Paula Cooper Gallery in New York is the winner of the first Art Basel Gallery Legacy Award, a prize that effectively hands a baton to the next generation of art dealers. As part of the prize format, Cooper has nominated a next-generation gallery, the New York dealership Chapter NY, which will now receive up to $50,000 towards participation costs for Art Basel next year. Chapter NY, founded in 2013, represents artists such as Jesse Darling and Rene Matić.
“While artists are often honoured for lifetime achievement, galleries, the long-term builders of artistic careers, markets, and cultural discourse, remain largely unrecognised at an institutional level,” says a statement from Art Basel. “The Gallery Legacy Award addresses that gap, while reinforcing Art Basel’s commitment to its core constituency: galleries.”
“The idea of passing on a legacy to the next generation is the right approach; galleries play a huge role in the [art world] community,” says Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s chief artistic officer and global director of fairs.
Paula Cooper Gallery, which has participated in Art Basel since 1999, was selected by a jury of nine collectors, patrons and industry figures including the Turin-based collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and the Indian-born philanthropist Komal Shah.
Cooper opened her gallery in SoHo in New York in 1968 with a politically charged exhibition benefiting the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. “Cooper’s programme has reflected a longstanding commitment to activism, public discourse, and cultural life beyond the gallery,” says an Art Basel statement. In a career spanning almost 60 years, Cooper has represented and exhibited artists such as Donald Judd, Cecily Brown and Lynda Benglis.
The Gallery Legacy Award was announced during a dinner yesterday, which also honoured the 2026 Art Basel Awards Medallists, who include Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, nominated in the “icon artist” section, and Pamela Joyner, who is shortlisted in the patrons category. (The winners will be announced in Miami Beach in December.)
