The Inward Power of David Zwirner
June 2025, FT Chinese Columnist Fanyu Lin
Some decisions are delayed by what can’t be measured: grief, memory, the weight of a name.
Last year, David Zwirner, one of the most systematic and globally respected gallerists of our time, marked the 30th anniversary of his gallery. It was also a moment of celebration for the opening of a new gallery in Los Angeles. “We cheated a little,” he confessed. “It was actually 31 years. We were delayed in opening Los Angeles.” But he hadn’t just waited one more year. He had waited an extra decade.
David Zwirner at the opening of his Los Angeles galleries on N Western Avenue in April 2023
“We wanted to have this beautiful moment where you look forward and you look backwards,” he said. “I really wanted to have all my artists with me when I’m opening a new gallery. We invited everyone. Everybody came.” But one artist’s presence of absence was deeply felt.
Jason Rhoades had been one of David’s closest artists and friends. When Rhoades died at just 41, the emotional weight lingered. “After he died, I had a more difficult relationship with Los Angeles,” David told me. “I went there less. It was still connected to him.” Years passed. Galleries expanded to London, Hong Kong, and Paris. But Los Angeles waited.
When I sat down with David for the latest installment of the Global Leadership Conversation series, our conversation began with a reflective moment on the ceremonial milestone, but soon revealed a kind of emotional infrastructure that anchors one of the world’s most powerful galleries. Its leader’s decisions aren’t performative. They’re interior.
I. A Leap of Faith
In 1993, the 27-year-old David Zwirner had no business plan, no space built out, and no certainty anyone would come. But he was already waiting for the world to notice something he believed in with conviction. He signed a lease in SoHo, New York City. He spent a quarter of the startup funding from his father, Rudolf Zwirner, an influential gallerist in Cologne, on designing a logo—the corporate identity. “It was a great investment,” he said, almost laughing at himself. “I’ve enjoyed looking at it for the last 32 years.”
“It was just me and one other person, two of us when we started.” The space was 1,600 square feet, but it held a sense of possibility. “I had no plan, which is kind of funny. Looking back, it’s amazing how little of a plan I had. But what I did know, and maybe that was my saving grace, is that in order to have a gallery, you need good artists.”
He spent the year before opening traveling across Europe, attending Documenta in Kassel, the Venice Biennale, and visiting museums across Germany, searching for artists. “I was looking for art that I thought was important,” he said, “especially artists who were well known in Europe but still underrepresented in America.” He was drawn to figures like the late Austrian sculptor Franz West and Belgian painter Luc Tuymans, artists whose distinct voices had already shaped the European conversation.
Luc Tuymans: La Pelle, 2019
Installation view, Palazzo Grassi, Venice. Featuring Schwarzheide, a mosaic based on his 1986 painting inspired by the sketches of Holocaust survivor Alfred Kantor. © Palazzo Grassi. Photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
“At the very beginning, I had difficulties because I was trying to persuade artists to join a gallery that wasn’t even in existence,” he recalled. He remembers Tuymans telling him, “You want me to join your gallery? You don’t even have a gallery.” David replied, “I will have a gallery.” He laughs about it now. “I think I went there three times to beg. Please join my gallery. Finally Luc said, ‘Okay, you are very persistent.’”
The shows he mounted in those early years still astonish him. “If you see the shows we did there, you’ll be like, whoa.” He was building something, artist by artist, conversation by conversation. “I could really be a talent scout within my own generation,” he said. “I’d go to Europe and meet Luc Tuymans. Then I’d meet Jason Rhoades. Then Raymond Pettibon. Before you know it, you put a stable of artists together.” It was a leap of faith for him and for the artists who chose to believe in something that hadn’t fully taken shape.
Looking back, he doesn’t describe those years as bold. He describes them as necessary. “Every show had to be profitable for my gallery to work.” And even then, he was thinking about sustainability. “What we did right from the beginning, and I think that’s the difference between my way of working and many other young galleries nowadays, we embraced both the primary market and the secondary market.” He sold new work from emerging artists, but also placed historical works—Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Bruce Nauman—helping the gallery stay financially healthy while grounding it in art history. “If you come to the gallery today,” he said, “you’ll see Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Paul Klee. That’s art history. If you just work in the primary market, that’s harder to get to. That balance is very important.”
The foundation had been laid long before. “I grew up above my father’s gallery in Germany. When I came home from school, I walked through the exhibitions. Sometimes I was interested, sometimes not. But it was part of my DNA. It just got in.”
It taught him how to see. Maybe even when to move.
“In 1992, there was a big art market crisis. In New York, a lot of galleries went under. I opened just after that, which in hindsight was a fantastic time. You want to start at the bottom of a business cycle. I didn’t know that. I just got lucky.” Franz West reappeared not long after. “Franz called me and I said, ‘I want to show you.’ He said, ‘But I already have a gallery in New York.’ Then I read in the paper that his gallery, Koury-Wingate, had gone out of business. I called him and said, ‘Your gallery went under. How about working with me?’ He told me he had just signed with another gallery, Christine Burgin.” A few months later, they too had closed. “I called again,” David said. “‘Franz, Christine Burgin is out of business.’” West paused. “Okay, okay, okay,” he said, “I will show with you.”
Franz West finally found a gallery that would last. And so did David.
II. The Heartbreak
Years ago, the calm confidence of David Zwirner was tested by a moment of heartbreak. It was the late 1990s. The gallery was still modest, still in SoHo. Franz West decided to leave. Enticed by a larger, more powerful gallery, the artist chose a new patron.
At the time, David had poured everything into supporting West’s career in America. “We were doing a great job for him,” he said. “Introducing his work to American collectors and museums.” But West, aware of his own mortality and drawn to the resources of a mega-dealer, chose to move on. For David, it wasn’t just a business loss; it was a loss of trust, of intimacy, of something shared.
In that moment of rupture, doubt crept in. His deeply personal, family-style approach had nurtured something beautiful, only for it to be spirited away by sheer scale. Was his way sustainable in an art world growing ever more ruthless and commodified?
“It really made me face this decision,” he reflected. “Am I going to stay small, which is lovely… or do I turn it on and create a much larger global business?”
Franz West: Investigations of American Art, 1993
Installation view, David Zwirner, New York. Courtesy David Zwirner
He respects the many gallerists who choose to remain small. He could have been one of them, content with a single space to show challenging art without compromise, a life spent caring for a dozen great artists. But the hard lesson of losing a treasured artist taught him something else: without growth, his ability to secure the futures of the artists he loved might always be limited. If he wanted to give them the world, he would have to build a world of his own.
In the years that followed, he transformed his operation from a small storefront gallery into a network of spaces that spanned continents. A larger Zwirner gallery footprint emerged—each outpost a beacon, drawing in artists and audiences. The staff grew from a handful of multitaskers to a team of specialists. The overhead ballooned; so did the stakes.
As the gallery approached its second decade, David sought advice from beyond the art world. He hired a former McKinsey & Company consultant. Together, they dissected the business and tuned up its engine. David wanted a gallery that could expand efficiently without losing its soul. “We’ve really looked under the hood and made some changes,” he said. “The funny thing is, the changes are invisible.”
New management structures, improved logistics, and carefully negotiated partnerships —none of these inner workings were visible to outsiders. At the center of a system humming with well-honed efficiency stands the founder, ensuring the machinery serves its true purpose. “Most important, of course, are the artists,” he said. “We are really looking to maximize our artists’ audience and tell their stories. But how you go about it has changed quite dramatically.”
As a leader, David speaks more often of responsibility than of power. He chose to grow not for growth’s sake, but to give artists a world large enough to hold them.
All of his spaces are designed by architect Annabelle Selldorf, and in early May the gallery debuted a new building by the architect in Chelsea on 19th Street. The façades are modern and understated, giving way to interiors of quiet grandeur, high ceilings, diffuse light, and a hush that invites contemplation. But the true structure being built is something less tangible: trust, longevity, and an expanded field for artistic voices to resonate.
David Zwirner 20th Street, New York, 2013
Designed by Selldorf Architects on the site of a former parking garage. Courtesy David Zwirner. Photo by Jason Schmidt
Franz West: Echolalia, 2023
Installation view, David Zwirner, 19th Street, New York. Courtesy David Zwirner
III. Trade Secret
“I’m not a banker,” David Zwirner said. “I deal in culture.”
He doesn’t deny that art is a significant asset class—how could he, when the works he places often sell for tens of millions? But that’s not what fuels him. “We tend to favor and get along better with collectors who are interested in building collections,” he told me, “rather than speculating on the art market. Those are usually the ones who also get better access to what we do. Because we want to help them build something that lasts.”
To lead in today’s art world, one must be multilingual: fluent in art, finance, diplomacy, and empathy. “You’re selling an expensive work of art, that’s nice,” he said. “But these long-term things you can shepherd along, those are the ones that really, really excite me.” For David, the reward lies in the slow cultivation of a career, the deep placement, the enduring match between artist and collector.
“Important works of art have many layers of meaning. And you want to keep discovering them. That is an intellectual pursuit. It's looking and thinking. I think if you can combine those, you build a great collection. You also have a much more fulfilled life.”
He genuinely cares about the collectors they serve. For more than two decades, David and his leadership team have been refining how client relationships are structured, shaping an internal culture that favors cooperation over competition.
“We had to find a way where the client feels truly well served, but also where the team works together,” he explained. To do that, he formalized something few galleries ever write down: a code of conduct. Some have called it his trade secret. He smiles at the term. Yes, it’s something he wouldn’t want to hand to competitors—but, he says, “I think it's less a trade secret than something really at the core of our DNA. Even if you took it, you couldn’t make it work. You need more than just a bunch of words; you need a climate, an ethos, an atmosphere. That’s very unique to us.”
When he brought in McKinsey & Company more recently to assess the business, the results were affirming. “The best part of the last McKinsey experience was that I didn’t learn that much new,” he said. “It meant we were really on our way. Now, if we want to make changes, they have to come from the inside.”
Change, now, is homegrown. The code is lived. The manners are honored. Progress is not imposed from above, but cultivated from within. Some longtime colleagues have become partners in the business, many of them with David for over two decades. “They know the artists,” he said. “They know the stories behind the work. That institutional knowledge is so important. And our artists, they want continuity.”
David describes his gallery as a talent agency. “We manage careers globally,” he said. “It’s not just about waiting for artworks to leave the studio. It’s about helping an artist do a museum show in Asia, or land a public commission in New York, or partner with a foundation in Europe.” The role, as he sees it, is both strategic and deeply personal—a slow shepherding, not only of work, but of voice, of legacy.
“I think for me,” David said, “when a very talented artist looks around at all the galleries and decides they’d most enjoy working with us, that’s when I feel I’m successful.”
This is the real trade secret.
A place where growth is rooted in trust.
Where clients are guided, not captured.
Where the invisible becomes the signature.
And where the real story is still, always, about the artists.
Jason Rhoades: CHERRY Makita – Honest Engine Work, 1993
Installation view, David Zwirner, New York. The artist’s first solo show in New York City. Courtesy David Zwirner
Luc Tuymans, Hearts, 2024
Installation view, David Zwirner: 30 Years, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 2024. Hearts depicts a close-up of an Ace of Hearts playing card, created for the gallery’s 30th anniversary exhibition. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
