From first show to mega-gallery, in charts

An artist’s market begins with their first solo show at a commercial gallery: the first prices, the first collectors, often the first review. For the 122 artists that show happened at 117 different galleries. No gallery gave a first show to more than two of them, and only five did that: Victoria Miro, Plan B in Cluj, Peres Projects in Berlin, LFL Gallery in New York, and White Cube, which gave Michael Armitage his first solo show in 2015 and still represents him.

New York had 24 of the first shows, London 16 and Los Angeles 10. The rest were spread over 45 other cities, among them Cluj, where Plan B gave Adrian Ghenie and Victor Man their first shows, São Paulo, Cape Town, Beijing, Accra and Kuwait City.

Most of these galleries were small. Only 23 of the 122 first shows were at a gallery that had a stand at Art Basel in Basel this June, the fair whose selection is the nearest the trade has to a ranking of established galleries. David Kordansky gave Lauren Halsey hers in 2020, Jack Shainman gave Tyler Mitchell his in 2021, and Pippy Houldsworth gave Jadé Fadojutimi hers in 2017. The others were galleries like 56 Henry on the Lower East Side, where Anna Weyant’s first show in 2019 priced paintings at $2,000 to $12,000. There were also Feuer/Mesler, which sold Loie Hollowell’s at $8,000 to $15,000 in 2016, and Friends Indeed in San Francisco, which gave Lauren Quin her first show in 2020. Rawson Projects showed Jamian Juliano-Villani, Ramiken Crucible Andra Ursuţa, and Various Small Fires Julie Curtiss.

By the time a mega-gallery signed them, most had moved up a rung. Of the galleries that represented them just before, 44% have a stand at Art Basel this year and 10% are mega-galleries themselves. Of the galleries that gave them their first shows, 19% and 2%. Another 18% came from a gallery that has since closed or merged.

Each of the five recruits differently. Gagosian took seven of its 29 younger artists from the other four. Four came from David Zwirner: Carol Bove, Cy Gavin, Harold Ancart and Jordan Wolfson, whom Zwirner still shares. Two came from White Cube, which still shares them, and Sterling Ruby came from Hauser & Wirth. Zwirner signed 12 of its 19 from galleries with a stand at Art Basel, usually in partnership with them: Canada for Katherine Bernhardt, Stevenson for Portia Zvavahera, Sadie Coles for Yu Nishimura. White Cube goes furthest afield. Ten of its 22 came from galleries that are not at Art Basel, in Tokyo, Beijing, Brescia, Brussels, Amsterdam, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Pace is the one that grew from other galleries’ endings. Ten of its 29 came from galleries that closed or merged. Metro Pictures, which shut at the end of 2021 after 41 years, sent it Trevor Paglen, Paulina Olowska and Latifa Echakhch. Kayne Griffin in Los Angeles merged into Pace in 2022, bringing Hank Willis Thomas and Mika Tajima. When Blum, the former Blum & Poe, closed in 2025, Pace took on Lauren Quin and Friedrich Kunath.

Eight galleries each saw three or four of these artists go to a mega-gallery, and seventeen more saw two. David Kordansky in Los Angeles is the clearest case of a gallery whose artists the mega-galleries share rather than take. Gagosian signed Jennifer Guidi, Jonas Wood and Lauren Halsey from it, and Hauser & Wirth signed Rashid Johnson, and Kordansky still represents all four. Victoria Miro in London has seen four go: Njideka Akunyili Crosby to Zwirner, Flora Yukhnovich and María Berrío to Hauser & Wirth, and Jules de Balincourt to Pace, all four of them shared. Three of the eight have closed: Metro Pictures, Blum & Poe and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, whose dealer joined Gladstone in 2020.

A mega-gallery’s announcement used to mean the end of an artist’s old gallery. Of the 63 artists signed up to 2021, 25 still work with the gallery they had before and 21 left it. Of the 27 signed since 2024, 20 kept it and one left. Hauser & Wirth now usually signs an artist together with the gallery they have: Company Gallery for Ambera Wellmann, Nicola Vassell for Uman, Hannah Barry for George Rouy, Marianne Boesky for Michaela Yearwood-Dan. Zwirner signed Sasha Gordon with Matthew Brown, the gallery that gave her her first solo show in 2021.

The old gallery has the most to lose. In the Art Basel and UBS survey of 2025, the smallest dealers, those selling less than $250,000 a year, made 40% of their sales from their single best-selling artist and 65% from their top three; dealers selling more than $10 million, 26% and 48%. The report calls the loss of a top artist to a larger gallery potentially catastrophic for a small one. Sharing keeps some of the artist’s sales coming through the gallery that found them. The mega-galleries, for their part, have learned that a long roster is costly: in June 2026 ARTnews reported that Pace would cut its roster from about 135 artists toward 85, and its staff from about 250 to 200.

The median artist joined a mega-gallery nine years after their first solo show, at the age of 40. The spread is wide. Eighteen were signed within three years of their first show. Michael Armitage’s first solo show was at White Cube itself, and Loie Hollowell went from Feuer/Mesler to Pace within a year. Oscar Murillo, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Theaster Gates, Julie Curtiss, Pam Evelyn, Li Hei Di and Christina Kimeze each took two. At the other end, Friedrich Kunath had been showing for 27 years when he joined Pace, Harmony Korine 26 when he joined Hauser & Wirth, and Carol Bove 23 when she joined Gagosian.

White Cube signs earliest, at a median of 6.5 years after a first show; Pace latest, at 11. Counting every living artist the five have given a first solo show since 2011, of whatever age, the median was 47 at that show. Ten were under 30, among them Anna Weyant, Tyler Mitchell, Pam Evelyn and Sasha Gordon at 27, and 31 were 70 or over: Frank Bowling was 87 at his first Hauser & Wirth show, Howardena Pindell 81 and Yoko Matsumoto 88 at theirs at White Cube.

The five signed 19 of these artists in 2022 and 17 in 2023, more than in any two years before. The count is of artists still on the rosters, so the earlier years are short of those who have since left. But the peak came after the market for young artists’ work had already turned. Works made in the previous twenty years sold for $2.9 billion at auction in 2021, by the count in the Art Basel and UBS report, and for $0.9 billion in 2025. Artprice’s count of the work of artists under 40 fell from $427 million in its year to June 2022 to $148 million two years later.

The signings have slowed since: 7 in 2025 and 5 so far in 2026, Anicka Yi at Pace, Conny Maier at Hauser & Wirth, Louis Fratino at Zwirner, and Suleman Aqeel Khilji and Tesfaye Urgessa at White Cube. In September, after Hauser & Wirth’s roster was last read for this report, it announced that it would represent Lucy Bull, whom David Kordansky has shown since 2021.

A gallery sets the price of an artist’s new work and keeps about half of it. When Anna Weyant left Blum & Poe for Gagosian in 2022, the top of her range went from $40,000 to $600,000 within a year, as sources close to the gallery told Artnet. Jadé Fadojutimi’s large paintings went from £130,000 at Pippy Houldsworth to about £500,000 at Gagosian between one Frieze London and the next. Amy Sherald’s went from $50,000 at Monique Meloche to $175,000 at Hauser & Wirth.

The rise is the gallery’s choice, and not every mega-gallery makes it. Lauren Quin’s paintings cost $70,000 at Blum & Poe in 2022 and $85,000 at Pace in 2025. Flora Yukhnovich’s cost up to £350,000 at Victoria Miro in 2022, and Hauser & Wirth sold one for $325,000 this year. Some of the steepest rises come before the mega-gallery arrives. Lucy Bull’s paintings went from $55,000 to $250,000 at David Kordansky between 2021 and 2024. Amoako Boafo’s went from $10,000 in January 2019 to $250,000 to $300,000 by 2022, the year before his first show with Gagosian.

The steepest step of all was from the gallery to the auction room. A Sherald bought from Monique Meloche for about $10,000 in 2016 sold at Phillips for $2.1m in 2022. A Lucy Bull bought for $4,500 in 2019 made $841,263 in Hong Kong in 2023. Boafo’s The Lemon Bathing Suit changed hands for $22,500 in 2019 and was resold at Phillips for $880,971 a few months later.

The galleries that find artists and the galleries that sign them sell different things. In the Art Basel and UBS survey of 2020, where each dealer sorted its own artists into emerging, mid-career and established, 48% of the artists shown by the smallest dealers selling new work were emerging; among dealers selling more than $10 million a year, 18% were, and 54% were established. In 2025, 95% of the sales of dealers under $1 million were for less than $50,000, against 35% of the largest dealers’ sales. The median small dealer sold 35 works in the year and the median large one 175.

The largest study of artists’ careers, published in Science in 2018, followed 496,354 artists through their shows at 16,002 galleries and 7,568 museums from 1980 to 2016. It ranked galleries and museums by where their artists went on to show: a venue ranks high when its artists go on to show at other high-ranking venues. Gagosian and Pace came third and fourth, after MoMA and the Guggenheim. The study calls the top fifth of venues the top, and the bottom two-fifths the bottom. Among 31,794 artists born between 1950 and 1990, those whose first five shows were, on average, at venues in the top fifth were still showing ten years on in 39% of cases, and 58.6% ended their careers near the top. Of those who began at the bottom, 14% were still showing and 10.2% reached the top: 240 artists in all. Those who rose did so within their first ten years, after showing at a wider range of venues than those who did not.

Prices followed the start. The highest price at a gallery averaged $193,064 for artists who began at the top, and $40,476 for those who began at the bottom.

On View’s maps of New York, Los Angeles and Paris have 38 solo shows at the five mega-galleries on view or announced this autumn. Twelve of the 37 artists have died, among them Jackson Pollock at Pace, Lee Krasner at Gagosian in Paris, Alexander Calder at Hauser & Wirth in Paris and Roy DeCarava at David Zwirner in Los Angeles. Thirteen were born in 1970 or later. The youngest are Jem Perucchini, born in 1995, at Zwirner in Tribeca, and George Rouy, born in 1994, at Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea. Deana Lawson’s first solo show at Gagosian is on view now, four years after it announced that it represents her, and Oscar Murillo opens his at Zwirner in Paris for Art Basel Paris.

For the galleries one city at a time, see our guides to the best galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Berlin, where several of the galleries that found these artists are still showing new ones.