Galleries
The galleries that decide what contemporary art is shown, to whom, and for how much: who founded them, where they are, whom they show and what they have sold.
- 12
- Galleries on this page
- 28
- Cities they have spaces in
- 1960
- The oldest: Pace Gallery
- $40m
- The highest price one of them has reported at a fair
All galleries
Gagosian
New York, 9 cities
The largest gallery in the world, with spaces on three continents and exhibitions of a kind once left to museums.
Hauser & Wirth
Zurich, 12 cities
A Swiss gallery that became one of the three largest in the world, known for artists' estates and for art centres in unlikely places.
David Zwirner
New York, 5 cities
A New York gallery with one of the strongest rosters of living painters and of post-war estates.
Pace Gallery
New York, 7 cities
The oldest of the mega-galleries, founded in 1960 and still run by the family that started it.
White Cube
London, 5 cities
The London gallery that launched the Young British Artists, now with spaces in Asia, Paris and New York.
Thaddaeus Ropac
Salzburg and Paris, 5 cities
An Austrian gallery with the strongest ties of any to the German and American art of the post-war years.
Perrotin
Paris, 7 cities
The Paris gallery that brought Takashi Murakami and Maurizio Cattelan to the West, and the one most at ease with popular culture.
Lisson Gallery
London, 5 cities
The London gallery of Minimal and Conceptual art, open on the same street since 1967.
Marian Goodman Gallery
New York, 3 cities
The New York gallery that introduced a generation of European artists to America, respected above all for its loyalty to them.
Gladstone Gallery
New York, 3 cities
A New York gallery built on long relationships with demanding artists, and keeper of the estates of Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe.
Galleria Continua
San Gimignano, 8 cities
An Italian gallery founded in a medieval hill town, which opens where others do not: Beijing, Havana, the French countryside.
Sprüth Magers
Berlin, 4 cities
A German gallery founded by two women, which made its name by showing women artists when few others would.
Where they are
A gallery of this size is a chain of them. New York, London and Paris are where almost all of them meet, and Asia is where they have opened most recently.
When they began
Most of the galleries that lead the market today were founded between 1980 and 1993, as the market for living artists took the shape it has now.
- 1960Pace Gallery, Boston
- 1967Lisson Gallery, London
- 1977Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
- 1980Gagosian, Los Angeles
- 1980Gladstone Gallery, New York
- 1981Thaddaeus Ropac, Lienz, Austria
- 1983Sprüth Magers, Cologne
- 1990Perrotin, Paris
- 1990Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy
- 1992Hauser & Wirth, Zurich
- 1993David Zwirner, New York
- 1993White Cube, London
What they sold
Galleries sell in private and seldom say for how much. At the large fairs some of them do, and these are the highest prices they have reported there since 2022.
- 1Louise BourgeoisSpider, 1996$40 millionHauser & Wirth, Art Basel 2022
- 2Pablo PicassoLe peintre et son modèle dans un paysage, 1963$35 millionHauser & Wirth, Art Basel 2026
- 3Gerhard RichterAbstraktes Bild, 1987$23 millionHauser & Wirth, Art Basel Paris 2025
- 4Louise BourgeoisSpider IV, 1996$22.5 millionHauser & Wirth, Art Basel 2023
- 5Gerhard RichterAbstraktes Bild (940-7), 2015$20 millionHauser & Wirth, Art Basel 2026
- 6Joan MitchellSunflowers, 1990 to 1991$20 millionDavid Zwirner, Art Basel 2024
- 7Arshile GorkyUntitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)), c. 1946 to 1947$16 millionHauser & Wirth, Art Basel 2024
- 8Julie MehretuCharioteer, 2007$11.5 millionWhite Cube, Art Basel Paris 2025
- 9Amedeo ModiglianiJeune fille aux macarons, 1918Just under $10 millionPace Gallery, Art Basel Paris 2025
- 10Philip GustonFour Heads, 1975$9.5 millionHauser & Wirth, Art Basel 2023
- 11Ruth AsawaUntitled, a hanging wire sculpture, 1955$9.5 millionDavid Zwirner, Art Basel 2025
- 12Ruth AsawaA hanging sculpture$7.5 millionDavid Zwirner, Art Basel Paris 2025
- 13Peter Paul RubensA painting$7 millionGagosian, Art Basel Paris 2025
- 14Gerhard RichterA painting$6.8 millionDavid Zwirner, Art Basel 2025
- 15Gerhard RichterAbstraktes Bild, 2016$6 millionDavid Zwirner, Art Basel 2024
How to read this page
The choice of galleries is this site's: the largest international galleries, and a few smaller ones whose influence is out of proportion to their size. Others would belong on a longer list.
Prices as the gallery reported them from its stand at the fair named. They are the seller's figures, usually the asking price, and cannot be checked.
A gallery that reports nothing is not selling less. The largest of them say the least, so the ranking above shows who speaks, not who sells most.
This site is not connected with any gallery, and sells none of the works named.