White Columns Puts Dealers in the Studio for “Art (by) Dealers”
At White Columns in New York, a benefit exhibition is asking the art world to reconsider who gets to make the work. “Art (by) Dealers,” organized by Kathy Huang and Will Leung, gathers more than 90 dealers and gallery workers who created new pieces for sale, reversing the familiar model in which artists are asked to donate work for fundraising.
The premise is simple, but the effect is sly. Every work in the exhibition measures 12-by-9 inches, is priced at $500, and is sold anonymously. That means a buyer may walk away with a piece by a dealer who already maintains a studio practice, or by someone taking up art making for the first time. The anonymity turns the exhibition into a game of attribution, but also into a small study of how porous the boundary between dealer and artist can be.
The roster includes Stefania Bortolami, Gavin Brown, Eric Firestone, Leo Fitzpatrick, Anton Kern, Wendi Norris, and Rachel Uffner, among others. Huang and Leung first staged the format in summer 2023 at Long Story Short, where it served as a benefit for the Lower East Side Girls Club. This second edition expands the idea while keeping its rules tight.
That structure has also revealed how many participants move between roles. Some are practicing artists as well as dealers. Others have returned to the studio after years in the business. Jack Hanley, for example, began as an artist before spending more than three decades running a gallery and has returned to painting since retiring in late 2024. Margaret Lee, who co-founded 179 Canal, stepped away from the gallery side in 2023 to focus on painting full time.
The exhibition was reported to be almost halfway sold out, with 41 works acquired and 52 still available. For White Columns, the project fits a long-standing commitment to emerging practice, while also exposing the labor and improvisation that often remain hidden behind the commercial side of the art world.
In the end, “Art (by) Dealers” is less a novelty than a reminder that the art world’s categories are often more fluid than they appear. The show remains on view through April 25 at White Columns, 91 Horatio Street, New York.
