Artist Agents Are Returning as Galleries Face a More Fragmented Market
A new layer of art-world representation is taking shape, and it looks less like the traditional gallery model than the career-management systems long used in music, fashion and film. As galleries contend with market volatility and artists increasingly work across disciplines, artist agents are re-emerging as a practical alternative for support that goes beyond sales.
At the end of last month, Cristopher Canizares left his role as a partner at Hauser & Wirth to launch the Artist Legacy Bureau. He is part of a growing cluster of new ventures that have appeared over the past two years, including Sensity Studio in London, founded by cultural strategist Dina Mostovaya with a focus on female artists; Art+Mgmt in Miami, founded by Julia Bassiri; KUNST Agency, created by former model Anne Verhallen and working across fashion, art and music; and Spencer Young, an agency-advisory that opened in New York this spring.
Jon Horrocks, formerly a director at Stephen Friedman Gallery, which closed earlier this year, is also entering the field with an agency focused on museum partnerships. He calls the moment a “zeitgeist” shift, shaped by the need to remain adaptable in a turbulent market. His business is designed to stay lean: without a physical space, overhead remains low, and the roster will likely stay small, with four or five artists on retainer.
Horrocks is already working with Sarah Ball, who was previously with Stephen Friedman, and Nick Goss, who is represented by Josh Lilley in London and Ingleby in Edinburgh. He describes the work as collaborative rather than competitive with galleries. His emphasis is on institutional visibility — building relationships with curators, securing museum exhibitions and pursuing acquisitions.
The fee structure reflects that flexibility. Some artists pay a monthly retainer; others work on commission, depending on the museum sales he secures. Horrocks says the model is meant to cover the slower, less visible labor of long-term career development, including estate planning, academic engagement and archive publishing. In his view, that kind of support can ease pressure on galleries while giving artists a broader way to think about their careers.
The numbers suggest the gallery remains central, even as the system around it changes. According to the latest Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting, dealers still accounted for 43% of collectors’ spending in 2025. But direct-to-collector, or “disintermediated,” sales have risen sharply, doubling from 10% in 2021 to 20% in 2025.
That shift helps explain why hybrid models are multiplying. In Los Angeles, Rachel Keller and Sarah Davis opened Davis Keller gallery earlier this year, combining gallery experience with studio management expertise to serve mid-tier artists who need more administrative and strategic support than many galleries can provide. Their aim, Keller says, is to ease the tension between galleries trying to stay financially viable and artists trying to expand their practices while continuing to sell.
The pattern is not entirely new. United Talent Agency launched a fine art division in 2016, though both of its gallery spaces closed in 2024 and the fine art operation remains paused. Art Agency, Partners, co-founded in 2014 by Allan Schwartzman, Amy Cappellazzo and Adam Chinn, was acquired by Sotheby’s in 2016 for $85 million.
What is new is the scale of the current reset. Artist agents are no longer a historical footnote. They are becoming part of the infrastructure artists use to navigate a market that is still gallery-led, but increasingly distributed across studios, institutions and direct relationships.
