Pandemic sales: Larry Gagosian's online business fetches $14 million

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenian-American art dealer/mogul Larry Gagosian has been social distancing and working from home like most people lately, except that he is doing that from a modernist fortress in the Hamptons, New York.

Since the lockdown began in March, online sales have rung up more than $14 million, Gagosian said in a recent interview with Bloomberg.

This week alone, as Frieze New York opened its virtual edition, the gallery found a buyer for a $5.5 million Cecily Brown painting featured in its online viewing room.

Gagosian has been running his empire from the Hamptons mansion in the past two months while all 18 of his galleries, which dot the globe from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, remain closed.

The stakes are high for Gagosian, who employs almost 300 full-time staffers and has more than 175,000 square feet of prime real estate.

A grandson of Armenian immigrants, he rose from selling posters in a parking lot in Los Angeles in the 1970s to becoming one of the art world’s most powerful figures, with all the trappings of his clients: mansions, a private jet and an enviable personal art collection.