David Lewis has been appointed Senior Director at Hauser & Wirth, which is a significant development for the New York art scene. Known for his rigorous curatorial vision and deep scholarly expertise, Lewis is set to bring a fresh perspective to one of the world’s leading galleries. His arrival comes after over a decade of running his acclaimed eponymous gallery, which operated first on Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side and later on Walker Street in Tribeca.
David Lewis Gallery earned a reputation for its critical engagement with both emerging and historically under-recognized artists. The gallery consistently drew praise for its solo presentations and theory-driven group exhibitions that sought to challenge and expand the boundaries of contemporary art discourse. Lewis’s commitment to revisiting the canon led to the revival of attention to figures like feminist artist Mary Beth Edelson (1933–2021) and Alabama-based expressionist painter and sculptor Thornton Dial (1928–2016), among others.
Widely respected for his thoughtful, scholarly approach, Lewis has been a champion of cultural narratives that traverse modern and contemporary art. A key example of this is his groundbreaking exhibition Dial / Hammons / Rauschenberg, where he was the first to present Thornton Dial, an artist shaped by the Jim Crow South, alongside giants like David Hammons and Robert Rauschenberg, positioning them as equals. His recent exhibition, Everyone Loves Picabia (2023), reinforced his gallery’s ethos of forging meaningful connections between historical and emerging art.
Marc Payot, President of Hauser & Wirth, expressed his enthusiasm, stating, “Having admired David Lewis for a very long time, we’re thrilled he is joining our senior team in New York City. Since the end of the pandemic, David and I have spent many hours together, discussing art as well as the art world itself, discovering so much common ground and thinking out loud about dream projects. He shares Hauser & Wirth’s values, our commitment to original art historical scholarship, and our love of living artists as generative forces essential to the wellbeing of the wider culture. I am excited to welcome him to Hauser & Wirth.”
Before founding his gallery in 2013, Lewis lived and worked in Paris, where he completed a Ph.D. at The Graduate Center, CUNY, focusing on the career of Francis Picabia. His dissertation, Francis Picabia and the Problem of Nihilism, reflects his longstanding scholarly engagement with challenging artistic figures. During his time in Europe, Lewis also contributed regularly to Artforum, Frieze, and other leading art publications, penning essays on artists such as Philip Guston, Henri Matisse, and Sturtevant.
With Lewis now joining Hauser & Wirth, the gallery is set to further its commitment to both historical scholarship and contemporary innovation, with Lewis’s unique vision poised to enhance the gallery’s already distinguished reputation.
