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The 50 Most Powerful Women in the New York Art World

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By GalleristNY 10/05/11 10:00am

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Here at GalleristNY we initially resisted the idea of creating a Power List (anyone who reads The Observer will know that they are treasured here), until we realized we could use one to make a point.

There has been a lot of press about women in the art world recently, but for some reason this talk has been for the most part limited to women who work in galleries. Vogue profiled Gagosian’s female employees (the “Gagosiennes), New York magazine’s fashion blog, The Cut, recently looked at the sartorial choices of gallery assistants and a piece in the The New Yorker questioned their very existence.

And of course there is the upcoming Bravo reality series Paint The Town, which, according to advance promotion, will follow the trials, tribulations and, presumably, the night life of a bunch of young gallery assistants.

What gets left out in the current discussion is the fact that women hold positions of real power in the art world. Many may have started out as the women who work the front desk, but now they are the ones who decide whether or not you get to buy that painting, or have that museum show. They raise money for museums, source pictures and write reviews. Attesting to the power of women in the art world, this was an excruciatingly difficult list to narrow down. Also, we would like to emphasize that the order is random: the list is not ranked.

In The Observer‘s pages, we recently profiled Paula Cooper, one of New York’s legendary dealers. In the slideshow that follows, we give you the 50 most powerful women in New York’s modern and contemporary art world.
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Amy Cappellazzo – Christie’s, chairman of international post-war and contemporary art development

With her promotion in May to her current position, this former curator’s star has quickly risen. Ms. Cappellazzo is credited with playing a major role in the department’s record-breaking auctions of 2004 and 2007. "They'd prefer to spend $500,000 here or at auction on something they could buy privately for $50,000,” the rainmaker once told The Times, of her clients. “These people are traders, and they're incredibly savvy about markets." So is Ms. Capellazzo, who has demonstrated an uncanny ability to tempt collectors into bringing top material to market year after year.
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Rachel Lehmann – dealer

Along with partner David Maupin, Rachel Lehmann has assembled an idiosyncratic mixture of today’s leading artists, from Tracey Emin to Gilbert & George to Angel Otero, at Lehmann Maupin. Though she has two New York spaces, she recently organized a temporary exhibition in the fast-rising art capital of Istanbul, courting new money and power in a scene that is flush with both.
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Andrea Glimcher – The Pace Gallery, director of communications

Given all those high-profile artists to manage, it can’t be easy to be director of communications at Pace, which is arguably the second most powerful gallery in the world, second only to Larry Gagosian. But Andrea Glimcher never lets you see her sweat. Ms. Glimcher serves on the art council of the Dia Art Foundation, along with her husband, Pace Gallery president Marc, and was instrumental in Pace’s recent decision to buy space under the High Line. With a London gallery on the way, we’ll be hearing more from Ms. Glimcher in years to come.
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Ann Temkin – Museum of Modern Art, chief curator

As chief curator of MoMA's formidable collections, Ms. Temkin has the power to shape discussions of art history, which she has been doing with her ongoing reorganization of the museum’s permanent galleries. With access to one of the nation’s biggest acquisitions budgets and more space on the way, as the museum readies its latest expansion, Ms. Temkin’s power is poised to expand in coming years.
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Amanda Sharp – Frieze Art Fair and Frieze, co-founder

As if being the co-founder of Frieze magazine—arguably the art world’s second most respected monthly magazine—wasn’t enough, Ms. Sharp now stages the massively influential Frieze Art Fair with her partner Matthew Slotover. Introduce yourself to her at the first New York edition of the fair next spring on Randall’s Island. Though that far-flung location has raised some doubts in the New York art world, she is giving the long-running Armory Show a run for its money.
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Clarissa Dalrymple – curator and art advisor

Called “the most aristocratic bohemian on New York’s contemporary art scene” by T Magazine, Ms. Dalrymple has factored into the careers of too many artists to count, Matthew Barney, Damien Hirst and Neo Rauch among them. An able saleswoman for a number of today’s young artists, the advisor has been a fixture of the New York art world for decades (she ran the Cable Gallery in the early 1980’s with gallerist Nicole Klagsbrun), meaning that she knows absolutely everyone. She was introduced to the new generation last year with a cameo in director Lena Dunham’s twee-set hit film Tiny Furniture.
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Cindy Sherman – artist

She may not always be recognized at parties, but Ms. Sherman’s playful, haunting self-portraits explore the multifarious aspects of personality, and are always top sellers at auction: she hit her all-time high this year with an untitled work that sold for $3.8 million, the most ever paid at auction for a photograph. MoMA will present a retrospective with her (for the second time) in February.
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Marian Goodman – dealer

One of the most important dealers of the last three decades, Ms. Goodman represents such powerhouses as John Baldessari, Gerhard Richter, Tino Sehgal, Dan Graham and Maurizio Cattelan. Operating out of both New York and Paris, she has helped grow the careers of some of the world’s most important artists. After her New York gallery closed a few years ago, painter Julie Mehretu was courted by many dealers, but picked Ms. Goodman, testifying to the gallerist’s continued relevance with young artists. Fun fact: the Goodman Gallery, which has remained on 57th Street for decades (just blocks from MoMA) is open six days a week, Monday through Saturday.
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Marie-Josee Kravis – collector and patron

Ms. Kravis, wife of billionaire financier Henry Kravis, is one of the art world’s most important benefactors and patrons. As the president of the board of the Museum of Modern Art, she has donated around $10 million to that museum alone. Glance at the labels on contemporary artworks in MoMA’s collection and one will find no shortage of works donated by Ms. Kravis and her husband, giving her powerful sway in art dealers’ back rooms.
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Beth Rudin DeWoody – collector and patron

An impresario of the old-school model for contemporary art, Ms. DeWoody’s homes in New York and West Palm Beach, Florida, are jam-packed with Cindy Shermans, Nan Goldins and Andy Warhols. Her diverse tastes are a testament to her immersion in the art world: she used to be married to the artist Jim DeWoody and was an early supporter of Tom Sachs and John Waters. Given her extensive collecting, she can play a major role in determining the success of an artist—and his or her gallery.
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Anne Pasternak – Creative Time, president and artistic director

If you don’t already know Ms. Pasternak, you definitely know her work. As president and creative director of Creative Time since 1994, she’s been responsible for such works as “Tribute in Light,” the spectral downtown Twin Towers, and has worked with artists like Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Jenny Holzer, Gary Hume, Vik Muniz and Takashi Murakami. Having staged large-scale exhibitions again and again throughout the city, Ms. Pasternak has the ability to give artists public visibility on a scale that few other art world players can even imagine.
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Paula Cooper – dealer

Since opening the first gallery in SoHo, in 1968, Paula Cooper has guided the careers of many of today’s most renowned postwar American artists, from Carl Andre to Sophie Calle, for years. Now at the helm of two Chelsea spaces, she has continued to sign many of today’s most coveted young artists, including the highly-coveted Op artist Tauba Auerbach and Kelley Walker. She engineered a blockbuster event earlier this year when she kept her doors open for uninterrupted screenings of Christian Marclay’s 24-hour video piece The Clock, which is now ensconced in museum collections around the world, one of the most-talked-about works of video art in history.
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Melva Bucksbaum – collector and patron

Melva Bucksbaum has deeply involved in a dizzying array of philanthropic pursuits, serving as a member of the boards of the Whitney, the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, Creative Time, the American Friends of the Israel Museum, the International Committee of the Tate Gallery and others. A formidable collector of contemporary art, she has been named to the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list many years, and her eponymous $100,000 prize, presented to one artist in each Whitney Biennial has become one of the American art world’s most respected and influential prizes.
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Agnes Gund – collector and patron

A world-renowned collector of contemporary art and exceedingly generous philanthropist, countless institutions owe much of their livelihood to the Gund fund. Ms. Gund is also a former MoMA president and a current chair of MoMA PS1, as well as a board member for the president’s National Council on the Arts.[
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Angela Westwater – dealer

A former Artforum managing editor in the 1970s, Ms. Westwater made a name for herself showing pioneers of Minimal and Conceptual art like Bruce Nauman, Carl Andre and Gerhard Richter in the 1970s and ‘80s in SoHo. Last summer, the Sperone Westwater Gallery co-founder made a bold move from a quiet space in the Meatpacking District into its new Norman Foster-designed space that towers over the Bowery, a building that rivals the neighboring New Museum in scale and ambition.
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Mary Hoeveler – art advisor

Ms. Hoeveler left Citibank in 2008 to start her own advisory firm and since then has become ubiquitous at contemporary fairs, auctions and galleries in New York and internationally.
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Amy Phelan – collector and patron

Once, she was a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. Now, you might say, she's brought that spirit to art institutions. A major supporter of organizations like Creative Time, she' s served as the boisterous MC at numerous galas. Ms. Phelan, who splits her time between New York and Aspen (where, not surprisingly, she is a huge supporter of the Aspen Art Museum), is seemingly indefatigable. One more important note: she is amassing a sizable art collection with her husband, John Phelan, a partner in the investment firm MSD Capital.
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Abigail Asher – art advisor

The redoubtable art advisor, a regular in both the auction salerooms and the galleries, has been with powerhouse firm Guggenheim Asher for 24 years and has been a partner in that firm for the past two decades.
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Andrea Rosen – dealer

Ms. Rosen made a name for herself from her very first exhibition, in 1990, by showing Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and went on to establish herself as the “tough, platinum princess of the Chelsea gallery scene,” as New York magazine once put it, through her stellar eye for talent. A major find included ex-boyfriend John Currin, now represented by Gagosian. With relatively young international giants like Wolfgang Tillmans, David Altmejd and Andrea Zittel on her roster, she has a base of power that seems likely to endure.
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Melissa Chiu – Asia Society Museum, director and curator for contemporary Asian and Asian-American art

Since joining the museum as its first curator for contemporary Asian and Asian-American art a decade ago, Melissa Chiu has since worked to make it a destination for contemporary art. She was named director in 2004. Two of her recent contemporary art shows—solo exhibitions of the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei and the Japanese neo-Pop master Yoshitomo Nara—were triumphs, but she has also emerged as a passionate advocate on human rights issues, calling for Mr. Ai’s release when he was imprisoned earlier this year and organizing “The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara” against formidable difficulties. (It was delayed for months because of difficulties obtaining the works from Pakistan.) The New Republic christened it “the Taliban’s least favorite Buddhist art show.
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Amalia Dayan – dealer

The former model and granddaughter of Moshe Dayan has been in the art business for over ten years. She worked for Gagosian Gallery, then opened a gallery of her own in Chelsea with Gagosian colleague Stefania Bortolami. After the two women went their separate ways, Ms. Bortolami opened a Chelsea gallery solo, and Ms. Dayan became a private dealer. Recently Ms. Dayan opened a jewel box of a gallery on the Upper East Side, Luxembourg & Dayan, with established Swiss dealer Daniella Luxembourg, who spends most of her time in Zurich. Last year, the gallery made a splash by bringing back to light Jeff Koons' famously pornographic "Made In Heaven" series. Ms. Dayan also happens to be married to noted collector and Observer columnist Adam Lindemann.
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Emily Fisher Landau – collector and patron

Ms. Landau has amassed one of the largest private art collections in the world. In 1991, she opened the Fisher Landau Center for Art in Long Island City, not only helping to inaugurate that neighborhood as an up-and-coming epicenter for art, but also creating one of the great cultural destinations in the city when her private collection is on view. She secured her place in the history of New York cultural patronage with her donation of 367 works to the Whitney last year.
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Elisabeth Sussman – Whitney Museum of American Art, curator of photography

Over the past three decades Ms. Sussman has earned a reputation as a thoughtful, fearless curator, working with institutions like SFMOMA and ICA Boston. Known for organizing seminal shows of work by Keith Haring, Mike Kelley and Nan Goldin, she is co-curating the 2012 Whitney Biennial. Her work curating the 1993 biennial, which was filled with political art, earned sharply differing views: so her picks for this year’s edition are likely to receive especially close attention.
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Lucy Mitchell-Innes – dealer and Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA), president

Ms. Mitchell-Innes is the first female president of the Art Dealers Association of America. She has run the successful Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery in New York with her husband for more than 15 years and, before that spent 13 years at Sotheby’s in its contemporary art, Latin American art and print departments. Beyond that, in her short time as president, she guided ADAA through the slowest art market since the ‘90s.
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Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn – dealer

The gallerist behind Salon 94—which has three locations in New York and shows the work of such bankable talents as Marilyn Minter and Huma Bhaba (who also shows with Peter Blum)—became something of a nationally recognized style icon as a judge on Bravo’s Work of Art. Beyond her rich roster, which recently added Jules de Balincourt (who was left without a gallery when dealer Jeffrey Deitch decamped to run MOCA LA), Ms. Rohatyn also works with a wide array of talent—from Rashid Johnson to Lynda Benglis—for some of the most interesting and influential one-off shows in the city.
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Kate Levin – New York Department of Cultural Affairs, commissioner

Commissioner Levin oversees a department that is the largest municipal funder of culture in the country, giving $27 million to more than 800 organizations each year. She’s overhauled the creative landscape of the city, including recently expanding it to Governors Island, where a huge retrospective of large-scale sculptures by her husband, Mark di Suvero, closed out the summer. Her power is enhanced by the fact that she works with a billionaire mayor whose philanthropic organizations have been highly supportive of artistic projects.
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Nancy Spector – Guggenheim Museum, deputy director and chief curator

More than two decades into her career at the Guggenheim, Nancy Spector continues to set a striking curatorial agenda, organizing shows like her 2007 Richard Prince retrospective, her 2008 relational aesthetics group show, “theanyspacewhatever,” and the 2009 U.S. pavilion in Venice, with Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Though those projects earned sharply differing reviews from some quarters, she has proved brilliant at presenting of-the-moment work. Her much-discussed Maurizio Cattelan retrospective, which is set to open in November, could solidify her position as one of the most influential curators in the history of New York contemporary art.
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Emily Rafferty – Metropolitan Museum of Art, president

First woman president of the largest art museum in the United States. Enough said. Well, not quite enough. Ms. Rafferty has been at the Metropolitan Museum of Art all of her working life, beginning there as an assistant in the development office in 1975, when she was 25. She was elected president in 2005. She's a fundraising dynamo, sitting at the helm of one of the world's greatest museums, and one that is hardly content to rest on its laurels. In November it opens a brand new wing devoted to Islamic art, and the museum is increasingly incorporating contemporary art and contemporary fashion into its programming.
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Yvonne Force Villareal – Art Production Fund, co-founder

Omnipresent on the benefit circuit, Yvonne Force Villareal has led the Art Production Fund to become of the most visible nonprofits in the city, helping young artists produce work on a scale that would be almost unimaginable without her support, solidifying their careerss. Case in point: in 2009, Ms. Villareal and her partners helped Karl Haendel emblazon one of his large black-and-white drawings on the side of a SoHo building, giving him one of the most visible mural sites in the city.
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Dominique Levy – dealer

With the combined efforts of Ms. Levy and gallery founder Robert Mnuchin (a former Goldman Sachs executive), L&M Arts has become one of New York’s most well connected, rarefied galleries. The gallery’s client list includes billionaires like Steve Cohen, it recently expanded into Los Angeles and its artist roster includes the estate of Joseph Cornell and, in North America, Yves Klein. Ms. Levy has spearheaded seminal exhibitions of Willem de Kooning’s later work and “Elemental Form,” a large-scale survey of works from the 1960s and ‘70s that acts as a virtual canonization of the era. The gallery’s connection with the reclusive artist David Hammons has also added to its cache: their show with Mr. Hammons in January may have been the best-reviewed gallery exhibition of the year.
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Lisa Phillips – New Museum, director

Ms. Phillips is only the second director of the New Museum in its 30-year history, a position she has held since 1999. Under her leadership, the museum moved to its current location on the Bowery, installed David Wojnarowicz’s censored video “Hide/Seek” in its lobby and has helped spawn a new gallery neighborhood on the Lower East Side in just a few short years.
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Helene Winer and Janelle Reiring – dealers

When Ms. Winer and Ms. Reiring founded Metro Pictures in 1980, they were already art world elite. Ms. Reiring worked at Castelli Gallery, and Ms. Winer had been a pioneering curator of Conceptual art in Southern California and London, and had established a reputation for Artists Space as a vanguard downtown art center. After putting artists like Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler, Mike Kelley and Martin Kippenberger on the map, they proved themselves as innovators once more by being among the first dealers to open in Chelsea in 1995.
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Marina Abramovic – artist

After staging her epic endurance piece, The Artist Is Present, in MoMA’s atrium earlier this year, the indomitable, highly charismatic Marina Abramovic has singlehandedly worked her way into a central position in the history of postwar art. That’s no small feat, but she has also cultivated sterling connections throughout the contemporary art world, making her a sought-after fundraiser. (She’s organizing this year’s MOCA Los Angeles gala-spectacle.) If she succeeds in building her Marina Abramovic Institute in Hudson, N.Y., which will be dedicated to presenting performance art, she could prove to be an enduring influence on the form.
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Jo Carole Lauder – collector and patron

Jo Carole Lauder is one of the city’s most established patrons, having served on the boards of museums and groups like Independent Curators International.
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Lisa Spellman – dealer

Ms. Spellman opened her gallery, 303, in 1984, renting a loft on Park Avenue for just $470 a month, where she showed Richard Prince, Jeff Koons and Andreas Gursky. Once an outsider, she’s now an institution. Moving to the East Village and then SoHo in subsequent years, she continued her habit of picking top talent early, giving artists like Rirkrit Tiravanija and Karen Kilimnik some of their earliest shows. Deeply respected by curators, her shows continue to shape the discourse.
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Thea Westreich – art advisor

With many of the city’s most deep-pocketed collectors as her clients, art advisor Thea Westreich is shaping many of the most important, well-financed collections in the city and internationally. A 2004 guilty plea for failing to collect sales tax has proved to be little more than a temporary speed bump in her career. Publishing luxurious artist books with her husband, Ethan Wagner, she has cultivated her public image as a serious art patron.
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Thelma Golden – Studio Museum in Harlem, director and chief curator

While many of the city’s museums have rushed to build museums and organize blockbusters, Thelma Golden has carefully consolidated her power on 125th Street, overseeing a panoply of off-the-wall, prescient exhibitions. Ms. Golden has developed a reputation for spotting talent early, and a nod from her can be a key catalyst in the success of an emerging artist’s career. Just ask artists like Wangechi Mutu and Kerry James Marshall, whom she showed early in their careers.
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Nathalie de Gunzburg – collector and patron

Besides being a major collector, Nathalie de Gunzburg is chair of a newly ascendant Dia, which suffered a blow when its longtime supporter, Barnes & Noble Leonard Riggio, resigned from the board in 2006 after helping to finance the creation of Dia:Beacon upstate. Having guided the foundation as it acquired a lot adjacent to its West 22nd Street gallery space, which Pace will surrender at the end of next summer year, Ms. de Gunzburg is in a position to be the leader of a museum that could become a centerpiece of Chelsea, second only in the area to the Whitney’s forthcoming High Line home.
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RoseLee Goldberg – Performa, founding director and curator

A pioneering scholar of performance art, RoseLee Goldberg has transformed her performance biennial, Performa, which first appeared in 2005, into a biannual fixture of the contemporary art landscape. Each year, Ms. Goldberg has managed to expand the ambition and reach of her offerings, and this year’s iteration, running from Nov. 1 through Nov. 21, will be the biggest biennial yet. Her imprimatur carries weight: look down the CVs of many of today’s most critically acclaimed young artists, and one often finds Performa events listed quite early in their careers.
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Lisa Dennison – Sotheby’s, chairman of North and South America

After serving as director of the Guggenheim for less than two years, Ms. Dennison left for Sotheby’s, in a position the auction house created for her. Tobias Meyer, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s told New York magazine upon Ms. Dennison’s arrival in 2007 that the move was a “proactive gold mine.” With her at the helm of international business development, Sotheby’s saw profits of $680 million in the last fiscal year, a record for the publicly owned auction house.
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Laura Paulson – Christie's, deputy chairman

International director in the postwar and contemporary art department at Christie's, Laura Paulson works closely with Brett Gorvy, but also spends a good portion of her time sourcing consignments and working with clients around the world. She's been working in the auction world for 25 years, at Christie's, then at Sotheby's, then back at Christie's. She's been instrumental in major single owner sales, like the Collection of Henry Geldzahler, the Estate of Lawrence Alloway and the Collection of Victor and Sally Ganz. For a demonstration of her art historical chops, listen to her talk about Rauschenberg's The Tower.
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Marilyn Minter – artist

Ms. Minter’s now-iconic Green Pink Caviar video was screened in MoMA’s lobby for more than a year, a significant curatorial vote of confidence for the New York art world veteran. One of the most commercially successful female artists of her generation, she has a one-person show scheduled at Salon 94 (run by Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, who also made our list), which opens this month.
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Mary Boone – dealer

In years past, Mary Boone’s hard-charging business practices earned her the consternation of many in the art world—a victim of a double standard?—but she has recently reinvented herself as an able collaborator, organizing stunning shows with other galleries’ prize artists (like Phoebe Washburn and, right now, Nick Cave), helping to guide their prices into loftier territory. And her stable is still packed with heavy hitters like Peter Halley, Eric Fischl and David Salle. But beyond her panache for presentation, her true power derives from the high volume of secondary market sales that she brokers from her two galleries, in Midtown and West 24th Street.
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Leslie Prouty – Sotheby's senior specialist and senior vice president of contemporary art

Ms. Prouty has been a quiet force in the auction world since 1982. She's worked not only in sales but also in diligently researching the house's catalogues. She's sold pieces from the collections of the Dia Foundation, Ethel Redner Scull, Samuel and Luella Maslon, Karl Ströher, Lannan Foundation and the Estate of Vera G. List.
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Marianne Boesky – dealer

Ivan Boesky's daughter opened a gallery in Soho back in 1996, and eventually moved, along most of the neighborhood's galleries, to Chelsea. Now she boasts two locations in New York City—one in Chelsea (a Deborah Berke-designed building that she lives above) and another in a tony townhouse on the Upper East Side. Ms. Boesky has created one of the art world’s most diverse artist stables, from Takashi Murakami (now represented by Gagosian), Yoshitomo Nara and Rachel Feinstein to Sue de Beer and Kon Trubkovich. With her husband, Wall Street trader Liam Culman, she also has a formidable art collection.
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Kathy Halbreich – Museum of Modern Art, associate director

As the director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for 16 years, she nearly doubled the museum’s collection, acquiring pieces by the likes of Matthew Barney, Bruce Nauman, Kara Walker and Yves Klein. In 2007, MoMA created the position of associate director just for Ms. Halbreich, who oversees everything from the organization of exhibitions to fundraising. She is poised to end her career as the director of a major museum. Last year, she got high marks for her reinstallation, with co-curator Christophe Cherix, of MoMA's entire 14,740-square-foot contemporary art galleries.
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Barbara Gladstone – dealer

Barbara Gladstone’s been in the art game since 1979, but her tastes have remained at the cutting edge. She shows artists like Shirin Neshat, Anish Kapoor, and Sarah Lucas. If you still need convincing, swing by her 21st location to see Matthew Barney’s “DJED,” whose gigantic works have price tags to match. Her handling of Mr. Barney’s career has been a case study in artist management. She carefully orchestrated the sale of hundreds of works—sculptures, films and photographs—from his sprawling “Cremaster” project, securing him a lasting position in art history. She also maintains a modest real-estate empire, with two of Chelsea’s largest galleries and a stately townhouse in an esteemed section of Brussels.
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Roberta Smith, New York Times co-chief art critic

Earlier this year, Roberta Smith became the first woman to hold the prestigious chief art critic chair at The New York Times when the paper’s editors tapped her, along with Pulitzer Prize winner Holland Cotter. The visibility and history of the position, along with Ms. Smith’s long, well respected record at The Times, provides her a unique, paramount place in the city’s—and the nation’s—critical landscape. Art criticism, along with the rest of journalism, may be in a transitional state these days, but Ms. Smith's voice--tough and fair--is one that gives the profession a good name.
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Valentina Castellani – dealer

As (one of) the right-hand women to Larry Gagosian, Valentina Castellani an especially bright star in the constellation of power in the dealer’s 11-gallery, high-flying enterprise. (A recent profile of Mr. Gagosian and his employees in Vogue noted that he calls Ms. Castellani quite regularly.) Along with John Richardson and Diana Widmaier Picasso, she co-organized the recent Marie Therese blockbuster; she is, without question, one of the city’s top rainmakers.
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Brooke Garber Neidich – collector and patron

As co-chairwoman of the board at the Whitney Museum, Ms. Garber Neidich is not only high up at one of the city's most vibrant art institutions, she's also helping to lead that museum through its biggest challenge in recent years: building and, eventually, moving into a new Renzo Piano-designed building at the base of the High Line. She was outspoken in her support for the project, which has a price tag of over $600 million, even when others voiced their doubts.

Comments

Brendagoodman says:

October 5, 2011 at 5:14 pm

a very hearty congratulations to you. you deserve all the recognition that has come to you.
1. varasart says:
  
  February 19, 2012 at 3:00 pm
  
  Mailyn Minter, not only a powerful artist but also an amazing professor at the School Of Visual Arts. Has a direct impact on shaping the artists of tomorrow. Nice to see even after all her acheivements in the art world, Marilyn Minter is still in love with teaching.
Julie says:

October 5, 2011 at 8:32 pm

Only 3 actual artist there……
1. guest says:
  
  October 24, 2011 at 8:58 am
  
  WOAH. seriously.
  are the most important women, people, in the art world dealers? i guess they are if you think of art in terms of market success.
  
  and why is there so much focus on the looks and fashion choices of these women– rather than that of what they actually accomplished?
KelleBelle says:

October 6, 2011 at 4:12 am

For people involved in the art world and such big decision-makers on what looks good, there are some gawd-awful outfits on some of those women.
1. Nomiwest says:
  
  October 7, 2011 at 12:24 pm
  
  why is the focus on how women look when they achieve so much. This is list makes wonderful reading – it is not a fashion spread.
  1. Diana B says:
    
    October 7, 2011 at 1:14 pm
    
    Hear hear!!! There are lists elsewhere of the 50 most well dressed women (although in whose eyes?) but it is a far more interesting list because it is about who they are and what they have achieved. Why do we insist that they should look differently than they do – because if they had spent their time and money on trying to confirm to the current image of beautiful people with beautiful clothes, they would have achieved nothing! And I am sure their families and friends love them as they are!
  2. Diana B says:
    
    October 7, 2011 at 1:19 pm
    
    And I should add that I happen to look pretty good most of the time but only because I was made that way and because I have a flair for putting the right outfit together ! But it is so disheartening when folk like me just because of how I look! As if the real me didn’t interest them! This is better now I am older, but I say “thank goodness”! When younger, this prevented me from actually ever achieving anything worthwhile in fact!
Celebrity Gossip, Get It Here First! says:

October 6, 2011 at 1:05 am

[...] decided that we might keep tuning in to New Girl if it means seeing guest star Lizzy Caplan. We met 50 of the most powerful women in the New York art world. We refused to imagine Hung star Thomas Jane as Don Draper. We learned [...]
Flavorwire » What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds In Our Office says:

October 6, 2011 at 9:33 am

[...] decided that we might keep tuning in to New Girl if it means seeing guest star Lizzy Caplan. We met 50 of the most powerful women in the New York art world. We refused to imagine Hung star Thomas Jane as Don Draper. We learned [...]
Dr JSB Naidu says:

October 6, 2011 at 1:45 pm

great information .. regarding the ART world ..
Lori Arnold says:

October 6, 2011 at 4:25 pm

That’s a really unfortunate picture of her, though.
Ellen Yustas K. Gottlieb says:

October 6, 2011 at 5:34 pm

one of a kind, Amy Phelan
MeArtist says:

October 6, 2011 at 7:07 pm

Now how about the other sub-group – The 50 Most Powerful Men in the NY Art World?
1. Meke says:
  
  October 10, 2011 at 4:37 pm
  
  Right… which you can actually just leave off the “men” from that title, since the most powerful, by default, have penises.
Afternoon Links! says:

October 6, 2011 at 4:51 pm

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Carlos Lersundy says:

October 7, 2011 at 1:09 pm

http://www.carloslersundy.com
La MaMa » Carlos Lersundy: Homecoming
lamama.org
La MaMa Galleria is honored to open the 50th anniversary season with an exhibition of new paintings by Colombian artist Carlos Lersundy. He has been apart of the La MaMa family since the very beginning, creating art for Ellen Stewart and some of La MaMa’s first highly acclaimed shows.
sssssss says:

October 7, 2011 at 8:14 pm

You’re using “chairman” to describe some of these women? How about chairperson, chairwoman–they sure don’t look like men to me, and last time I checked, “man” was not considered a generic term.
maaaa says:

October 11, 2011 at 3:25 pm

YEAH WHITE WOMEN
Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz says:

October 11, 2011 at 6:10 pm

I know most of these women and think it is a stellar list that proves the professionalism of working women in a vital cultural field that re-defines what America is becoming….finally ….. A force for unique arts and culture in the “New World” . We need them and they are doing it for all of us. The list can be longer , but 50 is a good round number proving there are so many superior working women with ideas and energy. Culture is what makes us civilized.

JOYCE POMEROY SCHWARTZ
Anonymous says:

October 11, 2011 at 9:27 pm

What about the 50 most powerful gay men in the New York art world? Or the 50 most powerful Jews? I’ve heard that if you look hard, you can find a gay man or a Jew somewhere in the art world. Don’t quote me on that though.
Juko says:

October 13, 2011 at 6:32 pm

Wow! Only one woman of color.
Aparks1 says:

October 25, 2011 at 6:04 pm

Perhaps the real discussion, underlying the success of women in art, is how far will the typically patriarchal definition of “What is art” continue to be defined by the “system.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to ask “What if Shakespeare had a sister”? How far would her work have gone? Not too long ago women who considered art were funneled into commercial art which, then, meant illustrations of refrigerators and car parts. Or they were siphoned into fashion. I studied art at the Corcoran Gallery in DC. I understand art, know the difference between Cereulean Blue and Vermillion and Burnt Umber, or a round point brush and a sharp. But also I now know what it means to be a woman “artist” in this world. The limitations are imposed upon one like a brick wall. They force women artists into the narrow dark peripheries of main stream.
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October 29, 2011 at 1:37 am

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Renata Andolfi:

February 5, 2013 at 9:35 pm

porca pipetta Vali che strada hai fatto!

Toni Osterhout:

February 6, 2013 at 11:36 am

Congratulations! Anne

Venetia Kapernekas:

February 11, 2013 at 9:09 am

hello Rachel.. congrats.

Lok Nath Verma:

April 18, 2013 at 3:47 pm

please search PICASSO and ME.

Lok Nath Verma:

April 26, 2013 at 2:34 pm

50 powerful ladies ' please support my late father's and my art work.

Neermala Luckeenarain:

May 20, 2013 at 4:53 pm

great and congrats.

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