David Lewis Joins Hauser & Wirth New York as Senior Director

David Lewis has joined Hauser & Wirth as a Senior Director in New York City. With over a decade of experience running his own gallery, David Lewis Gallery, which began on Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side and later moved to Walker Street in Tribeca, Lewis has earned critical recognition for his thoughtful and rigorous programming. His gallery is known for balancing solo exhibitions of emerging artists with theory-driven group shows and for revisiting the art canon by focusing on under-recognized older artists and historical figures. Notable artists championed by Lewis include pioneering feminist artist Mary Beth Edelson (1933–2021) and renowned Alabama-based expressionist painter and sculptor Thornton Dial (1928–2016).

Admired for his scholarly and nuanced approach to modern and contemporary cultural narratives, Lewis has consistently introduced fresh perspectives. For instance, his exhibition Dial / Hammons / Rauschenberg was the first to present Thornton Dial, a self-taught artist from the Jim Crow South, alongside prominent art world figures, positioning Dial as their equal. Another standout moment in Lewis’s curatorial career was the 2023 exhibition Everyone Loves Picabia, which captured the ethos of his gallery by bridging connections between emerging and historical art.

Marc Payot, President of Hauser & Wirth, expressed his enthusiasm about Lewis joining the team, 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.”

Prior to founding his gallery in 2013, David Lewis lived in Paris, where he completed a Ph.D. at The Graduate Center, CUNY, with a dissertation titled Francis Picabia and the Problem of Nihilism. During his time in Europe, Lewis contributed regularly to prestigious art publications like Artforum and Frieze, and wrote extensively on artists such as Philip Guston, Henri Matisse, and Sturtevant.

Lewis’s expertise and vision are poised to bring new energy to Hauser & Wirth, with exciting projects expected from this next phase of his career.

Photo: Axel Dupeux