One of London’s most famous commercial art galleries is closing

London is the place to be if you’re a billionaire looking for intriguing contemporary artworks to invest your cash in (or simply to hang on your wall, to remind the world you still have a soul). And that’s fantastic for ordinary culture fans, who hotfoot it to the city’s rarified commercial galleries as a way of seeing the most exciting artworks on the global scene for free.

Still, of late these white-walled temples to art haven’t been quite as serene as usual. Massive international gallerist Larry Gagosian recently exited the location on Burlington Arcade – as well as closing a Basel branch – as part of a wider trend of top galleries reassessing their bricks-and-mortar presence in expensive inner-city postcodes.

Gagosian’s Burlington Arcade branch launched in 2023. It had a retail shop at ground level and a gallery space upstairs that housed exhibitions including this summer’s show on the late artistic power couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s site-specific projects. Now, it’s lying empty, with rumours swirling that ultra-luxury trinket manufacturer Fabergé could move into the premises.

The Gagosian’s branch in Basel has also closed its doors for good. But this gallery giant still has two outposts left in London: 20 Grosvenor Hill and 17–19 Davies Street in Mayfair.

These two spots aren’t exactly tiny, either. 20 Grosvenor Hill takes up a whopping 18,000 square feet. Its double-height spaces will soon show ‘This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte’, a tribute to the Belgian artist that includes many of his most famous works, full of images of pipes, apples and bowler hats. There are also five Gagosians in New York, plus branches in LA, Paris, Hong Kong and more.

So the latest contraction in the Gagosian empire isn’t necessarily something to keep art fans up at night. Still, it is a sign of uncertain times, especially when taken in combination with the departure of gallery Zwirner from its Manhattan Upper East Side spot, and layoffs at huge gallery chain Pace. During that process, CEO Marc Glimcher described the mega-gallery model of constant expansion as ‘not only broken, but unfixable’, in a volatile climate rocked by global conflict, economic uncertainty and rising costs. This probably won’t be the last mega-gallery to rethink its London presence in years to come.

Here are the top 10 exhibitions to see in London.

Plus: 18 never-seen-before Georgia O’Keeffe paintings are going on display at London’s Courtauld Gallery. 

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