Help! I Hate... Their Relationship

Every week, The Art Journal’s resident artworld Agony Aunt Charlotte Jansen answers your questions about access, gatekeeping and sticky social problems.

Have a burning question for her? Get in touch anonymously here.

I recently found myself at one of those art world dinners where everyone seems to know each other. It was actually quite enjoyable. The food was decent, the conversation lively, and for once I wasn’t mentally composing my escape route before the main course arrived. It was one of those rare evenings where people were talking about life, rather than simply exchanging institutional biographies.

As the meal went on, though, I realised that one of the very young women at the table was the girlfriend of a much older, well-known figure in the art world, who was also there. Nobody behaved especially inappropriately. They seemed perfectly happy together and, for all I know, have a wonderful, equal relationship built on mutual respect and shared interests. And yet I found myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

This was partly, I think, because this was framed as a professional event. Here was someone with enormous cultural influence, decades of experience, institutional authority and the power – whether directly or indirectly – to shape careers. And a partner who was in her 20s. It’s made me see him differently and respect him less. I’m slightly embarrassed by this because I don’t especially enjoy becoming the relationship police. Am I being square?

Sure, adults are free to make their own choices, and there are plenty of happy couples with significant age differences. Equally, I don't think it's unreasonable to acknowledge that age gaps can intersect with questions of power, status and influence – particularly in fields like the arts where informal networks, mentorship and reputation carry enormous weight. Perhaps what unsettled you wasn’t even the age difference itself, but the context. 

If you’d passed the couple in a restaurant, I doubt you’d have thought twice. Seeing them in a room full of younger artists, curators, and people whose careers could plausibly be affected by the older, powerful partner’s status and approval somehow made the relationship feel less private and more symbolic. Fairly or unfairly, you found yourself reading it as symptomatic of the art world, and indeed the world, itself.

One of the occupational hazards of working in the arts is that we’re trained to ‘read’ and analyse everything. We spend our lives asking, “What does this reveal about power?” It would be remarkable if you suddenly switched that instinct off the moment the wine arrived. So no, I don’t think you’re being square.

Nor do I think you’ve been deputised into the Department of Romantic Investigations. The difficulty is that two things can be true at once. Age-gap relationships between consenting adults are not inherently suspect. Equally, power is real, prestige is seductive, and it would be odd to pretend those forces evaporate simply because someone has fallen in love. The art world, after all, is not famous for its flat hierarchies. It is built on reputation, access, patronage and the occasional ability to change someone’s career with a single introduction. That context matters.

What you’re describing isn’t outrage so much as disillusionment. You had unconsciously assembled a picture of this person. Their exhibitions, their public statements, perhaps even their politics, had formed a character in your mind. Then reality introduced a detail you found unsavoury, and the image unravelled. This happens more often than we’d like to admit.

The mistake would be assuming that the new picture is necessarily more truthful than the old one. You don’t know these people. You don’t know how they met, what they talk about over breakfast, or who empties the dishwasher. For all you know, she’s the more formidable intellect, the better networker and the one quietly rolling her eyes every time he explains things to someone who has read more books than he has. Stranger things have happened.

Equally, you’re allowed to notice patterns. The art world has an uncanny ability to produce men who write beautifully about dismantling hierarchies before dating someone born around the time of their first Venice Biennale. This doesn’t automatically make them hypocrites, but nor should we be surprised when observers raise an eyebrow. If someone has built a public identity around examining power, people will inevitably notice how power appears in their private life. That’s not moral panic; it’s about consistency. Our profession prides itself on noticing invisible structures but heaven forbid we interrogate the guest list.

Men of a certain age are, in my observation, often quite susceptible to vanity, terrified of being old, and hit the kind of crisis women usually reach in their 40s. So, yes, many older men are attracted to much younger women – that’s a glaring fact. Does this give me the ick? Yeah, a bit. But to each their own.

There is an etiquette of silence that often surrounds these situations, which is maybe also where your discomfort lies. Everyone notices. Nobody says anything. The conversation glides politely onwards, as though the only inappropriate act would be acknowledging the obvious. The art world can discuss colonialism over the starter, capitalism with the fish course and extractive labour during coffee, but never dare mention an interpersonal dynamic. Of course, adults are entitled to privacy, and dinner parties are generally improved by resisting the urge to convene an ethics seminar – but there is a fine line between respecting privacy and pretending not to see dynamics that plainly exist. 

I don’t know if I can really answer your question, because one of the great frustrations of adulthood is discovering ambiguity is a default, people are complicated, relationships are rarely something anyone outside them can fully understand. I would shift your focus – as there is another possibility worth considering. Perhaps what disappointed you wasn’t the relationship itself but the puncturing of an illusion. The art world has a habit of producing public figures who seem flawless. We encounter them first through books, catalogues, panel discussions and interviews. We imagine their lives must somehow express the theories they articulate so eloquently. Then they turn out to have ordinary appetites, sex drives, weaknesses, inconsistent values and complicated love lives. 

The older I get, the more suspicious I become of expecting public virtue to guarantee private perfection. Some of the most ethically eloquent people live astonishingly muddled lives. Others, who have never uttered the phrase “intersectional discourse”, quietly behave with immense generosity and integrity. Biography and belief rarely match up. Perhaps your understanding of the person you respected is more human and more real now – closer to the whole person they are. If seeing this relationship genuinely altered your estimation of this individual and has diminished your respect for them, you are entitled to acknowledge that. You’re allowed to feel unsettled. You’re allowed to think differently about someone. You’re even allowed to conclude that large age gaps involving powerful public figures simply aren't something you admire. It doesn’t mean others need to feel the same way.

Reserve a little humility for the fact that other people’s lives are always more complicated than the stories we construct about them from across a dinner table. And who knows, someday you might find yourselves in their shoes.