Pace Gallery to Cut 50 Artists and 50 Staff in Major Restructuring

Pace Gallery is cutting around 50 artists and estates from its roster and laying off approximately 50 staff members, marking one of the most significant retrenchments by a major international gallery in recent years.

The move will reduce the gallery’s represented artists from about 135 to 85 and its workforce from roughly 250 employees to 200, according to reporting from The New York Times.

Pace, founded in Boston in 1960 and now operating spaces in New York, Los Angeles, London, Geneva, Berlin, Seoul and Tokyo, has long been regarded as one of the world’s largest commercial galleries.

The announcement comes amid a prolonged slowdown in the contemporary art market, with galleries across the sector facing rising costs, weaker demand and broader economic uncertainty.

In a statement, chief executive Marc Glimcher said the existing gallery model had become increasingly difficult to sustain. "The art world has changed dramatically over the past decade, and the current gallery model isn’t only broken, it’s unfixable,” he said, adding that large rosters and management structures could divert resources away from artists.

Glimcher framed the changes as a return to a more focused approach, arguing that galleries have become "too big, too commercial, too impersonal and too corporate". He said Pace would concentrate its efforts on a smaller group of artists while continuing to seek new additions selectively.

The gallery has not released a list of artists affected by the cuts. Reports identified artist Glenn Kaino among those no longer represented. Several artists and estate representatives who remain with Pace expressed support for the restructuring. Artist Adam Pendleton said the move did not concern him, while Alexander S.C. Rower, president of the Calder Foundation, described it as a retreat from what he called an ‘arms race’ among mega-galleries.

The decision follows a series of adjustments by Pace in recent years. The gallery stepped back from the experiential art venture Superblue in 2022, closed its Palo Alto and Hong Kong spaces, opened a smaller gallery in Tokyo and expanded its secondary-market activities through external partnerships.

Despite the cuts, Pace said it remains committed to international expansion and major artist estates. Last month, the gallery announced representation of the estate of the Romanian modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi. It will also retain its eight-storey Chelsea headquarters in New York, opened in 2019 following a redevelopment project reportedly valued at more than $100 million.

The restructuring is likely to be closely watched across the gallery sector, where smaller and mid-sized businesses have faced mounting financial pressures since the pandemic. Pace’s decision suggests those pressures are now being felt even at the top end of the market.