Is LVMH going to buy the Gagosian gallery?

Conference at Bernard Arnault 's Ecole polytechnique "LVMH, the construction of a French world leader" © Jérémy Barande / Ecole polytechnique Université Paris Saclay

Rumor has it that LVMH wants to acquire Gagosian

Gagosian, the largest art gallery in the world, has denied rumors that it is in talks with LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy), the French worldwide leader of luxury goods company. Experts in the market have been talking a lot about a possible deal between the two. The rumors said that LVMH was in talks to invest in Gagosian, which was started by Larry Gagosian in 1980 in Los Angeles and now has 19 locations around the world.

Gagosian denied

But on Tuesday, a Gagosian representative strongly said that the deal wasn't true and that it was just hearsay. "The rumor is completely false, and the company is not for sale," a spokesperson for Gagosian said.

LVMH declined to comment.

LVMH owns many high-end businesses, such as the fashion house Christian Dior, the jeweler Tiffany & Co., and the yacht maker Princess Yachts. If the conglomerate owned or invested in Gagosian, it could get a foothold in the rapidly growing art market. A spokesperson for LVMH Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton told that the company had nothing to say.

Last week, the art market turned its attention to Paris, where LVMH is based. This is where the rumors started. The first Paris+ Art Basel fair just ended in the French capital, where Gagosian has two locations and a third in the nearby suburb of Le Bourget. The talk also came at a time when Gagosian was making plans for its future. In the past few years, Larry Gagosian, who is now 77 years old, has started to talk about his plans for the future. In 2019, Andrew Fabricant took over as the gallery's chief operating officer. Since then, though, there haven't been many details, so people have been guessing about where the gallery will go in the years to come.

May the art and fashion industries be one

In the past, Fabricant has called for the art and fashion industries to become one. "Bernard Arnault buys Tiffany's, then buys a Basquiat painting, and then makes a limited-edition Patek Philippe watch that Jay-Z wears for the first time," he told  earlier this year. "Art, business, and fashion will always interact with each other. All of these things, like Kardashian, Arnault, and the Gagosian Gallery having 19 galleries, are just making it go faster. It's just more, more, more. It also helps both sides."

The West 24th Street Gallery, Gagosian Gallery ©Kazuhisa OTSUBO

A way back from the world of art sales for LVMH

If LVMH did invest in Gagosian, it would gain a lot of power in the art world. A lot of the business that the conglomerate does is in the fashion industry. The company also owns the newspaper Le Parisien, the chain of luxury hotels called Cheval Blanc, and the amusement park called Jardin d'Acclimatation. Gagosian's main competitors, David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, and Pace, have all expanded into fields outside of art, but none of them can say that a large company like LVMH has invested in them.

Gagosian works with some of the world's most famous artists, like Georg Baselitz, Theaster Gates, Michael Heizer, Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, Richard Serra, and Jordan Wolfson. On the roster, these artists are next to younger ones who have loyal fan bases, like Jadé Fadojutimi and Anna Weyant. Gagosian is said to make a billion dollars in sales each year.

LVMH is already known to have links with art

Even though LVMH is mostly known for fashion, it also has ties to art. The chairman and CEO of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, is one of the best art collectors in the world. Arnault has been known to buy works by Hirst, Murakami, and Richard Prince, among others by Gagosian artists. Larry Gagosian is thought to be close to Arnault and other members of his family. Buying a piece of Gagosian would give Arnault an edge in the art world over Francois Pinault, who started the French luxury goods company Kering and owns the auction house Christie's. Pinault is a major collector as well.

Its portfolio once had a share in the Phillips auction house, which is another way it is related to art. In 1999, LVMH bought the stake, but four years later, when Phillips was having financial trouble, it sold it. LVMH also helps fund the Fondation Louis Vuitton, a new art space in Paris that opened in 2014. Even though Arnault started the project, the space is run by a nonprofit organization and not by LVMH. Talk of LVMH investing in Gagosian would take place at a time when the line between art galleries and lifestyle brands is getting harder to tell apart.nGagosian, on the other hand, runs a chain of stores that sell branded products. Pace just opened a teahouse in Seoul with the luxury brand Osulloc, and Manuela and Iwan Wirth, the founders of Hauser & Wirth, run a hospitality arm.