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Downtown Dealers: Lucy Mitchell-Innes, Charles Moffett, Kendra Jayne Patrick, and Chris Sharp

May 22, 2025

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Downtown Dealers: Lucy Mitchell-Innes, Charles Moffett, Kendra Jayne Patrick, and Chris Sharp - Features - Independent Art Fair

Independent, New York, 2025, Spring Studios, Marion Maneker, Chris Sharp, Kendra Jayne Patrick, Charles Moffett, and Lucy Mitchell-Innes; photography by Leandro Justen

At the 16th edition of Independent in May, four gallerists joined Marion Maneker of Puck News for a candid conversation about the shifting dynamics of the contemporary art market. With distinct perspectives from Lucy Mitchell-Innes, Charles Moffett, Kendra Jayne Patrick, and Chris Sharp, the cross-generational panel offered timely insights into how smaller and younger galleries are navigating a climate of consolidation while championing emerging artists of all ages. Below are highlights from the discussion, edited for brevity and clarity.

Marion Maneker:
I wanted to get a little bit of intelligence on the state of the market. There's been several shifts of mood. We've had a bit of a long cycle the last two or three years, but then there's been this dramatic shift with the panic over the tariffs, which people are slowly working their way through. Can you give us a sense of the state of the market, at least as you experience it? 

Chris Sharp:
What to say? It's become a very unpredictable time. You might think you have a sure bet, something with a lot of interest, and then nothing happens. When I talk to older, more veteran dealers, they say it's unlike any other time. So it's a strange moment, but people are still buying things. I imagine in some ways, 2008 was worse. But that was way before my time.

Kendra Jayne Patrick:
It feels like, in a way, people are back to looking. My gallery is seven years old, I like to show things that are strange or new and it feels like people have time for that right now. Which I'm not sure that's necessarily been the case the last few years. 

What's really on my mind, I guess in terms of the market, are the articles from last week, between The New York Times and Artnet, about Hauser and Wirth having these four artists' [museum] shows. There was so much discussion about why it's important, why it's not important. To me it represents what's happening in the broader economy of consolidation, between behemoth galleries, companies, et cetera. I've been thinking a lot about, how can we reintroduce competition back into the market? How do we make it so that we have the blue-chip galleries doing their job—which is venerating artists, making sure their legacies are cemented—but then also ensure younger programs can do that groundwork, can really get to know the artists, make shows, get to know those relationships before they go to a giant gallery.

Downtown Dealers: Lucy Mitchell-Innes, Charles Moffett, Kendra Jayne Patrick, and Chris Sharp - Features - Independent Art Fair

Independent, New York, 2025, Spring Studios, Charles Moffett, photography by Leandro Justen

Charles Moffett:
Honestly, I know everybody's focusing on what's happened over the last few weeks and months, but this is something I think that began probably a year or two years ago—long before this year. 

I’ll also preface by saying that my first job at a gallery was in 2008, so I thought it was normal that the phone didn’t ring. That was my introduction to the art world. Learning how people transacted when I got to an auction house was a lot different. Then I opened up a gallery and went through Covid. In 2020, we stopped doing art fairs, we stopped shipping artwork, costs weren't really a factor for us. Obviously we had overhead that we had to pay, but there weren't additional costs that were necessarily going out the door. Today, things have slowed way down yet we're still responsible for all these things. So we're having to find ways to generate income and continue to be players in a rapidly changing art world when bigger galleries are seemingly getting bigger and taking more control. I think we need to find new and creative ways to ensure that smaller, younger galleries are able to continue to do the things that allowed young artists’ careers to be championed and grown. 

Lucy Mitchell-Innes:
I hate talking about the market. I did have a gallery in 2008, I remember it very vividly. Yes, it was terrible and this has been more difficult because it’s gone on longer. That's briefly what I would say. 

Marion Maneker:
We're seeing in terms of evidence that there's a lot of interest in people buying art not as an expensive item. Numbers are obviously relative, but the lower end—$50,000 and below—seems to be incredibly active, at least in the broader data. So that goes against the biggest galleries and their programs, because they tend not to deal with work at that level. But if you're not feeling it, then there is a disconnect between how all those people who are buying are finding things to buy. And this is obviously an art fair, this is one of the key ways to bring people who are looking for emerging art in contact with dealers. In your experience, in the last couple of days and previously doing fairs, are you seeing a change in how people are relating?

Downtown Dealers: Lucy Mitchell-Innes, Charles Moffett, Kendra Jayne Patrick, and Chris Sharp - Features - Independent Art Fair

Independent, New York, 2025, Spring Studios, Kendra Jayne Patrick, and Charles Moffett, photography by Leandro Justen

Kendra Jayne Patrick:
Honestly, it's just nice to feel like you're really in conversation about work. I think my first Art Basel Miami beach was in 2021. It was like a frenzy; you could barely get to everyone. And that's great for all the reasons that it's great. But now I'm really enjoying where we are. It gives you a chance to be more articulate about your artists’ work for example. It allows you to have a longer conversation before someone moves on. 

But Hauser is taking on [an artist] that’s 26, Gagosian has someone that's 29. So that's what I meant when I say it's about competition. At 26, you're still quite young; you'd usually be showing at a program like mine. But if you're 26 and you're showing at Hauser, it feels like there's a real reconfiguration that I'm trying to work out.

Chris Sharp:
That logic is something that’s really symptomatic of the crisis. I agree with what you said earlier, more established, mid-career artists go to the big galleries so they can manage them accordingly. In terms of really building emerging careers, they're not in a position to do that. And not just because of the price point. It's somehow not productive.

Kendra Jayne Patrick:
That is what it is and now you're in your 20s or your 30s and you go to a blue-chip gallery. What does that mean about the art I show? How does it all fit together? For me at least it has been continuing to be confident about showing artists that have been working for 10 or 15 years, artists with a committed studio practice. It's a possibility that someone could be 26, 29, 30 and leave my program and go to Hauser. But then, what exactly do I want to do while they're here? It seems like you can’t really predict [how long] they'll be with the gallery. So what exactly do I do as a gallerist? What can I offer my artists? And not just in terms of money but in terms of support for their career, real advocacy. We’re going to try and make institutional acquisitions and focus on those. But if they do go to one of those bigger galleries, there’s a foundation for those prices.

Marion Maneker:
Charlie, you have two artists in the audience; I’m going to put you on the spot. How do you support the artists at this stage?

Charles Moffett:
I echo a lot of these sentiments. For us, it's so much about relationships. My gallery’s been running for seven years with 13 artists and we haven't lost any artists yet. Knock on wood. We are doing so much of the legwork for these early days, especially institutional outreach, which is huge. There's an artist here right now whose work was acquired by a museum that came to the gallery the other day. It’s finding ways to scratch and claw for every last little victory and we try to leave no stone unturned. Chris spoke to this idea, we as smaller galleries are really determined to try and go that extra mile to lay the foundation for what ultimately in a lot of cases becomes an easy entree for a bigger gallery to then pick up and say ‘Okay this artist is in 10 institutions and they've had a museum show and the prices are $50,000 and now we can make them $100,000.’ Trying to grow that organically when you don't have as big of a name is sometimes difficult. But it's also important for collectors to continue to support the galleries and not just expect the markets to dictate what's successful.

Marion Maneker:
Lucy, you’ve certainly shepherded a lot of careers, I wanted to hear your thoughts on that.

Lucy Mitchell-Innes:
The thing about the present market, that I don't like, is that it is dictating what gets seen. If you look back at the 60s and the 70s, in New York and Europe and anywhere else, the gallerists filtered what they saw in studios and what artists were making and through artist friends and presented it. And now it's exactly the reverse, where artists make work, the market finds it in whatever way it finds it, and that determines what gets shown. And the more difficult the economy is, the more you see that happening and the more risk-averse people become. And the bigger the gallery, the more risk-averse it has to be because of this.

Marion Maneker:
So you're saying demand drives supply.

Lucy Mitchell-Innes:
I think it drives aesthetics. That's the problem.

Marion Maneker:
Bigger galleries, as very large institutions with large sales, they have a large number of collectors that they have relationships with that they're plugging in with new artists. At your galleries, how do you focus on staying engaged with your collectors, how do you maintain those relationships? 

Downtown Dealers: Lucy Mitchell-Innes, Charles Moffett, Kendra Jayne Patrick, and Chris Sharp - Features - Independent Art Fair

Independent, New York, 2025, Spring Studios, Marion Maneker and Chris Sharp, photography by Leandro Justen

Chris Sharp:
The thing that I think about a lot lately, especially vis-a-vis certain art collectors, is the label “emerging.” This total fetishization of the emerging position, to the point where the collectors always want to know the age of the artist and the younger the better. At my gallery, we do have some emerging artists but we have some mid-career and we have older artists that are totally overlooked. And it's so funny because I was just in Chicago for a fair and there's this great young gallery and they're showing this 73-year-old painter who's amazing. And I thought ‘Wow, this is what it's come to.’ Zwirner is showing a 30-year-old and then you have this emerging gallery doing the work of a mega gallery, and I thought ‘Good for them.’ They're taking a real risk, they're doing real work. The category that drives me crazy is “ultra contemporary art.” That this has become an auction category is so crazy and it reflects this kind of futurist market. You have these collectors, they buy a bunch of things under $10,000 and hope one makes it. If they throw enough shit at the wall, they're going to get in two years this huge return on their little investment. That's really what’s tracking the market. I admire these younger galleries for taking risks on the kind of stuff nobody's looking at. 

Marion Maneker: 
We have seen that the ultra contemporary category has now narrowed to a shadow of its former self. There are still some of those artists very early in their career who are showing up at auction, but the numbers are way down in part because that happened for so long and eventually all of these trends look for some reversal. We're beginning to see much more interesting historical artists, either emerging ones, meaning people who have been working for a long time but aren't necessarily widely known, or a return to artists that the market used to focus on.

Kendra Jayne Patrick:
In a way, that relates to the collector strategies. For me it was about tunneling down into what I offer my artists but also what I offer people who like to collect. I realized, ‘Okay, you come to me if you want to have an adventure, you want to learn something new.’ I spend a lot more time with collectors and that means hanging out, for lack of a better way of putting it. But then, I'm sure we all do this, you go through this thing where you have to let go of the idea that you're going to have something for everyone. You won't. Accepting that has also strengthened my collector relationships.

Charles Moffett:
I'll talk about the collector relationship in a sec, but I just want to confess something. Lucy had mentioned, in talking about the market, bigger galleries becoming more risk averse. Younger galleries are guilty of this too. I bring the safer things sometimes to our fairs largely because fairs cost a lot of money and I've seen a lot of my colleagues, my peers, close because of a lot of the risks they took. I am in awe of those risks and a part of me wishes I had more guts to take those same risks. But I also feel I am not ready to roll the dice in that way and be a little bit riskier with some of the programming that we do. I hope that one day we'll get to that point, but for the time being, my goal is to keep our doors open. I fully admit that we are absolutely part of, I don't want to say the problem, but we do have a more commercial end sometimes. My hope is that we can grow out of it in a way, but I think that comes with the territory, especially being in New York where, between rent and costs, it’s difficult. 

In terms of collector engagement, we're doing a lot of the same work that we did around 2020 to 2021 now. We weren't taking people to lunch or dinner or drinks or whatever. We were doing it on the phone, picking up the phone and calling people and just checking in, not even really trying to sell anybody anything, just having a conversation about art. Have you seen the Jack Whitten show? Do you want to go and do some gallery visits? Just trying to have the relationship and not feel like you have to sell something because even if you were trying to sell something right now, chances are it's not going to happen tomorrow or next week anyways, so you might as well try and humanize a little bit.

Downtown Dealers: Lucy Mitchell-Innes, Charles Moffett, Kendra Jayne Patrick, and Chris Sharp - Features - Independent Art Fair

Independent, New York, 2025, Spring Studios, Lucy Mitchell-Innes, photography by Leandro Justen

Marion Maneker:
I understand your relationship with your collectors is the ability to get to know them, from the more broad common ground to the more specific things, and also build a level of trust. If your goal is to be starting as many conversations as possible, and if commercial means most broadly palatable or attractive, that would be part of the goal.

Charles Moffett:
I would love for that to be the case, but I was having a conversation with a collector yesterday who was thinking about buying a $2 million artwork from one of the big four galleries and he's fighting me on buying a $45,000 painting. For him, that's a comfort, it’s like ‘I don’t know how I could pass up this opportunity, I’m being offered this great thing.’ All the while, buying the work from us is like a rounding error on the discount [for that other painting].

Marion Maneker:
That's one of the big issues with all of this. Where the value lies. Sometimes people are happy to make a big payment on something that they think is safe or gives them some access or entree and will fight over tiny amounts because somehow they feel they're being taken advantage of. 

Now we’ve got three conversations going, I don't know which one to gauge you on Lucy, but let’s start with engaging with collectors. Part of it is building a level of trust and you have lots of experience with that. 

Lucy Mitchell-Innes:
Trust in the whole process, trust in your judgment, your eye. I think that Kendra said something very important which is recognize that you're not going to be able to have something for everybody. These very big galleries can, but I couldn't do that because I'm interested in working on things that I'm passionate about.

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Lucy Mitchell-Innes co-founded Mitchell-Innes & Nash in 1996 with her husband, David Nash, with a gallery on Madison Ave. In 2005, Mitchell-Innes & Nash opened a second space in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Prior to opening the gallery, Lucy Mitchell-Innes worked at Sotheby’s from 1981 to 1994, where she served as head of the Contemporary Art Department in Europe, then in New York as worldwide director of the Contemporary Art, Latin American Art and Contemporary and Modern Print departments. Ms. Mitchell-Innes served as President of the Art Dealers Association of America from 2009 until 2012. She was a member of the selection committee of Art Basel from 2012–2022, and she previously served on the selection committee of Art Basel Miami Beach from its inception in 2001 until 2009. 

Charles Moffett is the founder and owner of Charles Moffett, a contemporary art gallery based in New York City. Previously a contemporary art specialist at a major auction house, Moffett launched his eponymous gallery in 2018. The gallery recently moved to a new space in the heart of Tribeca.

Kendra Jayne Patrick is an art dealer and gallerist whose program straddles Bern, Switzerland and New York City, USA. She is a champion of the contemporary avant-garde, placing artists with whom she works into many institutional and highly-regarded private collections. At its inception, her eponymous gallery was itinerant, staging its exhibitions at prominent New York galleries. Its first brick and mortar is located in the Längasse neighborhood of Bern, having opened in late 2022. Patrick graduated from Georgetown Law School and Spelman College prior to her life in art, hailing from Cleveland, Ohio.

Chris Sharp is a former art critic and curator, Sharp co-founded the Mexico City-based project space Lulu, which he ran for almost ten years, before founding his own gallery in Los Angeles in 2021. He has since created two micro-boutique art fair alternatives, Place des Vosges, Paris and Post-Fair, Los Angeles as a response to the relative unsustainability of current art fair practices.

Marion Maneker was previously the President of the art publications at Penske Media Corporation, the publisher of HarperBusiness and a features editor at New York Magazine. He founded Art Market Monitor which produced the Artelligence conference, podcast and newsletter. He has covered the art market for more than 25 years.