With one heel in the art world and the other in fashion, Gay Gassmann has helped to shape some of the most impressive collections of contemporary art to be found anywhere outside of a gallery setting. The European-based American art consultant delivers works that are showcased in various French design houses and high-fashion boutiques the world over, while continuing her mission to create new spaces within which contemporary art can be appreciated. It’s been a uniquely specific 30-year career path, with a re-emerging theme: She graduated with a B.A. in art history from the American University in Paris and received a master’s degree in the history of the decorative arts from the Cooper Hewitt/Parsons School of Design in New York, then spent two years at the J. Paul Getty Museum in the curatorial department of the decorative arts. Gassmann’s passion was for a brief and spectacular moment in art history—French decorative arts of the 1720s, an important albeit decidedly narrow period of exquisite furniture-making and ornamental craftsmanship. Its stars are long deceased, their legacy living on through masterfully hewn and hand-painted works in wood and silver and porcelain. As she studied the beautiful antiques of this period, Gassmann ruminated on why “decorative” remains a dirty word in fine art circles. “Paintings that sit above sofas have gotten a bad rap, and I think it’s not necessary,” she says.
She was already a confident art scholar 15 years ago when her gaze was pulled away from the work of past masters to that of present-day creators. She started to frequent art fairs, beginning long-running conversations with the artists, curators and gallerists shaping the modern-day fine art landscape. “I am not an artist but I am so moved by art and those who create it,” says Gassmann, who became obsessed with making “discoveries”—which to her sometimes meant new work by emerging artists, sometimes not, but it was always work that broadened her aesthetic and conceptual bandwidth and made her ask questions about what art really is. “I love if I can see the intent or the emotion in the work of art,” she says. “That’s what touches me and gets me passionate, whether it be a sculpture or a work on paper. From there, I build a relationship with the artist, and it’s often a relationship that takes a while, because I like to follow the art and see what its lasting impact is and discover what is the influence of the work.”
Gassmann’s profile and network of connections in contemporary art circles grew and grew, and before long she found herself working with artists, crafting collaborations and championing new spaces for art outside of galleries. It was a task to which Gassmann found herself very well suited. “Ultimately, my mission is to give visibility to thought-provoking art and artists,” she says, acknowledging that sometimes younger artists can be nervous about placing their work in nontraditional environments, more so than more established artists. “It’s interesting that the less known an artist is the more inflexible they tend to be, probably due to the great fear of being taken advantage of or not being taken seriously,” says Gassmann, conceding that “the spaces I have worked with are not for everybody.”
For the most part, though, Gassmann finds that her ideas regarding creative collaboration between artists and her clients are enthusiastically received on both sides, her efforts representative of a new movement that has seen more and more artists explore different models of commerce, showing their work outside of the traditional art market. In a full circle of sorts, Gassmann finds herself legitimizing “decorative” spaces by placing fine art works in them.
“I think back to grad school and how I dedicated two years of my life to studying the decorative arts,” she says. “At the time it felt like stepping away from the mainstream. Now, giving visibility to a wide range of artists and making art accessible to a broader public feels great and what I should be doing right now.”
In addition to her work as an art consultant, Gay Gassmann is a contributing art editor to T: The New York Times Style Magazine and contributes to the monthly page, A Picture and a Poem.
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