Recently, major media outlets including The New York Times, the international contemporary art platform Ocula, and ARTnews have extensively reported on the large-scale restructuring of Pace Gallery, one of the world’s leading mega-galleries.

In particular, remarks by Pace CEO Marc Glimcher describing the current gallery model as not merely “broken” but effectively “unfixable” have sent ripples throughout the global art world.

Pace is reportedly reducing its roster by approximately 50 artists and cutting around 50 staff positions. This is not simply a matter of downsizing or cost reduction. Rather, it can be understood as a fundamental reassessment of the mega-gallery model that has dominated the global art market for decades.
 
 
 
The Rise of the Mega-Gallery Model
 
The mega-gallery model does not simply refer to a large gallery. It describes a structure in which galleries evolved beyond individual exhibition spaces into global, corporate-scale art distribution systems.
 
Galleries such as Pace, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, and David Zwirner established locations across major international cities including New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Los Angeles, representing dozens or even hundreds of artists and artist estates while building extensive global networks.
 
These organizations developed into complex systems that extend far beyond selling artworks. They became involved in artist discovery, exhibition programming, market development, price management, museum placement, collector-network cultivation, publishing, art fair participation, and global branding strategies.
 
Since the late 1990s, the simultaneous growth of global wealth, the expansion of Asian markets, the rise of ultra-high-net-worth collectors, the establishment of art-fair-driven distribution channels, and the financialization of art have positioned mega-galleries at the center of power within the global art market.
 

Expansion became synonymous with success.
 
More artists, more locations, more art fairs, more projects, and more revenue came to be regarded as the primary indicators of growth.

The Structural Limits of the Growth Model
 
Yet while the mega-gallery model proved highly effective during periods of growth, it became increasingly burdensome during periods of stagnation.
 
The fixed costs associated with maintaining global locations, large exhibition spaces, shipping, insurance, staffing, and participation in international art fairs continued to rise. Such expenses were manageable when the market was expanding, but as sales activity began to slow, they quickly became liabilities.
 
 
The growth in artist rosters created additional challenges.
 
When a gallery represents more than one hundred artists, it becomes increasingly difficult to provide each artist with adequate exhibition opportunities, institutional introductions, critical support, and market development. Resources inevitably become concentrated around a small group of blue-chip artists, while many others remain represented largely in name.
 
 
The role of the gallery also began to change.
 
Traditionally, galleries were responsible for nurturing and developing an artist’s practice over the long term. As galleries expanded, however, they increasingly resembled portfolio-management systems rather than spaces dedicated to cultivating artists and supporting artistic development.
 
 
The international distribution system centered on art fairs further accelerated this shift.
 
Continuous participation in major fairs requires a constant supply of new works and new sales strategies. As a result, both artists and galleries became increasingly responsive to short-term market performance and immediate sales results rather than long-term value formation.
 
 
 
The Time of Art and the Time of Capital
 
This development reveals a more fundamental issue.
 
It represents a collision between the time of art and the time of capital.
 
 
The time of art is slow.
 
It can take decades for an artist to develop a distinct visual language, establish a body of work, undergo critical evaluation, and secure a meaningful position within art history. Artistic value emerges gradually through exhibitions, research, criticism, collecting, and continual reassessment.
 
 
The time of capital, by contrast, is fast.
 
It demands more transactions, faster turnover, higher growth rates, and more immediate returns.
 
Over the past several decades, the global art market has increasingly operated according to the logic of capital. More artists, more exhibitions, more art fairs, and faster price appreciation became the dominant objectives.
 
 
Yet while prices can be created quickly, value cannot.
 
The Pace case can therefore be interpreted as a symbolic moment in which the time of art can no longer keep pace with the accelerating demands of capital.

The Market Is Not Collapsing—It Is Being Reconfigured
 
It is insufficient to interpret this event simply as evidence of market decline.
 
A phrase increasingly heard in international art-market discussions is: “The art market isn’t collapsing. It’s separating.”
 
In other words, the market is not disappearing—it is becoming increasingly divided.
 
Blue-chip works and the ultra-high-end segment continue to perform strongly. Meanwhile, the middle market and the market for many mid-career artists are weakening, placing growing pressure on galleries operating within those segments.
 
 
The issue is therefore not the disappearance of the market, but a transformation of its structure.
 
Pace’s restructuring demonstrates that these pressures have now reached even the level of the mega-galleries themselves.
 
 
 
The Post–Mega-Gallery Era
 
The significance of this event extends beyond Pace’s restructuring alone.
 
It may signal that the expansion-driven model that has dominated the global art market for the past twenty to thirty years is no longer capable of defining the future.
 
In place of a model built on representing ever-larger numbers of artists, greater importance is now being placed on supporting a smaller number of artists with greater depth and commitment.
 
Trust is becoming more important than volume.
 
Documentation, criticism, research, and archives are becoming more important than marketing alone.
 
The global art market may be entering a transition from an era of growth to an era of maturity, and from an era of expansion to an era of accumulation.
 
 
 
What Korean Contemporary Art Should Pay Attention To
 
This event also offers important implications for the Korean art world.
 
The challenge facing Korean contemporary art is not one of excessive expansion. Rather, it is the opposite. The infrastructure necessary to continuously introduce, document, evaluate, and connect Korean artists to the international art world remains insufficiently developed.
 
For many years, the globalization of Korean art has been understood primarily in terms of visibility—participation in overseas exhibitions, international art fairs, and connections with foreign galleries and collectors. Yet visibility alone is not enough for an artist to secure a lasting position within the international art ecosystem.
 
Artwork images, artist biographies, exhibition histories, collection records, critical essays, interviews, artwork descriptions, provenance documentation, media coverage, and high-quality English-language materials must be systematically accumulated and maintained.
 
If the global art market is moving from an era of growth and expansion into one of maturity and restructuring, then the task facing Korean contemporary art becomes increasingly clear. The goal is not to replicate the external form of the mega-gallery model, but to build the foundations through which Korean artists can be understood, evaluated, and trusted internationally.
 
 
Ultimately, the essence of globalization is not scale but credibility.
 
No matter how strong the artists or how significant the artworks may be, without systems capable of documenting, interpreting, translating, and connecting them, it is difficult to secure a sustained position within the global art world.
 
For this reason, the most urgent task facing Korean contemporary art today is not outward expansion, but the careful construction of reliable information systems, documentation practices, critical discourse, and archival infrastructure capable of earning international trust.

Jay Jongho Kim graduated from the Department of Art Theory at Hongik University and earned his master's degree in Art Planning from the same university. From 1996 to 2006, he worked as a curator at Gallery Seomi, planning director at CAIS Gallery, head of the curatorial research team at Art Center Nabi, director at Gallery Hyundai, and curator at Gana New York.

From 2008 to 2017, he served as the executive director of Doosan Gallery Seoul & New York and Doosan Residency New York, introducing Korean contemporary artists to the local scene in New York. After returning to Korea in 2017, he worked as an art consultant, conducting art education, collection consulting, and various art projects.

In 2021, he founded A Project Company and is currently running the platforms K-ARTNOW.COM and K-ARTIST.COM, which aim to promote Korean contemporary art on the global stage.