“I believe in the power and possibility of changing the world through art.” – Antwaun Sargent
Curator, critic, author and man-about-town Antwaun Sargent has helped the careers of artists including Tyler Mitchell, Honor Titus and Derrick Adams soar. JANET MERCEL meets the art world sensation (and Gagosian’s secret weapon) and discovers that Sargent is just getting started.
There’s something cozy about Antwaun Sargent. Maybe that’s not a word that immediately springs to mind from his portraits in Vanity Fair, or images of him on the red carpet at its Oscar Party. Certainly not while he navigates Fashion Week in head-to-toe pink suede Bottega, or slouches over a dinner table with Madonna. As an art-star maker, and consequently a star himself, one might expect some highbrow remoteness.
But today, he is curled on a banquette in Soho down the block from his apartment, somehow softened in a hoodie and beanie. In the tiny, train-car-shaped coffee shop, he is warm, focused, and open, and I begin to understand why so many people have put their faith in this man to shape their careers, livelihoods and vision.
For over a decade, Sargent has leveraged his voice as a critic to interrogate and redefine the art world’s relationship with Black artists. As a writer and curator, he wears many hats—both literally and figuratively, as distinctive headwear is part of his sartorial signature.
At 36, his critical lens now extends well beyond the page, shaping the very institutions he once scrutinized. Virgil Abloh approached him to put together “Figures of Speech” at the Brooklyn Museum, which ultimately became a posthumous retrospective of the artist, designer, and architect. He’s been a gallery director at Gagosian since 2021, with exhibitions such as “Social Works” and “Social Abstraction.” And it was forty-five minutes before “Social Works” opened, he recalls, that he sat down with Frick curator Aimee Ng to discuss what would eventually become “Barkley L. Hendricks: Portraits at the Frick,” the institution’s first solo show dedicated to a Black artist.
“Alison McDonald, [the chief creative officer at Gagosian] who oversees the publishing arm, was looking for new voices and valued my perspective,” he says. While that perspective is on display in his exhibitions and while writing for the coveted house catalogs, it’s just one facet of the job. The relentless networking ping-pongs him from coast to coast and to overseas outposts. “The sun never sets on the empire, and all that.” There’s a good deal of A&R, and the daily management of the kind of high-level careers that come with representing artists at this scale. In short, he says, everything he was already good at doing before the gallery came along.
“Initially I was set to do four exhibitions a year and edit the corresponding books,” Sargent explains. “Now we’re in my fourth year and I’ve done something like over 25 exhibitions.” He concedes that this sounds wild. (Gagosian confirms it’s 30 shows, to date.) “I was introducing people to the gallery, like Honor Titus. My role working with artists, that’s the interesting part of working with Larry. It’s nonstop. We had Tyler Mitchell’s opening last week, and Derrick Adams’s two weeks before that.”
Sargent is passionately verbal, periodically swatting at the banquette with his fingertips. He is not afraid of people hearing him, looking his way, nor of taking up space. I don’t mind; I could listen to him all day. I like the sound of his voice. Which is good—he does, too. He, and his brain, are always working, never missing a conversational opportunity to champion an exhaustive list of artists: Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Deana Lawson, Kevin Beasley, Lauren Halsey, Cy Gavin, Rick Lowe, and countless others. The names fall from his mouth like handfuls of shiny coins, each accompanied by a relevant seduction point.
Sargent won’t be comfortable until Black art and Black literature are not a novelty, not a trend, not passing through—but a commonplace, universal, and permanent fixture, a desire at the heart of both his books. The New Black Vanguard and Young Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists create space for many voices—artists, curators, collectors—to speak, in words and images. He is someone for whom the art of words is primary currency, yet his roles have become so interwoven that they are inseparable from his persona—a contemporaneous expression of his talents. Is he a writer first, curator second, or the other way around?
“A curator’s tradition is a writer’s tradition,” Sargent remarks. “A curator is telling a story, constructing the narrative, but using artworks instead of the written word. Although that’s a big part of it, too. Historically, the curator constructs the catalog essays, critical theory, wall text—a huge amount of text.”
You can almost see how he stitches his thoughts together, his writer’s mind tracing a path from one idea to the next to find the hook. I suggest that years as a freelance contributor probably serve him well during pitch lunches with Mr. Gagosian. We agree the practice teaches you to deal with constant rejection and roll with the punches—probably not a skill that coincides with the egos of most curators at his level. “No,” he says, grimacing. “It is not.”
“I’ve always been fascinated by the impermanence and ephemerality of printed matter, while extending the life of whatever it’s attached to. The reviews, Playbills, auction catalogs—that rich tradition of art and fashion becoming part of the historical record. Maybe it’s in the form of copy for Calvin Klein, or a letter for Gucci, wall text at the Frick. All of which I’ve done.”
Very few things, he notes, offer such a vast opportunity to create a springboard for impact as writing does. “Cord Jefferson won an Oscar!” he exclaims. “And he started out writing for Gawker.”
For Sargent, the malleability of mediums—the ability to convey ideas across culture and platforms—is the point. He references Toni Morrison’s quote: You are not the work you do; you are the person you are. “I do believe the work reveals who you are,” he emphasizes. “And I believe in the power and possibility of changing the world through art.”
Social engagement is the throughline of it all, along with a commitment to ensuring the glass cliff phenomenon becomes a thing of the past—though not without a heavy dose of realism. “It’s literally the name of the show! Social. Works.” he says, sketching each word with a klieg-light punctuation of his hand in the air. He points to artists like Lauren Halsey, Rick Lowe, Derrick Adams, and Linda Goode Bryant: creators whose active participation and transformation of their communities is the essence of the work.
“But be real, I wouldn’t have been called upon to do, what 27 shows, if they weren’t a financial success,” Sargent clarifies. “They were fantastically successful. And you know if the artists weren’t doing well, I wouldn’t be. I own an apartment in Soho. If they’re paid well out of the gate, it’s a more pure, sustainable model where they can take care of their families and communities and there wouldn’t be a need to be so protective in the secondary market. There is a different way to care about artists.”
Sargent does, in fact, care. At the opening of Tyler Mitchell’s “Ghost Images” at Gagosian last February, he wasn’t just there—he was invested, ensuring the moment wasn’t just an event, but a statement. With the titan gallery owner in a leather jacket and jeans, everyone else in various calculated cool kit, Sargent was in an impeccable suit from The Row with a Saint Laurent shirt and tie.
For someone seemingly just as at ease while naked under Burberry fishnet or in a tiger-print fur coat, this was something else. It was earnest, a little endearing. He was working, giving his artists sincerity. He was showing up. And seeing him, you can’t help but want to do the same.
Back in Soho, the incessant pinging of his phone—despite a valiant effort to ignore it all morning—finally demands his attention. Life is calling, and I all but push him out the door. And so, he switches gears, unfurling his long frame from the banquette, and steps back into the world that keeps pulling him so eagerly into it.
