MASTER OF HIS DOMAIN

Art dealer Larry Gagosian redefined what galleries look like in our era. Now he is reinventing things once again with a new space on Madison Avenue.

- By ELISA LIPSKY-KARASZ

The year was 1983. Two jaw-droppingly large slabs of Cor-Ten were dangling almost gingerly from a crane as they approached a gray stucco building in Beverly Hills. Construction, any passerby might have thought. But in fact the gargantuan steel pieces were Richard Serra sculptures, and this was the first time Serra was showing in a new space with his dealer, Larry Gagosian. The two California guys had decided to go for it. All was well—until the moment the crane set the steel onto a forklift, and that forklift crossed the threshold of Gagosian's gallery, which he had redone just a year or so earlier. Suddenly the floor collapsed. “We were in a panic,” Gagosian says.

The sculpture, aptly titled Plunge, was salvaged, the floor was repaired and strengthened, and the show opened without a hitch. “Now, you know, it’s kind of funny,” Gagosian says with a grin. He can have the last laugh: He’s sitting at his desk at his Peter Marino-designed home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan 43 years, 18 global gallery locations, and more than 30 Richard Serra shows later. This spring he unveils his latest New York gallery at 980 Madison Avenue, in a street-level space that has become his prevailing passion, in the very same building where he opened his first gallery spaces, in 1989. It’s a full-circle moment: Nearly two years ago Bloomberg Philanthropies acquired the bulk of the building, forcing Gagosian and a host of other galleries to relocate.