London gallerist David Juda of Annely Juda, one of the city's longest-operating dealers, shares his strategies for keeping a gallery open amid a wave of closures. He emphasizes staying small, avoiding expensive art fairs for newcomers, and planning succession—handing responsibilities to co-director Nina Fellmann as he approaches 80. The gallery is moving to a new space on Hanover Square, inaugurating with new paintings by David Hockney.
This matters because it offers rare, practical wisdom from a veteran who has survived multiple boom-and-bust cycles since 1968, at a time when many galleries are shutting down. Juda's model—prioritizing artist relationships over pure business, regenerating rosters with younger artists, and careful succession planning—provides a counterpoint to the high-risk, high-cost approach that dominates the current art market.