The Art World Star Breaking the Gallery Model

Conrad Shawcross’s rise in the British art world was unprecedented, beginning with his 2003 debut, a wooden machine that slowly wound threads into yarn. It was quickly acquired by the mega-­collector Charles Saatchi. A year later, at the age of 25, Shawcross cold-called Victoria Miro, arguably one of London’s most important dealers. “I got a meeting, and two weeks later she took me on,” he says. In 2013 he was inducted into London’s Royal Academy of Art, the youngest person ever to achieve the honor.

Now that he’s 40, Shawcross, the child of historians William Shawcross (the official biographer of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother) and Marina Warner, is aging out of his status as a wunderkind. In his own telling, the ambition and scope of his practice reflect his growing maturity. His latest work, a 52-foot-wide set of sails currently suspended from the ceiling of St. Pancras train station, is deliberately less ­whimsical. He’s also come to rely less on ­galleries to fund his ­projects and instead is focused on ­cultivating corporate and public patronage. With the art world wringing its hands over the rapid commercialization of young talent, Shawcross’s model could point to a viable alternative to the current collector-dealer-­artist model. “It really became about how to get things made,” he says. “It’s about how to get people to be enthused about helping.”