Jeffrey Deitch has been a prominent player in contemporary art for over fifty years. Born in 1952 and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, Deitch went on to study at Wesleyan University, turning his primary attention from economics to art history. As a college student, he opened his first gallery in 1972 in Lenox, Massachusetts. In 1978 Deitch received his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he authored his thesis on Andy Warhol as a business artist and sought to find synergy between aesthetics and economics. Such interest led him to Citibank, where he developed the art consultation division, the first professionally organized art advisory service attached to an international financial institution. Deitch has also contributed significantly to art criticism, becoming a regular columnist of Flash Art in 1980 and having his work published in Artforum, Garage, Interview magazine, and Paper magazine. In 1996, Deitch opened the Deitch Projects gallery in Soho, with shows including works from Vanessa Beecroft, Nari Ward, and Mariko Mori.
Deitch has made a resounding impact on the art scene of Southern California. In 2010 he received the honor of being named the director of MOCA, relocating from New York to Los Angeles. As an early advocate of graffiti art in the 1980s, his first curated show, "Art in the Street," sold over 200,000 tickets- more than any previous show in MOCA history. In 2018 he opened a 15,000-square-foot space in Hollywood designed by Frank Gehry, where he presents museum-level exhibitions in a gallery setting. Further, in 2020, Deitch created the Gallery Association Los Angeles (GALA for short) to generate excitement about the LA gallery scene. He has also launched galleryplatform.la, an online program that serves the dynamic Los Angeles arts community with editorial content and rotating online viewing rooms. Deitch continues to operate galleries in New York and Los Angeles while advising private art collectors and institutions. As his number of shows, exhibition spaces, and artists exhibited surpass any art dealer in history, he has crafted a unique role that merges his curatorial profile with the business side of art.
He and Zuckerman spoke about a daily practice of looking at art, the physicality of looking, feeling objects, time with artists, seeking communities, running an art museum and why “All Surface. No Structure.” matters!