Founder and President of Leila Heller Gallery, Leila Heller is one of the most well-known art dealers in the world. Specializing in Middle Eastern art which has become increasingly popular in recent years, Heller has worked with and show cased some of the most trending artists in the art world such as Shirin Neshat, Leila Pazooki, and Reza Aramesh. Other artists that have been presented in her collections include Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Marilyn Minter, Takashi Murakami, Rachel Hovnanian, and many more.
Hewitt Times: How do you choose which art to show?
Leila Heller: I always choose my artists that I represent or do shows of from my gut feeling. It’s always been that way. I’m a very visual person so it’s really what I feel that I can do a successful show but also in continuing and grooming that artist’s vision. They also have to be realistic and think of their audience. So let’s say, because I do so many shows in the Middle East, there they have huge palaces, they have huge homes, and so size is important. And if your living in New York, you have very small apartments, so you have to think that a work that big is not going to be placed in a Manhattan collector’s apartment. So it’s all relevant. The way I choose my curated shows is very different, because my curated shows have a scene. One just ended yesterday: The Pop Culture Show. So that I chose because I have a museum background. I have two masters in art history, so that is not so much from gut as it is from knowledge and academia and having had museum experience and knowing the market. So each is different.
HT: How do you think the art world has helped the plight of women in the Middle East?
LH: Well a lot of people ask me like oh you do a lot with the Middle East, and you’re a woman…isn’t that a challenge? If you look at every head of every initiative in the Middle East it’s a woman. So you look at Doha, the head of the whole Qatar Museum Authority is Sheikha Al Mayassa Al Thani, who is a woman. If you look at Dubai, the head of the whole art initiative and women’s initiative in Dubai is Sheikha Manal, who is a woman. And if you look at Bahrain, the Minister of Culture is Shaikha Mai Bint Mohammed Al Kahlifa, who is a woman. If you look at all the gallery owners, they’re all women. If you look at great artists who are Middle Eastern, they are all women. So, women have tremendous power in the Middle East. And they are really spear-hitting art movements and art initiatives in the Middle East. So you look at so many things that have to do with the Middle East and the arts and they are all women. You look at Shirin Neshat, she’s one of the most important woman artists in the world and a role model to all Middle Eastern women in the arts.
HT: Do you think art in Iran is a medium where the people are seeking to have their voices heard by Iranian activists to get their views across?
LH: I think that in any society, where there is strife and there is a political problem like censorship and artists being marginalized because of their thoughts and ideas, they feel a little bit under certain guidelines that are stopping their freedom in expressing themselves. There are always some artists who express themselves through their art in a political manner. But then there are also artists who use politics to take advantage of that situation and try to jump on the bandwagon, and that’s very dangerous because then you see art that is not so substantial, but with a great concept behind it with a whole artistic meat that is done and it ruins the whole message of the real serious artist. So that is normal that you see in areas where there is a political upheaval that artists express themselves through their art. So they do express themselves in their art but they are all also good artists, so it’s not just propagandistic. Because the worst is when it’s just propaganda art.
HT: How did you get started in the gallery business?
LH: It’s a long story! I came to Brown from Iran and I was supposed to study economics because my father had, amongst other things such as banking in Iran. And then by chance I took an art history course and I feel in love. And I’ve always been interested in art. I’d been to museums with my aunt, and my mother, and to every museum in Paris and London and New York as I was growing up. So I always had interest in art. My mother was a collector and she collected young Iranian artists. So I had that in me. So when I was at Brown and I had this mentor, an art history professor who was so influential on my life. So after Brown when I graduated, I took my masters at Sotheby’s situated in London. So then I did the Sotheby’s program and then I applied for a masters in art history and museum management, thinking I’m going back to Iran, I want to be a curator, I want to learn how to deal with museums. I worked one year at the Hirsh, working with different curators and different departments, and so I learned a lot. I graduated and moved to New York. One of my best friends at Brown was Lisa Dennison who gave me a job at the Guggenheim. So I joined the Guggenheim and they couldn’t pay me because I didn’t have any papers. And until I found a job that a friend of mine who had an investment bank sponsored me to be the curator and house curator of the collection of the bank. So then once I got my papers, then I opened my gallery in 1982, and since I’ve been a gallery owner.