Who

One of the city's most prominent art dealers and gallerists, Deitch has been a major player on the art scene since the early '80s.

Backstory

Raised in Hartford, Connecticut—his father ran an oil and coal company and his mom was a professional economist—Deitch was 19, he says, when he first discovered his passion for art, an epiphany that came to him after visiting several art shows with his parents while on vacation in the Berkshires. Duly inspired, he switched his major at Wesleyan to art history and jumped into the New York art scene after graduation, taking a job at the John Weber Gallery. Familial pressure convinced him to head to Harvard Business School a year later, but after earning his MBA he gravitated back to art, albeit at Citibank, where he co-founded the company's art advisory practice in 1979, counseling wealthy clients on their collections and helping them negotiate deals.

Deitch made a name for himself in the early 1980s, forging relationships with a handful of rising stars like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jeff Koons. In 1988 he went out on his own, establishing himself as an independent art advisor to well-heeled collectors. Deitch's operation expanded in 1996 when he opened his first gallery, a debut that was marked by a performance by artist Vanessa Beecroft. But right around the time he set up shop, he nearly went bankrupt: As one of Jeff Koons's primary backers in the mid-1990s, Deitch had to shoulder the mammoth cost overruns associated with Koons's ambitious "Celebration" series, and found himself millions of dollars in debt. The financial pressure led him to sell a 50 percent stake in Deitch Projects to Sotheby's for $5 million. By the time he extricated himself from the contentious relationship three years later, his relationship with Koons had crumbled and the artist had moved on. (He's now repped by Larry Gagosian.)

Today Deitch manages two gallery spaces in SoHo, serves as a private art dealer, and continues to advise clients on their collections.

Of note

Deitch (it's pronounced DIE-tsh) dabbles in a bit of everything: His two spaces—one on Grand Street and the other on Wooster—host a mix of exhibitions, installations, and performances. (A third location, a 12,000-square-foot space in Long Island City is coming soon.) His venues have championed young artists like Kehinde Wiley, Ryan McGinness, Steve Powers, and Kristin Baker; but he's also featured the work of more mature artists like David Salle and Francesco Clemente. Deitch has also been an active promoter of avant-garde performance art, sponsoring performances by Casey Spooner's Fischerspooner and the Dazzle Dancers, and he sponsors a handful of artsy events around town such as the annual Art Parade.

Of course, half-naked men running around in stiletto heels doesn't pay the bills, so Deitch continues to keep his hand in the secondary market, brokering expensive sales to hedge fund titans (Steve Cohen) and media moguls (David Geffen) and serving as an art advisor to foreign mega-collectors (Dakis Joannou) and even companies (Skadden Arps). It's the commission on the sale of a Francis Bacon or Rothko that allows him to fund the less conventional stuff—and less conventional it most certainly is. In 2006, Deitch underwrote one of Dash Snow and Dan Colen's infamous "Hamster Nest" installations, which involved the artists and their friends getting together at one of Deitch's galleries, filling the space with the remains of thousands of shredded phone books, getting high, and ransacking the place, peeing on the walls and worse.

On screen

Deitch produced and starred in a short-lived reality show on the Dish network in 2006, which featured a collection of artists competing to be stars. (Not surprisingly, the show was called Artstar.) Slate described Deitch as "mostly charmless," and described the program as "an upscale infomercial."

Personal

Typically attired in custom-made Caraceni suits and his trademark round-rimmed glasses, Deitch is a quirky figure amid the crowds of young, queer downtown art scenesters. Particulary since, contrary to popular belief, he's straight. In the early 1990s, he lived with the Italian artist Laura Grisi. He's now single and lives in a small two-room apartment on West 63rd Street that he says is completely devoid of any art.