Pace Gallery Axes Global Sales VP Hired Six Months Ago, Loses Two More Senior Staffers

Three senior staffers no longer work at Pace Gallery, one of the biggest galleries in the world, ARTnews has learned.

Pace axed Gary Waterston just six months after hiring him for the newly created position of executive vice president of global sales and operations. Meanwhile, Sarah Levine and Mark Beasley, Pace’s senior director of communications and curatorial director, respectively, have both departed the gallery.

When Waterston, a former director at Gagosian, was hired earlier this year, Pace said he was “among the most senior level of the leadership team, working closely with Samanthe Rubell and Marc Glimcher,” Pace’s president and CEO, respectively.

Levine, who was the global director of marketing and communications at Lehmann Maupin, was hired by Pace in the summer of 2023, while Beasley was appointed to his post in 2019.

“I confirm the departures of Gary Waterston, Sarah Levine, and Mark Beasley,” a Pace spokesperson said. “We parted ways [with Waterston] through a mutual and amicable decision that the newly created global role was not going to be successful based in London. We wish him the best in his next ventures.”

When asked about the reason for Levine and Beasley’s exit, Pace said, “As all businesses do, we regularly evaluate our priorities which occasionally necessitates staffing changes—including making new hires as well as identifying redundant roles. This is standard practice and ensures we’re delivering the results we strive for as a gallery.”

Waterston told ARTnews, “I joined Pace in a newly created role, and although my location outside New York did offer a different perspective, nevertheless, after these six months we understood that my not being alongside the other leadership in New York was making it difficult to achieve what we were aiming for.”

He continued, “It was an ambitious opportunity and one I’m thankful of. [It] was wonderful to get to know Pace, its talent within the galleries and in the artists roster. But we are ambitious, as a gallery and me as an individual, and we had to accept it wasn’t working as we planned. And so a mutual decision was reached. My role also took me too far from working directly with artists, and so, this gives me a chance to look for a new role with more connection there. I’ll continue to support Marc [Glimcher], Sam [Rubell], and the executives over the coming months as I exit the gallery. I obviously wish them well and I know they’ll support me as I move forward.”

Levine declined to comment. Beasley did not respond to ARTnews’s request for comment.