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Lora Reynolds opened her eponymous gallery in Austin in 2005, almost immediately changing the gravity of the art world in Texas. No longer a college town, Austin was well on its way to becoming the booming music, film, and tech capital that it remains, and Lora Reynolds Gallery marked a new ambition and seriousness in its contemporary art scene.
In the 20 years since, Reynolds built an international reputation, showing a roster of established yet often underrecognized artists and cultivating a generation of avid Texas collectors. Two decades on, she has decided to shutter her shop, bringing an era to a close. I talked with Reynolds by email between October 27, 2025, and January 21, 2026. Our conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Joseph R. Wolin (JRW): In 2005, when you opened your own gallery after working for blue-chip dealers in London and New York, including Anthony d’Offay and Matthew Marks, what led you to choose Austin as the location for your new venture? Were there institutions or players in the Austin and Texas art scenes that influenced your decision? What do you recall of your impressions of those art worlds at the time?
Lora Reynolds (LR): After growing up in Houston and Dallas, and working for galleries in London and New York, I moved back to Texas because that is where I wanted to raise kids. I was ready to start a family, so was my partner Quincy Lee, and he was living in Austin.
When our first child, Georgia, was about 18 months old, I started to feel like I wanted back in the art world. But — little problem — in the early 2000s, there was not really anywhere in Austin that showed the kind of international contemporary art I wanted to spend time with. So, I opened my own space.
At that time, Dallas and Houston already had robust communities of curious and adventurous collectors, but Austin is a different kind of place. Lots of people here like Barton Springs more than ambitious art. Slowly though, Austin has become a place where some of the most interesting collectors want to live. I am delighted to count as friends many wonderful people — collectors and artists alike — who have moved here in the last 20 years, after immersing themselves in the art worlds of Los Angeles, New York, London, Berlin, and elsewhere.
It is always so rewarding to meet people who love artists — and the many ways they think and see and feel and make — and be able to offer them a space, in Austin, where I can share stories from the artists whose work has expanded my world. Once or twice, people have told me they were nervous about moving to Austin because they worried they were leaving art-with-a-capital-A behind in some bigger city. But finding the gallery after getting here brought them some measure of comfort. It has been a great honor to be able to help the art-obsessed feel more at home in Austin, which is exactly what I needed myself, all those years ago.
But I have always also thought of the gallery as an educational resource — for students and anyone who is just starting to be curious about contemporary art. I hope my staff is a little warmer and more welcoming than the notoriously icy reception desks of the art galleries of New York. We have never cared if you are on the ARTnews “Top 200” list. If you walk in the door and feel something, anything — confusion, excitement, discomfort, mystification, or whatever else — and want to talk about it, so do we! Our professor friends often bring groups of students for exhibition tours and to talk about our experiences in the art world. But some of our most gratifying gallery walk-throughs have been for younger kids — 8, 10, 12 years old — who are unafraid to say exactly what is on their mind, even if some boring grown-up might think the comment obvious or absurd or embarrassing. Their insights are often enviable. Kids are the best.
JRW: From the beginning, your program was quite national and international in scope — you exhibited artists from both East and West Coasts, as well as quite a number of artists from Europe. One of your most recent shows was your third with Lucas Simões, from Brazil. At the same time, you have never shied away from presenting the work of some of the more ambitious artists in Texas or Austin. You have shown promising artists at the start of their careers and also some of the greatest figures of our time, such as Ellsworth Kelly, Ed Ruscha, and Vija Celmins.
What accounts for this wide-ranging approach? What were your goals in formulating and evolving a decades-long exhibition program specifically for Austin? Do you think your direction has set you apart from other Texas galleries?
LR: The initial idea for the gallery was to bring artists and artwork to Austin that would not otherwise be here. And that is still the core of the gallery’s mission, but rules are meant to be broken.
In the early years, I was particularly drawn to labor-intensive work that was mostly intimately scaled: Ewan Gibbs’ gauzy graphite drawings, Jim Torok’s hyperrealistic miniature oil portraits, Noriko Ambe and Francesca Gabbiani’s two divergent approaches to taking a razor blade to paper. As the years passed, my tastes and interests expanded to include artists who are deeply engaged with both their craft and what they see as the most pressing issues facing the world we live in.
I am thinking of how Tom Molloy’s incredible draughtsmanship or his delicate sculptural interventions can so perfectly encapsulate the gap between the U.S.’s purported ideals and real life. Or Donald Moffett’s lifelong dedication to activism, his early years as a founding member of [the art and design collective] Gran Fury for ACT UP, and his turn in the last decade toward climate activism — and how all of that energy he has spent fighting for, and dreaming of, a better world has informed his jaw-droppingly seductive, restrained, monochromatic paintings. Or Karl Haendel’s funny/smart/silly/giant graphite drawings that he uses to prod himself into being a better person, while simultaneously trying to redefine the masculine ideal as empathetic, anti-macho, feminist, and comfortable with vulnerability.
I was an HIV/AIDS counselor in grad school. I believe deeply in a woman’s right to autonomy. Being a mom is the most important part of my life. I love animals, all of them, almost as if they were my own children. Being outside in nature feeds me. At some point, I realized how gratifying it is to work with artists who hold value systems I identify with. The artists I choose to work with and the shows we put up together are declarations of what I think are the most important bits of being alive right now, too.
Almost nobody saw one of my favorite projects that we ever did. It was our first show after several months of being closed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. George Floyd had just been murdered. And Kay Rosen met the moment with a show, titled 202020…, of just four artworks. Two giant wall paintings and two little drawings, that was all. I do not know who she sold her soul to in order to conjure so much from the mundane bits of language she transmogrifies, but I want their contact information!
The project we did with Ed Ruscha coincided with the Harry Ransom Center making his archive available to the public — an acquisition I facilitated. I worked closely with Ed for years before I had my own gallery. Our show in Austin was a perfect excuse to reconnect with a dear friend and celebrate his singular approach to life and art.
Similarly, our show with Ellsworth Kelly aligned with the opening of his architectural wonder, Austin, at the Blanton Museum. Ellsworth had passed by that time, but I was glad to collaborate with his widower and longtime life partner Jack Shear (whose naughty sense of humor I have always enjoyed). Anthony d’Offay and Matthew Marks both worked with Ellsworth. I got to tag along to a few meetings back in the old days, and more recently I had spent a day with Ellsworth and Jack in Spencertown in the final planning phases of the Blanton project. Ellsworth was so kind and gentle. What a lovely man!
But our first project with an artist (an artist duo, actually) based in Texas was with Teresa Hubbard/Alexander Birchler in 2011. They live here and teach at the University of Texas, but, even 15 years ago, they were operating on the world stage. They have a blue-chip gallery in New York, their work is in the best museum collections, and in 2017 they co-represented Switzerland in the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennial, along with Carol Bove. So, although Teresa and Alex were here, they were not showing their work here until that first project, in which they looked at the underappreciated and crucial role cinema plays in shaping how you and I and everyone else makes sense of the world. I was glad for an excuse to get to know them better — now they are two of my favorite people.
In 2015, we did our first summer project with artists based in Texas. Prior to that, our summer shows were what I had learned a summer show should be from my time in New York — a group show with work by gallery artists. But I found that our summer group shows sometimes lacked a curatorial or conceptual thread beyond the artists’ connections to the gallery. I wanted a change. We challenged ourselves to look where we had not been looking — right under our noses — to find artists we would be excited to do a project with. The first one was with Troy Brauntuch, Andy Coolquitt, and Jeff Williams. All three of them scratched their heads a little when we first pitched the show; they didn’t immediately see what the connection between them was, but they were all excited at the result.
Seth Orion Schwaiger published a beautiful narrative of walking through that show; it is one of the most unconventional and interesting pieces of writing I have read about a show we put on. That three-person show was an experiment, but we really loved doing it and our friends loved seeing work in our space by artists they knew personally, so we made it a recurring tradition. This summer, Karla García, a Mexican sculptor living in Dallas, made us a spectacular installation of ceramic barrel cacti that felt like you were walking through the Chihuahuan desert in the dead of night under a full moon.
But I have almost always only worked with artists who already have careers and are already showing at other galleries in bigger art cities. Discovering new talent was not really part of Anthony d’Offay or Matthew Marks’ approach to the art world; that is who I learned from, so, emerging artists were never really part of my program.
That said, we did give Simon Haas his first show as a solo artist. He is one half of the Haas Brothers (who we are also lucky to work with), and, as a duo, he and his twin brother Niki have an active and exciting career. But, from the beginning, Simon has made drawings and paintings outside of their collaborative practice. Colin Doyle, my husband and partner at the gallery, and I were always excited about the images that Simon would post online and repeatedly told him so. So, he made us a show of glory hole drawings. It was kind of a lot for some people, but, for those of us who dared to take a step closer and really engage with the ideas and stories Simon was working through at the time, it was a deeply personal and tender show — so powerful, so moving.
Colin always says spending time with Niki and Simon feels like watching them reach into their chests to pull out their hearts and offer them to you, still beating, in their outstretched hands — and, in doing so, makes you want to do the same. That is what Simon’s show felt like, too. People noticed. The show sold out before the opening. And now he is navigating requests from other galleries that want to show his work. It has been fun to watch him slowly come out of his shell and get more comfortable with accepting that people are really excited about the work he makes outside of the Haas Brothers.
I am not a big planner. When I opened the gallery, I had no idea where it would go or where I would end up 20 years later. I started with what I learned in London and New York, spent a lot of time looking at a lot of artwork, and what I wanted to show at the gallery and what I wanted to live with at home evolved in unexpected ways as my tastes and interests (and life!) developed along the way.
JRW: Over the last two decades, the art world and the art market have changed in a myriad of ways, both large and small. Which of these changes has affected the gallery the most? Did any of them contribute to your decision to close the gallery now?
LR: It seems someone is always worrying that the art market is in trouble. Is it ever going to recover? Is anyone selling anything at the art fairs? Oh no, the auction markets are collapsing! All that kind of talk is so boring. The art market is not where you want to be if you are trying to make a quick buck. The earliest humans made art — and then we never stopped. Making and looking at art is a big part of how we figure out who we are. Surrounding yourself with art, inserting yourself into the art world, means picking up one of the oldest torches we have — and trying to carry it forward.
I have spent my career in the art world because I think artists are some of the most interesting and eye-opening humans anywhere. I have always been so curious to hear what my artist friends think is worth paying attention to, and I have wanted to help them realize the projects they have dreamed up but have not figured out how to actualize. I say yes to projects when an artist is chewing on something I want to chew on, too — not because I think the show will sell out. (I had no idea so many people would want a glory hole in their home — I just knew Colin and I wanted one because of how Simon’s drawings made us feel.)
When someone buys an artwork from LRG, I hope it is because they connected with an object, a story we helped retell, an artist and the way they see the world. From the beginning, I always wanted LRG to be a little oasis, a little separate from how everyone else does things, where we could look for artists and projects with heart.
I am not closing the gallery because of anything going on in the art world. I have loved every minute of pouring myself into LRG, but I was never trying to create a dynasty. I am proud of what we accomplished in two decades, and I am ready to put a bow on it. My son is graduating from high school this year. Colin wants to make his own artwork. It is the right time for us.
JRW: Your current exhibition, Who made the grasshopper?, is the final one and includes works by 42 artists who have previously shown at the gallery. Has living with this summation of the gallery’s history incited any unforeseen feelings or reflections?
LR: Planning this show was a little nerve-wracking because it was so far outside the bounds of what we usually do. We have never put on a show with so many artists or with so much work, and long ago we turned away from “just because” group shows of gallery artists. We told artists to send us whatever they wanted for the gallery’s 20th-anniversary show, our final show, and did not give any direction beyond that.
Was everything even going to fit in our space? Was it going to make any sense? What would it look like? We crossed our fingers and barreled headlong into all the unknowns and reminded ourselves that 20 years of trusting artists has led us to some surprisingly magical places. Why would this show be any different?
When install week arrived, we unpacked the work in the empty gallery and leaned it all up against the walls around the space, and, at first, our worst fears appeared to be confirmed. It was too much work, it was too visually and conceptually disparate, it just was not right. But as soon as we found spots for a few visual and emotional anchors, everything else kind of fell into place. Colin could talk your ear off about all the surprising resonances between artworks by different artists that arose once we started moving things around and trying them in different combinations. There was a distinct moment when Colin and I were arranging and rearranging the show, after hours of frustration at things just not working, when everything finally started to click, when it transformed from a show of which we were more than a little afraid into something really special. We both burst into tears.
I think a big part of the reason I was so emotional is because until that moment I did not anticipate the show would feel like anything more than a history of the gallery — kind of dry. And maybe that is how other people see it. But for me, as it turned out, Who made the grasshopper? actually feels more like the story of my life.
Years ago, I called Arlene Shechet from a funeral home, crying, when I was flipping through a catalog of urns for my mom’s ashes. They were all so cold and impersonal and wrong. I asked Arlene if she would make me something for my mom instead. Of course she would, she said. She pulled me out of a hole in a way no one else could.
The Ewan Gibbs drawing in the show, a portrait of my dad, was a surprise gift from Ewan the year after my dad died. I look at it every day.
Jim Torok’s painting of me was also a surprise. He took the source pictures from which he painted when I was helping him test light for the pictures he made for a painting of my daughter, Georgia, on the occasion of her 18th birthday. We had so much fun going together to see him in his studio in New York. I had no idea he would turn those test shots of me into a painting until it arrived at the gallery a week before this show opened.
Simon Haas’ piece, Nautilus Walk (2025), is one of the first drawings he made after the glory hole show we did. He says making that show and putting it up in Austin, his hometown, was a scary and emotional and ultimately cathartic experience that cracked his heart open and made space for a new relationship to vulnerability and intimacy in his personal life.
Karl Haendel’s drawing is a marriage portrait of Colin and me, of our hands. Colin started at the gallery as an intern 15 years ago, and in 2023, Niki and Simon Haas officiated our wedding.
I love all the artists in this show. More than a few are among the most important people in my life. So many of the artworks they contributed point to how deeply our lives are intertwined, not only in professional contexts, but personal ones, too. I do not know who I would be without them. I feel so lucky the gallery brought us together. And now, even without the gallery — guess what? — they are stuck with me forever.
This final show feels a little bit like I am attending my own funeral. It is a celebration of the last 20 years — and the end of a thing. But it feels a little bit like a wedding, too, looking forward into the unknown; it is the beginning of another thing. It feels big and emotional and scary and exciting — overwhelming, at times. Carl Hammoud really met the moment with Space Song (2025), an oversized graphite drawing that stares out across the sea. (I wonder if he can read my mind?)
Thank you, Carl. Thank you to all of the artists who made LRG what it was — and made me who I am. I will see you soon.
Who made the grasshopper? was on view November 15, 2025–January 24, 2026, at Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin. The exhibition will remain on view by appointment only through February 20, 2026.
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