Smart Art: Breitbard Williams Fine Art Offers a Curated Way to Collect

Kendall Morgan·
Dallas/Ft WorthVisual Art
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With over 150,000 new residents moving to North Texas just last year, it’s not difficult to imagine all the large, white walls waiting for the perfect piece of art.

Transplant gallerists Stephanie Breitbard and James Williams are ready to fulfill that need from their eponymous space in the Design District. Opened in November, Breitbard Williams Fine Art takes a unique approach to curation. The owners don’t anticipate showing the work of one painter or sculptor alone or even mounting thematic shows that gather multiple artists.

Instead, they offer a unique blend of art consultancy and fine art gallery, showcasing carefully curated work from talents based in the Bay Area and beyond. The concept for their approach began with the storied career of co-founder Stephanie Breitbard, who launched her consultancy in 2007 near San Francisco. A former buyer for Banana Republic, Breitbard had already been collecting for many years when she decided to switch careers.

“We had enough people in our home say, ‘Where did you get this?’ so I decided I’d help people get art,” she recalls. “It began organically. I had to carry inventory, so I built a formal gallery space onto my house in Mill Valley just north of San Francisco and started running an art consultancy out of my home.”

Eventually, this led to her brick-and-mortar in the heart of Silicon Valley and a space on Jackson Street in San Francisco. There, she offers painting, mixed media, and sculpture with a methodology designed to help clients explore their tastes and educate themselves on the work they want to own.

“We’d go into their homes and think of it as a holistic space and explore how to weave art in so that it worked with their décor and architecture and who they are as people,” explains Breitbard. “For some people, we’re gallerists, but for others, we’re interior designers. Our roles change based on our needs for clients, but the most important thing is we’re a full concierge art service helping people curate a home collection.”

Meanwhile, her future partner, James Williams, had a successful career in the film and television industry working for Mark Burnett, producing such reality TV hits as The Surreal Life, America’s Next Top Model, and The Apprentice. By the last year of his 20-year career, he was commuting to LA from Dallas,  raising a family with his artist wife, Lauren when her modern fiber art career took off, thanks to Instagram

“She asked if I wanted to help her run her business, and it was an opportunity for us to not be separated by states,” he recalls. “About two years ago, we started thinking about being involved in the local market and thought it would be good to be part of the community here. We had developed a good client base, but there were only so many Lauren Williams works I could sell, so my question was, ‘What else can I put on these walls?’”

The answer was the “modern contemporary” aesthetic of Stephanie Breitbard. With a mix that ranges from representational to pop to abstract to photorealism, she already had a built-in stable to choose from. Her philosophies on curating and collecting were “a gift” to Williams, who felt it was a natural fit for the duo to pair their skill sets. Breitbard came out to look at spaces, and the partners eventually settled on a 5,200-square-foot gallery on Leslie Street.

The gallery is a one-stop shop for developing a stellar collection with services that include complimentary in-home and in-office curating, framing, commissioning custom artwork, and complimentary installation. Pieces are hung together to tell a story through color or texture so clients can envision how pieces of varying mediums can complement one another. Work is rotated out regularly, and the gallerists envision two to four group events happening yearly, with lectures and appearances from their stable of talent layered in along the way.

By not focusing on a single artist’s oeuvre, the duo hopes to catch the eyes of many clients while removing the barrier to collecting that often exists when a client is still developing their taste. Works retail from around $5,000 up to $80,000 for more established, blue-chip artists, and the owners have already seen clients and designers responding to the concierge service that makes the most of their respective skill sets.

“I bring years of curatorial experience, and James brings years of working with designers and clients in their homes and custom designing artwork to make a home come to life,” says Stephanie Breitbard. “The two things combined make us a great team. I bring the infrastructure to the gallery system, and he has tons of local collectors in Dallas, so I’m bringing the supply, and he’s demand.”

And that demand is only growing. Williams explains, “I feel like we’ve seen Dallas come into its own. In the last ten years, there’s been an incredible resurgence of food, entertainment, art, and culture. It’s been cool to see that and be a part of that. With the influx of people who have moved here, we felt it was such a great opportunity. It’s incredibly alluring to add to her roster and bring dynamic artists to this market.”

—KENDALL MORGAN

Kendall Morgan

Kendall Morgan is a Dallas-based writer and editor who keeps her finger on the pulse of art, design, fashion, film, literature, and pop culture.