White Cube has appointed Jessie Washburne-Harris as a global director, strengthening its senior leadership in the United States. She will be based in New York and formally takes up the role in October 2025.
Washburne-Harris arrives from Pace Gallery, where she served as senior vice president, and brings experience from Marian Goodman, Gagosian, Petzel, and Sotheby’s. She also cofounded the gallery Harris Lieberman.
Her appointment coincides with the two-year anniversary of White Cube’s first permanent New York space, located in a former 1930s bank on the Upper East Side. Since opening in 2023, the gallery has staged exhibitions there for Tracey Emin, Theaster Gates, Antony Gormley, Ilana Savdie, and others.
“White Cube played a pivotal role in shaping an entire art movement in the 1990s, something few commercial galleries can claim as part of their DNA,” Washburne-Harris said in an email. “I feel like this legacy continues to define how the gallery operates today: artist-centered, fostering experimentation, and creating the conditions where art history is made.”
White Cube chief executive Sam Johnson described the hire as part of a long-term US strategy. “The US has always been at the core of White Cube’s global outlook,” Johnson said, adding that “this is the right moment to deepen our leadership capacity in the US.”
Founded in London in 1993, White Cube has expanded across three continents, with spaces in London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Seoul in addition to the New York one. The gallery seemed to indicate that it was doubling down on its US focus this month when it participated in the Armory Show for the first time in more than three decades, devoting its booth to the Croatian duo TARWUK. White Cube will also take part in Art Basel Miami Beach in December.
Upcoming programming at White Cube New York includes a Sylvia Snowden show opening in November and a Marguerite Humeau show opening in January.
