Marine Tanguy, founder of MTArt Agency, has been named one of the UK’s top female entrepreneurs at the 2019 NatWest everywoman Awards.
The awards are a celebration of Britain’s most inspiring female entrepreneurs and Tanguy won the Demeter Award, sponsored by Nutriment Limited, for the most inspirational woman running a business trading from 3 to 5 years. The judges praised her for creating a new business model that is disrupting and transforming the art industry.
Founded in London in 2015, MTArt Agency is the world’s first agency for visual artists worldwide and has brought the principles of a talent agency to the art world, supporting artists outside the traditional gallery model. The agency covers artists’ studio costs, creating and managing commercial partnerships on their behalf and taking a commission from their work.
Tanguy, 30, has spent her whole career working in the art industry, and decided to build her own agency for artists after opening a gallery in Los Angeles and becoming frustrated by the difficulties of building meaningful relationships with the artists. She wanted to find a more sustainable way of managing talent that would allow her to grow, pay, and support artists better.
The agency currently has 60 artists on its books, supporting them financially and strategically, including landscape artist Saype, who recently produced a 600m bio-degradable art piece at the base of the Eiffel Tower, and British performance artist Adelaide Demoah.
In their citation, the judges said: “Our feedback for Marine was unanimous – she is the future. One of MTArt’s biggest missions is not just putting art in galleries and the homes of wealthy collectors, but also creating more public art. They have worked with Network Rail, Team London Bridge, the Mayor of London Fund and the Mayor of Paris to bring more art to these cities. MTArt has more than doubled revenues two years in a row and is on track to double revenues again in 2019. And, on average, MTArt artists have increased the prices of their works over 100% year on year”.
Speaking about the award Tanguy said: “I am thrilled and honoured to have won this award. I founded MTArt because I felt artists were being locked out of a system that felt outdated and elitist and I am proud of all we have achieved for our artists in the last four years. The demand for art in public spaces is growing and I believe the agency model is the best way to help artists get their work seen by bigger audiences”.
