Reclaiming the Visual Public Realm
Marine Tanguy has built her career around a simple but radical conviction: artists should not sit at the edge of culture, but at its centre. As the founder and CEO of MTArt Agency, she has helped reshape how contemporary artists are represented, valued and placed within public life, moving beyond the traditional gallery model to create a talent agency for visual artists.
Her route into the art world began unusually early. At 21, Tanguy became the youngest gallery manager in Europe while working with Steve Lazarides, the gallerist known for discovering Banksy. By 23, she had been approached by a US investor to open her first art venture in Los Angeles, De Re Gallery, on Melrose Avenue. It was there that the idea for MTArt Agency began to take shape: an art world equivalent of the major talent agencies that represent actors, musicians and cultural figures.
Founded in London in 2015, MTArt Agency was conceived as a new model for artist representation. Rather than treating artists purely through the lens of exhibition sales, the agency supports them across a far broader cultural field, from public art and institutional projects to brand collaborations, collectors, cities and global organisations. MTArt describes itself as the art sector’s leading talent agency for visual artists, working with partners including Apple, Hyundai and the World Cup.
For more information, visit mtart.agency
What distinguishes MTArt is its belief that artists need both protection and expansion. The agency model allows artists to develop long-term careers with strategic support, while also placing their work into contexts where it can be encountered by wider publics. In this sense, MTArt challenges the separation between fine art, public space, commerce and culture. It argues that artists should be visible not only in galleries, but in the cities, platforms and environments that shape daily experience.
In conversation, Tanguy speaks of art not as something remote, but as something that belongs in the centre of everyday life. Her passion lies in seeing artists’ visions embedded within the city, in places where people encounter them not because they have chosen to enter an art space, but because art has entered the shared world.
Tanguy’s advocacy extends beyond the agency itself. She has written and spoken widely about visual literacy, public art and the impact of images on society. Her work reflects a broader concern with how people see, interpret and are influenced by the visual world around them. She has given four TEDx Talks on subjects including transforming cities through art, the effect of social media visuals on the mind, and the visual biases that shape everyday perception.
Her wider achievements have positioned her as one of the most visible entrepreneurial figures in the contemporary art sector. She was named in Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe for Art & Culture in 2018, received UK Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2019 NatWest Awards, and was named 2023 Hurun Entrepreneur of the Year under 35. In 2024, she was awarded the Champion of Empowerment Medal for her leadership in supporting artists and creatives internationally.
At the centre of MTArt’s work is a question about value. How should artists be supported in a world where images circulate constantly, but artistic labour is often undervalued? How can public art, visual culture and creative thinking be recognised as essential rather than decorative? For Tanguy, the answer lies in building structures that allow artists to operate with the same seriousness, visibility and strategic backing as other cultural leaders.
MTArt Agency’s growth reflects a wider shift in the art world. Artists are increasingly expected to move between disciplines, audiences and platforms, engaging with institutions, brands, civic spaces and digital culture. Yet without proper representation, these opportunities can become fragmented or extractive. MTArt proposes a more sustainable framework, one in which artists are not simply commissioned, but represented, advocated for and developed over time.
The agency’s status as a Certified B Corporation also adds another layer to its identity, aligning its business model with a stated commitment to social and cultural impact. For an art world often shaped by exclusivity, opacity and short-term market attention, this positioning is significant. It suggests a different kind of infrastructure, one that sees artistic practice as both cultural capital and social force.
In many ways, Marine Tanguy’s career mirrors the mission of the agency she founded. From gallery manager to entrepreneur, writer, speaker and advocate, she has consistently worked to expand the conditions in which artists can be seen. MTArt Agency is not only a company, but a proposition for the future of the art world: one in which artists are given the agency, visibility and professional support to shape culture at scale.
You founded MTArt Agency to reposition artists within public and commercial environments. What gap did you see in the traditional gallery system that needed to be addressed?
I founded MTArt Agency as the first talent agency in the art world. That means supporting artists on a 360-degree level, financing their studios, developing partnerships and building a support network of art collectors, institutions, online audiences and art critics.
The traditional gallery system focused mainly on art world audiences and art sales, and I felt that this scope should be expanded to better support visual artists.
Your role sits between artist, client and public audience. How do you translate an artist’s vision into large-scale public contexts without compromising its integrity?
We fully protect the artistic vision of the artist, and that is our core role: integrating this artistic vision within a different context. This takes creative, legal, communications and financial literacy, as well as decades of expertise from our team, to do so.
My passion is to see these artistic visions in our everyday lives, in the centre of our cities, inspiring everyone. But we never ask the artist to compromise on their integrity, and never have throughout the last 300 projects we have delivered over the years.
When developing a major commission, how do you determine the right alignment between artist, site and stakeholder?
It is all about the core values, artistic vision, objectives and storytelling. It needs to feel right, and our art is the one to bring the right shareholders to support it.
Public art is often described as democratic, yet frequently funded by private interests. Who do you believe it ultimately serves today?
It is also funded by the taxpayer and public bodies. It is democratic when its commissioning process is participatory, something I am very passionate about, and free for all to access.
A public artwork’s interest varies depending on whether it is commissioned by an architect, real estate developer, government, community or another body.
In cities such as London, where audiences encounter art without choosing to, what defines a work that truly resonates at that scale?
Again, it depends so much on the context and the approach.
There is a fine line between meaningful integration and surface-level branding. How do you ensure collaborations with developers or global brands retain cultural depth?
By retaining the artistic vision of the artist, conceptually and technically.
MTArt represents a focused roster of artists. What qualities do you look for beyond talent when deciding who to support?
We have hundreds of talents on our books and look to build one of the most diverse portfolios in the art world, specifically to match all the cultural and professional contexts we are lucky to work in.
Many of your projects engage with visibility and representation. How do you approach these themes in a way that feels embedded rather than imposed?
The best answer is the paper I just published with UCL on the topic, Harnessing the Visual Public Realm for Community Prosperity.
As cities become increasingly commercialised, do you think public art still has the capacity to challenge, or is it becoming part of the environments it once disrupted?
It must, and as you know that is the whole theory of my book. Our shared spaces must remain civic.
What are you currently developing through MTArt, and are there any upcoming projects or international directions you are particularly focused on?
We just launched seven public art projects this month, including the very first land art in a rugby stadium to celebrate women’s sports. It is our best year to date and we have such a strong team on board.
Through MTArt Agency, Tanguy has built a structure that argues for the artist as a central cultural figure, one whose work can operate across public space, commercial partnership and civic imagination without being reduced by any of them. The agency’s model reflects a changing art world, in which visibility, context and representation are increasingly inseparable from artistic practice itself.
What emerges from Tanguy’s work is a broader proposition: that the visual world is not neutral. The images, symbols and artworks that surround us shape how we think, move and belong. If cities are becoming more saturated with commercial messages, then public art becomes more urgent, not less. It offers a way of reasserting shared space as cultural space, and of placing artists at the heart of how that space is imagined.
