Sunlight spills through the windows at Dante Beverly Hills, catching the copper edges of martini shakers as if on cue. The place hums with midweek quiet luxury: linen blazers, hushed dealmaking, and the scent of citrus oil rising from freshly zested peels. Amid the low murmur of conversation, Arushi Kapoor sits poised.

Most people, she explains, walk into meetings with the ultra-wealthy unprepared, armed with charm but no data. “They show up with a pretty face and a pretty smile,” she says. “They’re not going to listen to you and not going to respect you.”

At 29, Kapoor speaks with the unflappable confidence of someone twice her age, a voice tempered by years of sitting across from billionaires who rarely hear the word “No.”

Under her Agency Art House banner, she’s assembled a team of 40 carefully vetted art advisors. Her star-studded client list includes Grammy winners, NBA legends, Silicon Valley founders, and finance titans. In a field notorious for opacity, Kapoor has built a business on radical transparency.

“The old art world runs on opacity and exclusion,” she says. “We’re building something different. An ecosystem of access.”

Kapoor treats Warhols like currency, discusses Basquiats like stock positions, and tells her clients exactly what she’s making on every deal. In a market fueled by whispers and hidden commissions, she shows up with PDFs, presentations, and people on standby to pull numbers in real time.

“All of my ultra high net worth clients love numbers,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what industry they’re in.”

“All of my ultra high net worth clients love numbers. It doesn’t matter what industry they’re in.”
ARUSHI KAPOOR

Artistic Upbringing

Raised between New Delhi and London, Kapoor grew up between two worlds, in a family that measured ambition in enterprises. Her grandfather, D.K. Jain, pioneered writing instruments across Southeast Asia, running factories that employed more than three thousand workers. Her mother opened one of India’s first galleries dedicated to contemporary South Asian artists, many of whom would later be recognized as masters.

“I come from a family where everyone is an entrepreneur,” she says. “Our dinner conversations were about building things that help people. How do you make a difference while running a successful business?”

The answer, for her, began with art.

Each year, her parents took her to Art Basel, handing her a small budget and a simple directive: buy something you love. “It taught me value and taste,” she says. “Age doesn’t become a factor if you can portray yourself as a serious person.”

At sixteen, she wrote Talking Art, a book that examined why Indian painters working alongside Pollock and Rothko were still undervalued globally. It became a course text for contemporary Indian art, but for Kapoor, it was more than academic.

“A lot of Southeast Asian artists don’t clearly articulate what they’re wanting to say,” she explains. “I could be an instrument between both of them.”

From her grandmother, she learned the importance of clearing space and letting go of what doesn’t serve you.

“She taught me to wash my hands with salt to remove bad energy,” Kapoor says. “It’s something I still do. You cleanse, reset, and move on.”

The art world she entered was designed to keep people out. Its power brokers were aging titans, the same names controlling access since the 1970s. “They’ve outlived their competition,” Kapoor says. “They have no interest in democratizing their industry.”

Her break came not through pedigree but proximity. While studying at USC’s Marshall School of Business, she found herself in the after-hours ecosystem of LA’s new wealth: tech founders, hedge funders, newly minted millionaires.

“I was in the party circle,” she says with a grin. “These people were twenty-three years older than me, exiting these huge companies, and they were interested in what I had to say.”

They had new money and empty houses. Kapoor filled them with the same precision her clients brought to their portfolios. “When you go through me, you’re leveraging my relationships so you don’t have to buy fifty things you don’t want to get the one piece you do,” she explains. “You get exactly what you want.”

“When you go through me, you’re leveraging my relationships so you don’t have to buy 50 things you don’t want to get the one piece you do.”
ARUSHI KAPOOR

Mystique as leverage no longer worked on her collectors. They weren’t looking for gatekeepers. They wanted clarity. Kapoor understood both sides, the emotion that drives artists and the logic that moves investors. She spoke both languages fluently.

While advising billionaires on blue-chip acquisitions, she opened her own gallery in Echo Park. For five years, she learned the business from the other side, from the the fragility of emerging artists to the chaos of celebrity collectors. “It was the biggest educating experience I’ve ever had,” she says. “I learned how to deal with people.”

NBA players, actors, and influencers all came through her doors. Some paid late, some not at all. Many left with art that doubled in value within a year. “It taught me empathy,” she says. “And patience.”

By the time she closed the gallery to focus on advisory work, she’d realized her strength wasn’t in the exhibition space. It was in the transaction, in bridging passion and capital.

Arushi Kapoor & Mauricio Umansky. Credit: Mara Friedman

The Agency Art House

In November 2024, Kapoor partnered with luxury real estate magnate Mauricio Umansky to launch The Agency Art House, extending The Agency’s global brand into fine art. Within weeks, over three hundred advisors applied. She chose forty, each personally vetted and trained in her practice.

“The model is simple,” she says. “While traditional advisors hide behind mystique, we show up like CFOs with art history degrees.”

The venture transforms luxury real estate into live-in galleries. “In the last two years, the emerging side of the art world has struggled,” she says. “Galleries have closed, artists haven’t been paid. We wanted to create a new sales channel that helps them make money.”

She believes that pairing multimillion-dollar homes with curated installations from rising artists can create a new market that gives emerging talent real visibility.

“Most staging companies try to get artworks at the cheapest possible price,” she explains. “We’re genuinely trying to help emerging artists make money.”

The first two homes — one listed at $18 million, another at $28 million — will open as invitation-only viewings this fall. Kapoor describes them less as houses than as “luxury pop-up galleries.” Each curation is chosen to complement the architecture while exposing collectors to new voices.

“These are people who can afford to buy art but don’t yet know how,” she says. “This brings it to them.”

It’s an elegant feedback loop: artists gain visibility, buyers gain access, Kapoor gains trust. “People don’t want to hire ten different consultants,” she says. “They want to buy the house with everything in it — and that includes the art.”

“I’m an art advisor, therapist, travel planner, life planner, curator of life, and stockbroker all in one.”
ARUSHI KAPOOR

Her clients often demand more than market analysis. They come to her with breakups and house purchases, strategic pivots and existential questions.

“I’m an art advisor, therapist, travel planner, life planner, curator of life, and stockbroker all in one,” she laughs. “Art is just the surface of what they’re really trying to express.”

For her, art advisory is about uncovering the stories driving collectors’ instincts.

“If someone tells me they want a Warhol, I don’t just find a Warhol,” she says. “I find out why. Maybe their mother loved pop art. Maybe they’re seeking permanence in a world that feels transient. My job is to connect that emotion to an asset that will hold meaning and value.”

The Digital Divide

Kapoor was an early NFT collector, owning Bored Apes and CryptoPunks before the boom went bust. “I love collecting — art, clothes, jewelry, real estate,” she says. “When NFTs came out, it was like online shopping meets art. Of course I was hooked.”

Then her Coinbase wallet was hacked. “I lost a lot of Bitcoin,” she says plainly. “There was no recovery process. That’s when I cashed out.”

The experience left her skeptical of blockchain’s infrastructure, but not its potential. “People in the crypto world still want physical validation,” she observes. “You might have a billion in your wallet, but when someone visits your house, they’re looking at what’s on your walls.”

She sees herself as a conduit between those realities. “The people who made money in crypto are more open to buying traditional art,” she says. “The traditional art world still doesn’t understand blockchain. They’re scared of it.”

“The people who made money in crypto are more open to buying traditional art. The traditional art world still doesn’t understand blockchain. They’re scared of it.”
ARUSHI KAPOOR

The exception, in her view, is Refik Anadol. “He’s taken something like brain scans or weather patterns and turned them into something aesthetically beautiful,” she says. “He’s done a phenomenal job of upholding his market as an asset class.”

For Kapoor, the debate about technology and creativity is already outdated. “AI isn’t replacing artists,” she says. “But if you’re not using AI as a tool, you will be replaced by those who do.” The conviction in her voice is sharp, almost pedagogical. “The art world said the same thing during the dot-com boom. Everyone was scared, and now we Google everything.”

She laughs, the pragmatism returning. “Art is an irreplaceable part of culture. No machine can duplicate that. But you’d be foolish not to use every tool at your disposal to make it stronger.”

Staging a New Market

To Kapoor, the art market isn’t a monolith. It’s three markets moving at different speeds.

“At the top — the ten, twenty, thirty million dollar range — nothing changes,” she says. “Those buyers always have money. The market doesn’t affect their decisions, just their mood.”

Between $500,000 and $5 million, business remains strong. Below $500,000 — the realm of emerging artists and first-time collectors — is where the pressure shows. “The people buying under $500,000 are the ones affected by egg prices,” Kapoor says, half-smiling. “They’re actually budgeting.”

Kapoor sees an opportunity in the volatility. “There’s less competition right now for A++ works,” she explains. “And those works, in a high market, end up giving you the best possible return.”

Her clients, she says, are shopping aggressively in this environment. Buy when others hesitate. Acquire when attention drifts. “It’s the same principle they use in every other asset class,” she says. “Fear is a discount.”

“Being a proud Southeast Asian woman is at the very core of everything I do.”
ARUSHI KAPOOR

For all her global polish, Kapoor’s sense of purpose remains anchored in lineage. Seventy percent of her personal collection is Southeast Asian art, another ten percent focused on minority artists. The rest spans blue-chip names and emerging discoveries. “Being a proud Southeast Asian woman is at the very core of everything I do,” she says.

In addition to her roles with the UNICEF Next Gen Board, the Young Collectors Board at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and LACMA’s Future Arts Collective, her position on Tate Modern’s South Asian Acquisitions Committee gives her a seat in shaping institutional history.

“Indian art auctions are showing double-digit growth while others are stagnant,” she notes. “M.F. Husain is breaking records, and that’s personal for me. I grew up around him.”

She pauses. “He used to babysit me in London,” she adds, smiling. “For me, it’s not just business. It’s identity.”

Her grandfather’s ethos still guides her. “He always said, the only way to grow is if the people around you grow too,” she recalls. “If I do well, I want everyone with me to do well — my advisors, my artists, my clients. That’s the point.”

In Kapoor’s eyes, her success comes from collapsing the distance between the guarded rooms of the art world’s old establishment and the open spreadsheets of her new order.

“The art world wanted you to feel like art is untouchable,” she says. “That if you invest in it, you can’t easily take your money out.” She shakes her head. “That’s not true. Art is aesthetics and passion, but equally it’s assets. It’s real estate on a wall.”

She’s under no illusion about the generational divide. The titans who’ve controlled the market for decades — Larry Gagosian, Jeffrey Deitch — are in their sixties, seventies, eighties. Their collectors are aging alongside them. But Kapoor isn’t trying to unseat them.

“I’m not competing with the sharks,” she says, smiling. “I’m cool with the sharks.”

“The people I work with will be on ArtNet’s Top 100 list in a decade.”
ARUSHI KAPOOR

She’s building for a different table entirely. Her clients are the founders still in their thirties and forties, the crypto millionaires pivoting into tangible assets, the next wave of collectors who will define taste in ten years.

“The people I work with will be on ArtNet’s Top 100 list in a decade,” she says.

Her phone buzzes on the table. Another client with a question and a wall waiting to be filled. She glances at it, then back up, unbothered by the interruption. It’s part of the rhythm now, the constant hum of a business built on being perpetually available.

“People think this work is about taste,” she says. “It’s not. It’s about trust. And trust comes from showing up… consistently, transparently, with numbers in hand.”