For Dealer Friedrich Petzel, a Successful Gallery Is About Precision, Not Expansion

One morning a couple weeks ago, the art dealer Friedrich Petzel was sitting in a backroom of his Upper East Side space—on the third floor of an elegant townhouse—and discussing his gallery’s future. His downstairs neighbor, the veteran dealer of American modernism Vivian Horan, had told him earlier this year that she was retiring, he said, and she asked him if he might be interested in taking over her space. “Absolutely it’s of interest to me because it’s the