Welcome to Woldt Gallery

The Gallery was founded in London in March 2019 with a commitment to presenting modern and contemporary international artists, with a particular focus on textile and fibre art. In June 2022, the gallery expanded to Hamburg, further strengthening its cross-border engagement with diverse artistic practices and audiences.

From August 2025 

We will enter a new chapter by moving towards a project-based and research-oriented model. Collaborating with both established and emerging artists, as well as with partners from different disciplines, we will explore the evolving relationship between artistic autonomy and social responsibility.

This development reflects our response not only to the broader dynamics of contemporary society and cultural practices, but also to the changing conditions of the art world itself, where the balance between market forces, ideological debates, and artistic integrity is constantly renegotiated. Rather than adopting predefined positions, Woldt Gallery seeks to create a space of inquiry—one that acknowledges complexity, embraces multiple perspectives, and resists simplification.

While research and dialogue will form the core of our work, selected artworks may continue to be available for acquisition in close exchange with the artists, allowing our projects to remain in art market as natural part of our practice. Selected works from our projects may enter private or institutional collections, reflecting our belief that artistic research, critical inquiry, and collecting belong to the same cultural ecosystem.

Through this evolution, Woldt Gallery positions itself as a hybrid platform—where artistic practice, critical reflection, and social engagement intersect, extending the role of the gallery beyond exhibition-making into a space of research, dialogue, and shared discovery.

Prof. Dr. Isabella Woldt, – Gallery Director & Founder 

About Me and the Gallery

I hold a doctorate in Art History and a postgraduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Hamburg. Today, I serve as Professor and Chair for Art Theory and Artistic Practice with a focus on Ethics at MSH Medical School Hamburg. My career has always been guided by the conviction that art is inseparable from ethical und anthropological reflection: how we perceive, create, and engage with art also raises questions of responsibility, participation, and the spaces we share.

When I first founded the gallery, it followed the model of a conventional exhibition space. Over time, however, my academic and curatorial work shifted its direction. In 2018, while co-curating Metadata. How We Relate to Images at the Lethaby Gallery in London as part of the Warburg Institute's international project Bilderfahrzeuge, I experienced how profoundly art research and artistic practice can inform one another. My ongoing research—on Warburg's theory of image memory, on processes of creativity, and on textile and fiber art encompassing also questions from the cognitive psychology —has deepened this insight, while my focus on ethics has provided the framework to ask how art situates itself within society.

From this emerged the decision to transform the gallery into a project-based model. Instead of working primarily within a commercial system, we collaborate with artists and research partners to develop projects that engage materials, techniques, and the broader questions of art's social and ethical role. The focus on textile and fiber art reflects my growing interest in materiality as a carrier of meaning, while expanding into architecture and spatial concerns acknowledges that art always exists in and with space.

This evolution is rooted in a belief that galleries should be more than spaces of display. They can be laboratories of thought and practice, where ethics, artistic autonomy, and social responsibility converge. This is the foundation on which I continue to build the gallery's work.

For more information about the director and her activities please take a look at www.dr-woldt-art-consulting-research.com

Sarath De Silva,  – Strategic & Development 

Since August 2025 Sarath De Silva accompanies the work of the Woldt Gallery in questions of strategy, organization, and development. With his strong experience in leadership and business contexts, he leads the operational restructuring and marketing of the gallery's transition from a conventional exhibition model towards a project-based and research-oriented platform.

His contribution lies in strengthening structures, building connections, and providing guidance in organizational matters, so that the gallery can fully concentrate on its research, curatorial and artistic goals.

Photo 1: Isabella in the front of Alex Kuznetsov's painting "Mist" (2022), The Fear of the Fog, Exhibition ©i.woldt

Photo 2: Sarath in Fundation Maeght, France (2024) ©i.woldt