Is 19 the magic megagallery number? With a new Basel address and a second London space opening next year, Hauser & Wirth, run by husband and wife Iwan and Manuela, alongside Payot as president, will shortly equal Gagosian’s real estate. It is ‘a whole world you step into’, consultant Barbara Guggenheim told the Financial Times. She was not just talking about a global reach that spans from Hollywood to Hong Kong to Gstaad to New York, nor the 103 artists and artists’ estates the gallery promotes (veterans William Kentridge, Jeffrey Gibson and Nairy Baghramian joined the roster this year, as well as youngster George Rouy and Michaela Yearwood-Dan). The trio have also established themselves as lifestyle purveyors via their ‘art centres’ in Somerset and Menorca, and, above all, through Iwan and Manuela’s loss-leading Artfarm hospitality company, which owns restaurants, hotels, pubs and, not least, London’s Groucho Club, all adorned with the work of gallery artists. If, as one cynic put it, also to the FT, ‘galleries are event organisers for rich and lonely people’, then Hauser & Wirth definitely fills the void.