As of 2024, Gagosian employs 300 people at 19 exhibition spaces – including New York City, London, Paris, Basel, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong – designed by architects such as Caruso St John, Richard Gluckman, Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, and Annabelle Selldorf.

[3] Larry Gagosian opened his first gallery in Los Angeles in 1980,[1] showing the work of young contemporary artists such as Eric Fischl and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The business expanded from Los Angeles to New York: In 1989, a new, spacious gallery opened on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 980 Madison Avenue, with the inaugural exhibition "The Maps of Jasper Johns".

During its first two years, the Madison Avenue space, once used by Sotheby's and Parke-Bernet, presented work by Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and Jackson Pollock.

The uptown gallery on Madison Avenue maintained its commitment to historical exhibitions by showing monumental sculptures by Miró, Calder and Moore, as well as large-scale works by artists such as Richard Serra, Mark di Suvero, Barnett Newman, and Chris Burden.

The Beverly Hills gallery mounted exhibitions by Edward Ruscha, Nan Goldin, Frank Gehry, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince.

The large viewing space in Chelsea allowed Gagosian artists, such as Serra and Damien Hirst, to exhibit large-scale works with great flexibility.

In the spring of 2000, Gagosian became an international gallery with the London opening of a Caruso St John-designed space on Heddon Street, near Piccadilly.

A second London gallery, also designed by Caruso St John, on Britannia Street, opened in May 2004 with a paintings and sculpture show by Cy Twombly.

The fifth-floor gallery has showcased the works of Steven Parrino, Mark Grotjahn, Isa Genzken, Dan Colen, and Dash Snow, among others.

The Italian space is a refurbished former bank on Via Francesco Crispi, built in 1921 and redesigned by Rome-based architect Firouz Galdo in collaboration with Caruso St John.

[14] Later in 2010, Gagosian opened its first gallery in Switzerland, a 140-square-metre Art Deco space located off Rue du Rhône in Geneva's business district.

Gagosian and a consortium of other art dealers spent years finding buyers to prepay for Jeff Koons' giant Celebration sculptures.

[24] Between 2003 and 2008, a number of artists switched from well-known galleries to Gagosian, such as Anselm Reyle from Gavin Brown's Enterprise; John Currin from Andrea Rosen; Mike Kelley from Metro Pictures; Takashi Murakami from Marianne Boesky; and Richard Phillips from Friedrich Petzel.

[23] In 2003, the Internal Revenue Service sued Larry Gagosian and three of his associates, accusing them of evading $26.5 million in taxes, interest, and penalties on a 1990 sale of contemporary art.

[26][27] The IRS charged Gagosian and his partners for deliberately shifting assets out of a company they created, Contemporary Art Holding Corp., to avoid paying taxes.