For more than 40 years, Nicole Klagsbrun has worked closely with leading artists and estates to organize exhibitions at the forefront of contemporary art. In partnership with Clarissa Dalrymple, Klagsbrun opened Cable Gallery in 1984, which became renowned for showing young artists across diverse backgrounds and disciplines. This included introducing the work of Ashley Bickerton, Christopher Wool, Barbara Ess, and Haim Steinbach.

In 1989, Klagsbrun opened Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery at 59 Greene Street in SoHo. The program continued to represent artists working in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, video, photography, installation, and assemblage. Klagsbrun organized Karen Kilimnik’s first exhibition in New York (1989), Candida Höfer’s first exhibition in the United States (1991), and Rashid Johnson’s first gallery exhibition (2008), among many others. In addition, Klagsbrun mounted exhibitions of artists whose practices had been under-recognized in the New York art world, such as Wallace Berman, Jay DeFeo, John Giorno, and Cameron.

In 2013, Klagsbrun closed her gallery and has remained active as the New York representative of the Cameron Parsons Estate. She has produced off-site exhibitions for Brie Ruais (2014), Lee Quinones (2016), and Jonathan Silver (2017). Originally from Belgium, Klagsbrun graduated from La Cambre School of Architecture and Visual Arts, Brussels, Belgium in 1979. She arrived in New York in 1980.