By Alexandra Bregman,Contributor

Copyright forbes

Hilde in Zurich, 2022
Courtesy of Hilde Lynn Helphenstein

June 2025, Hilde Lynn Helphenstein announced she was done. Her beloved, sharp-edged Instagram account, Jerry Gogosian, was to be discontinued. 150,000 devoted art world followers and seven years of satire were apparently coming to an end.

“I have so loved and enjoyed being Jerry, but it is time to let it go,” Helphenstein wrote, republished by ARTnews.

But the former Hooters Girl from Florida who says some of the best years of her life were in Siberia never needed a roadmap. Rather, she has mastered the art of constantly reinventing herself.

To understand why and how Hilde became Jerry, one must recognize how hard she has fought to make her name.

Hilde, a Norwegian American Florida native, initially trained as an artist. She studied in San Francisco, moving to Los Angeles to work on an Andy Warhol/Richard Pettibone show. Warhol held a particular fascination for her in his study of art market and business ideology. In her own words, she was “seduced by the incredible wormhole” that is the art world, and this interest initially developed into founding her own gallery, eponymously named HILDE.

Hilde as an upstart gallerist, attending a New York art fair in 2014
Courtesy of Hilde Lynn Helphenstein

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Many Negronis and juicy conversations later, HILDE had two spaces in Oakland and LA. Like any good gallerist, Hilde the human straddled the line between the emergent and the excessive, catering both to the free-spirited soul of the artist and the moneyed, shrewd collector. But as a young female business owner, Hilde faced misogyny head-on. Men would walk into her gallery and ask for her boss…then use business meetings as chances for romantic dinner dates.

“This dynamic undermines my education and all the hard work I’ve put into my gallery, my artists, and my career,” she told Artnet firmly in 2017. “I am disappointed that so many women are afraid to voice their experiences for fear of repercussions. I won’t deal with misogyny. There is no place for it in the art world, there’s no place for it anywhere.”

Hilde at HILDE in 2015
Courtesy of Hilde Lynn Helphenstein

Then, in 2018, Hilde “nearly died from a tick bite,” when she contracted an infection from the Rickettisa parasite, which multiplied so intensely that she was in the ICU for more than two weeks and bedridden for eight months. She was forced to close her gallery. HILDE was over.

“I assumed my life and career were finished,” she admitted.

But she was not quite done.

“That collapse became a hinge,” she explained, “During recovery, I launched Jerry Gogosian on Instagram, and an entirely new universe opened—one I could never have imagined.”

HILDE was closed, but in its place was a potent alter-ego, a composite caricature of Jerry Gogosian defined by the male-dominated world with which she was so deeply familiar: Jerry Saltz, seasoned art critic for New York Magazine, and Larry Gagosian, perhaps the most famous art world titan, whose network of galleries around the world is a case study in the multimillionaire counterculture which makes the art market so fascinating.

Like many of her now-established female colleagues, including myself, Hilde did intern at one of Larry Gagosian’s outposts. It was a Warholian place, where money talked. For young art market aficionados, it was a place where the good and the bad were revealed behind iron-clad NDAs.

Enter the power of the meme.

Hilde with her beloved Persian cats at her former Connecticut home
Courtesy of Hilde Lynn Helphenstein

“I was very early to consuming meme content privately between myself and the friendly co-hort insomniac creatives…,” she reflected. “There wasn’t a name for it yet, and they were primarily still images and text. It was incredibly juvenile as most of the content was first being produced by teenage boys on message boards.

“One day, someone sent me a meme, and it dawned on me that this juvenile, absurdist, and often nihilistic humor perfectly mirrored the art world with just a few word or idea swaps…I made that first image with text on it, and I was addicted to it. From that day on, all I did was attempt to gamify Instagram.”

Within four weeks, she had 18,000 followers. Over the subsequent years of daily churn, the account grew by over 3000 people a week. Even in 2025, Jerry Gogosian gained 20,000 followers.

“I was stunned,” Hilde said. “I often remind people: 150,000 followers may not seem like a massive number by social media standards, but in the art world, it’s practically everyone. Artists, dealers, advisors, curators, collectors—they’re all there. And beyond that, the circle widens: fashion icons, billionaires, actors.”

But at first, Jerry Gogosian was completely anonymous. Hailed as a genius, influential industry insider and searched by “Jerry Gogosian father” on Google, even a friend passed along consensus that said Hilde “could never be” Jerry.

She just laughed. Having worked in so many roles and befriended the artists at bars, she had the keys to the kingdom.

“Much like in Downton Abbey, the help often know more than the castle owners,” she said, “…and in our world, gossip is practically currency. The material was already there—the art world writes the jokes, I just happened to be paying attention.”

Many knew who she was before it was public, but when Artnet alluded to her identity in April 2019, she was out of the art gossip closet.

Her anonymity was lost. But she was not quite done.

“A friend gave me a choice: disappear from the art world entirely or step into the light and own it,” she recalled. “I chose to own it. That decision transformed everything…because people recognized that I was telling the truth.”

The cache of secrecy was replaced by relatability, revealing the same authenticity and acumen that endeared Hilde to both artists and collectors when she was an up and coming gallerist. The businesswoman and gallerist were now one in the same.

Hilde deftly obtained an Executive MBA from NYU and set out to shape her personal brand as effectively as possible. The gamification she applied to Instagram and the business savvy she used at HILDE combined into a social media powerhouse.

She curated a show at Sotheby’s called “Jerry Gogosian’s Suggested Followers,” in September 2022, flew to Monte Carlo to speak on a panel called, “The future of the Art Market,” with Simon de Pury and Kenny Schachter in July 2024 for Monaco Art Week, and cultivated an “Art Smack” podcast that is still churning out interviews today.
Sothebys.comMeme-Maker Jerry Gogosian’s Exhibition Is No Joke
She also used her voice for justice, alleging harassment against Gagosian Gallery director Sam Orlovsky. Larry Gagosian responded directly in the media to the Jerry Gogosian call-out by condemning misbehavior, and Orlovsky was terminated in November 2020.
ARTnews.comGagosian Gallery Director Sam Orlofsky Terminated Amid Misconduct Investigation
But Hilde described the art world as a “tiny, dysfunctional family,” and with its microcosm came judgement.

Simply put, “visibility brings criticism”.

As she became better-known, she walked ever more carefully.

“The margin for error narrowed, and the risk of being misinterpreted, or canceled overnight, grew immense,” Hilde recognized. “In many ways, that shift took some of the joy out of comedy.”

But she was not quite done.

Hilde speaking in London, 2023
Courtesy of Hilde Lynn Helphenstein

“I chose to pivot,” she explained, leveraging business-savvy lingo. “I reshaped the account into something less humor-driven and more rooted in dialogue, teaching, and community-building.”

Globetrotting, networking, studying, and constantly posting proved grueling, however, especially with her personal life caught in the fray.

“My days were scheduled down to 15-minute increments,” Hilde recalled. “My executive assistant essentially ran my life—I used to joke that she was actually my boss. But the truth was, I had lost my autonomy.”

Because the brand was the self, she became someone else’s case study.

“I had a media coach retraining how I spoke, a stylist dictating what I wore, a trainer keeping me in shape. Analysts and strategists constantly dissected what I was doing wrong and how to improve…At the time, my business partner counted 16 separate project flows on my plate. Sixteen. I was drowning.”

Hilde in Seoul, 2024
Courtesy of Hilde Lynn Helphenstein

In her own words, she cracked. Her relationship with her fiancé ended abruptly, and life was moving just too fast. Transparent as she is, Hilde shared that she attempted suicide three separate times.

But she was, as ever, not quite done.

Hilde prioritized her mental and physical health. She parodies her love of tennis and pilates on her page, calling it a “Basel Body” for the beloved art fairs in Switzerland and Miami Beach. In reality, she is healing. She is a survivor. Perhaps, in her commentary about the market, she is speaking as much about art as herself.

A childhood manifestation, 1991
Courtesy of Hilde Lynn Helphenstein

“As difficult as it is to accept, no one is coming to rescue the art world financially,” the entrepreneur said boldly. “It’s up to us to imagine what comes next—and to build the structures that will keep us afloat.”

And by peering behind the curtain, Hilde revealed the nature of the curtain itself.

“The art world is a sleight of hand, a glittering illusion. To the untrained eye it appears absurd—Why the fuss? Why the staggering prices? A child could make this. What is unseen, what slips beneath casual perception, is the vast machinery that sustains this fragile, rarefied ecosystem. It runs on the labor of some of the most relentless, devoted, and astonishingly underpaid people alive. Yes, money is a lure—but just as often, love and obsession are the true currency.”

She continued:

“Within this strange Marvel universe of characters, the stage is crowded with hierarchy, with classism masquerading as taste…I stand with the underdogs. As far as I am concerned, the art world is meant for the weirdos, the eccentric, and the daring.”

In parallel to Hilde’s knack for people is, of course, her love of art. The way she can distill a situation into a joke, or a person into their information regardless of status, so too can she look at a painting and determine its cultural and artistic value to her.

“There’s almost never a moment when art isn’t on my mind…” she expounded passionately. And now, in her own words, she has gone from “participating” to “shaping”.

Next up on Hilde’s docket may just well be an unscripted television series, currently in development. She connected with the producer through one of her followers.

“Infuriating and miraculous,” Hilde is still unstoppable, thrilled by possibilities.

But as much as Hilde has reshaped herself time and time again, it is the process itself that is the greatest teacher. From cocktails to sobriety, a tickbite to a breakup, life keeps throwing her opportunities to learn how to find new solutions. This time around, it is tennis and pilates, and hanging out with her cats and her parents in Miami. Because behind that glittering, glamorous curtain was a desire to feel something the art world could never provide: “ordinary”.

Hilde in Yekaterinburg, Russia, 1994
Courtesy of Hilde Lynn Helphenstein

“What I’ve learned is that healing isn’t something you can command,” Hilde concluded. “You can’t just tell yourself “heal” and suddenly feel whole again. It takes time, and you only arrive when you’re ready.”

And don’t worry – She is not quite done.

“About three months ago, I began to feel it again—that glitter in my mind, that subtle tickle of inspiration whispering that it’s time to begin anew,” she said.

“She’s on her way back.”

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