From Gallery Walls to Capitol Halls: Esther Kim Varet's Audacious Leap

When Esther Kim Varet opened her first gallery at 24 in her living room, she had exactly four sentences in her business plan. Her father told her she'd fail. Twenty years later, she's built Various Small Fires into a powerhouse with locations across LA, Seoul, and Dallas—and now she's running for Congress.

If that trajectory sounds impossible, you haven't been paying attention to Varet's career.

The Accidental Art Dealer

Varet's entry into the art world reads like a fairy tale, if fairy tales involved fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence and strategic risk-taking. At 22, fresh out of Yale and in grad school at Columbia, she took an 80-year-old artist to Art Chicago and walked away with $60,000. "I was like, whoa, I think I might be able to do this," she recalls.

Her father's response to her gallery ambitions was characteristically blunt: "You speak English? Why can't you figure it out?"

So she did.

Building Something Meaningful

But Varet didn't just build a successful gallery—she built one with purpose. Various Small Fires, named after Ed Ruscha's 1964 self-published book, became her vehicle for rewriting art historical narratives that had long dismissed West Coast art as secondary to New York's cultural dominance.

"Everything has to be done with meaning," Varet explains. "Otherwise you run out of steam. You can't do the impossible, which is create something out of nothing, create a brand and an identity and a vibe out of nothing. It has to be driven by a higher calling."

That higher calling meant championing overlooked voices: women artists, immigrant experiences, environmental movements, and the foundational LA art scene that had been systematically undervalued by the East Coast establishment. It meant understanding that Los Angeles embodied postmodern narratives long before the art world caught up.

Her approach worked. Artists like Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bankston—legends who "never do that"—made brand new works specifically for her Seoul gallery opening because they recognized the work she was doing for Los Angeles.

The PhD She Almost Finished

Oh, and she was simultaneously working toward a PhD at Columbia. For twelve years. While pregnant. While running galleries. While going to art fairs with babies in tow.

Her dissertation—400 pages of it—uncovered a fascinating piece of art history: LACMA's 1960s Art and Technology Program that paired 80 major artists with corporations involved in the military-industrial complex during the Vietnam War. Richard Serra learned to work with massive steel at Kaiser Steel Corporation at age 23. James Turrell collaborated with NASA scientists, leading to his light and space work.

"It was like dispelling that they were anti-capitalists," Varet explains. "It was actually the most proto-capitalist."

The dissertation remains unfinished—she chose to ride the wave of LA's rising art market rather than miss the moment. "That's the choice you make as a mom, as a working mom."

When Knocking on Doors Changes Everything

Then came November 2024. Varet joined a friend's trip to knock on doors for Kamala Harris in Detroit. What she discovered shattered her assumptions about American voters.

"I was talking to Black women voting for Trump because of the pro-life issue. Lebanese Muslim girls in their 30s voting for Trump because they were convinced Biden enabled Israel to attack Lebanon. Orthodox Jews voting for Trump. People on two different sides of the world voting for the same president for different reasons."

She came home knowing: "We're going to lose so badly." And they did.

But instead of despair, Varet did what she's always done—she looked for solutions. The House was lost by just three seats out of 435.

"I was like, I'll go flip a seat. How hard can it be?"

She literally Googled "how to run for Congress."

The Fight Ahead

Varet found her race: a Biden district won by Trump by just two points, held by a Republican who raised $8 million to her Democratic challenger's $800,000. The numbers were there to win—she just needed to compete financially.

Now she's the number one targeted Democrat in the country by Republicans, who've written 15 articles attacking her in the last month alone. She's making them nervous.

"Fighters recognize fighters," she says, noting endorsements from firebrands like Jasmine Crockett. "We need more fighters in Congress that are able to talk about their life experiences and their values that are also under attack."

Those values—environmental protection, reproductive rights, free speech, support for artists—aren't talking points for Varet. She's built a business around them. She's lived them.

The Daughter of Refugees

Understanding Varet's urgency requires understanding her background. She's the daughter of North Korean refugees who arrived in America with $400, started a shiitake mushroom farm in Texas, went bankrupt by the time she was in kindergarten, and started over as janitors because they couldn't speak English.

"I'm not supposed to be here doing this, but I have to do it," Varet says. "I have a responsibility. I am now in a place where I'm not scared where most people are, and I have to speak up for the people that are scared."

As a mother of two, her audience is clear: "They're the ones that are gonna be with me on my deathbed. And as a mom, you do incredible, irrational things for your kids."

She couldn't look at them in five or ten years and say she did nothing when she could have done something.

What the Art World Knows

Here's what anyone who's worked in galleries knows: the art world works harder than almost any other industry. Those glamorous openings? They come after days of painting walls, building installations, shipping artwork, and all-night install sessions.

Varet knows how to properly spackle a box and regularly teaches people the skill. She's battle-worn from two decades of doing the impossible—building a gallery program that challenged entrenched power structures, opening international locations, championing overlooked artists, and creating meaningful cultural dialogue.

If politics needs people willing to do the hard work, to put in the hours, to challenge systems that desperately need challenging—Varet is exactly that person.

Leaning Into the Fight

"You kind of lean into the moment and into the fight," Varet reflects on her decision to pause her dissertation for the gallery, and now to potentially step back from the gallery for Congress. "Right now we are at that phase where so many electeds already believe we've already had our last free and fair election."

She's preparing for everything: legal challenges, "stop the steal" claims, federal intervention. She's not naive about what's coming.

But she's also not deterred.

"It's better to do the hard work than to face that kind of reality later on."

From a Venice Beach living room to potential halls of Congress, Esther Kim Varet has never done things the expected way. She's rewritten narratives, challenged gatekeepers, and built something meaningful from nothing—repeatedly.

Now she's taking those same skills to a broken political system that desperately needs people willing to fight.

The art world's loss might just be democracy's gain.

To learn more about Esther Kim Varet's campaign, visit her campaign website.