Mercedes ongoing content series The Avant/Garde Diaries this week profiles Jeffrey Deitch. For more than four decades now, Jeffrey Deitch has been a major player in the US art scene. The dealer, advisor, writer and exhibition organizer started his career in the New York of the 70s when the art community was still very small. During Art Miami Basel last December he took time out of his busy schedule to talk to us about what avant-garde can be these days. “One of the most interesting things about art today,” he says, “is the changing status of the avant-garde.