Summer in the art world is a relaxed affair — galleries close early, publications slow down, and tourist-filled museums tend to scare away the professionals. A lively annual tradition, however, is summer group show, which is often an opportunity for younger artists to get exposure and younger curators to get practice. Though the art industry is known to reward the experience that comes with age, summer is an opportunity for young upstarts to experiment, and perhaps make a lasting impression.

With this trend in mind, ARTINFO compiled a list of 30 influential art professionals who are 30 years of age or younger. They range in age from 21 to 30 and include patrons, critics, dealers, and curators. (We decided to exclude artists, who would make this an entirely different kind of list.)

Our selection — in no way exhaustive — aims to capture what interesting young art-inclined professionals are up to today. Some of them are already known worldwide, while others remain just under the radar. But by next summer, we wager, you’ll know them all.

Sheikha Al-Mayassa Bint Hamad Bin Khalifa Althani

Sheika Al-Mayassa — the emir’s daughter and chair of the Qatar Museums Authority — would make any list of influential art worlders, regardless of age. Named number one on Art + Auction’s annual power list in 2011, the 29-year-old art expert holds the purse strings for the world’s biggest buyer of high-value art. The emirate is reportedly behind purchases of big-ticket Rothkos and Warhols as well as tens of millions of dollars’ worth of art and antiques to stock three national museums in Doha — not to mention that rumored $250-million Cezanne.

Alia al-Senussi

The London-based Alia al-Senussi is an art-world jack-of-all-trades who turned to gallery work after what she characterized as "a disastrous summer” working at Goldman Sachs in London. The 29-year-old is an art writer, collector, promoter of non-profit arts education, and the Middle Eastern VIP-relations manager for Art Basel. On top of that, she's also a member of the exiled Libyan royal family.

Maria Baibakova

The Russian heiress rushed headlong into the art world after graduating from Barnard College with a degree in art history. In 2008, she opened Baibakov Art Projects in a former chocolate factory in Moscow (presumably with the some of the nickel fortune she stands to inherit). The organization seeks to promote Western contemporary art in Russia and Russian contemporary artists abroad, and has mounted exhibitions of artists like Luc Tuymans and Kelley Walker. After graduating from Harvard Business School, Baibakova plans to open a library dedicated to contemporary art in her home country.

Hannah Barry

Boundaries don’t seem to be a problem for British dealer Barry, 29, who opened her eponymous gallery in Peckham, an area better known for its high crime rates than its cultural capital. Later that year, Barry brought 20 artists to the 2008 Venice Biennale and mounted an exhibition cheekily dubbed the Peckham Pavilion. (Quite a way to introduce your program to the world!) Today, her gallery — which represents young artists like James Balmforth and Molly Smyth — remains a beacon in the south London neighborhood, which is now home to numerous other galleries, cafes, and boutiques.

Jonathan Batiste

Having mastered the music world at a young age — he released two albums by age 17 and then went on to Juilliard — the 25-year-old jazz pianist is now focusing on making his name in the museum community. Batiste has become one of the biggest draws at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, where he serves as artistic director. He and his team have been charged with preparing the institution for its impending move to a new 10,000-square-foot home across the street from the Apollo Theater.

Will Brand

This 23-year-old from a military family had completed two dissertations and acquired a master's degree in art history mere months after he was old enough to drink. Now, when he's not dueling with media theorists twice his age as editor-in-chief of the art blog Art Fag City, Will is writing buzzed-about reviews for the site. Of Gagosian’s marathon "Spot Painting" exhibition of Damien Hirst, the famously sharp-tongued Brand quipped: "These spots reflect nothing about how we live, see, or think, they’re just some weird meme for the impossibly rich that nobody knows how to stop."

Elisa Carmichael

In addition to co-founding Culver City's Carmichael Gallery with her husband Seth — the couple is in the midst of relocating from Los Angeles to New York — 26-year-old Elisa Carmichael is the founder and editor-in-chief of TASJ Magazine, a beautiful large-format publication covering the art world. ARTINFO recently spotted her at a dinner party during Art Basel celebrating the launch of Zaha Hadid's new book.

Alexandra Chemla

The 25-year-old former Gavin Brown’s Enterprise staffer — and scion of ALTOUR founder and megacollector Alexandre Chemla — launched her digital inventory manager ArtBinder in 2010. Since then, the service, which is a digital version of the physical binders dealers have lugged to art fairs for years, has converted over 150 dealers, including David Zwirner, L&M, and Pace. This month, Chemla and her staff of five rolled out a new version of the software, dubbed ArtBinder 2.0, with additional bells and whistles.

Carter Cleveland

The 25-year-old, Princeton-educated computer engineer has risen quickly to the upper echelons of the art world as the founder and CEO for the site Art.sy. (He’s the one behind “The Art Genome Project,” that algorithm the site famously uses to connect users with new artists based on artwork they already know and like.) In addition to spearheading the well-funded project, Cleveland spends some of his time being “personally invested” in the success of his interns.

Kyle DeWoody

In addition to being one of the more well-connected individuals on this list (her parents are art world royals Beth Rudin and James DeWoody), 27-year-old Kyle has made a name for herself through her company Grey Area. Commissioning artists like Aurel Schmidt and the Bruce High Quality Foundation to make objects that blur the line between art and design, Grey Area has earned a reputation for offering appealing design objects at informal pop-up exhibitions around the world.

Victoria and David Farhi

Victoria and David Farhi, both under 25, are probably the youngest gallerists in Chelsea. But then, as offspring of New Realist sculptor Jean-Claude Farhi, they began their arts education much earlier than most. After David exchanged his diamond trade in Antwerp for an art collection, the two opened Vicky David Gallery late last year on 23rd Street. They represent a number of post-war French artists, along with a few contemporary names.

Adam Fields

As the director of artist and institutional development at Artspace, a Web platform for selling editioned prints, Fields is the company’s logistics guru. In addition to overseeing the Web site’s relationships with individual artists, galleries, and museums, he’s also implemented its entire framing and printing operation. The 27-year-old is also a founding member of the Artadia Junior Council, a non-profit networking group dedicated to supporting artists in need.

Bridget Finn

Since moving to New York from her hometown of Detroit, 29-year-old Bridget Finn has worked at Anton Kern Gallery, co-founded (with four female cohorts) the top-notch Brooklyn gallery Cleopatra's, and, for the past two years, served as special programs manager at Independent Curators International, the indispensable curatorial and art publishing non-profit.

Sara Friedlander

Friedlander, 28, landed at Christie's just after graduating from the Sotheby's Institute of Art, and quickly began to climb the corporate ladder from cataloguing works in a warehouse to a designated specialist. She worked to brand a mid-season contemporary sale, Christie's First Open, as an accessible entry-point for new collectors, and soon ascended to the title of vice president, post-war and contemporary art. She now oversees the higher-profile contemporary day sale in New York.

Alex Gartenfeld

At 25, this independent curator has a longer resume than many people twice his age. Gartenfeld is the online editor of Art in America and Interview magazines and, until recently, the co-founder of West Street Gallery, an experimental project space in his apartment that gave artists like Zak Kitnick, Julia Rommel, and Eric Paglon their start. Coming up, he’s curating a summer show for OHWOW gallery in L.A. as well as an exhibition that will take over Team Gallery’s two locations in SoHo this winter.

Aditya Julka

The 30-year-old Julka already had extensive experience in engineering and business when he and his friend Alexander Gilkes created their art e-commerce platform Paddle8. This year, the company rolled out partnerships with art fairs like NADA and the Armory Show that seek to give collectors an early peek at galleries’ booths. Julka was recently made a board member of the Performa biennial and traveled with founder Roselee Goldberg to the India Art Fair this past winter.

Julia Kaganskiy

As editor of the Vice and Intel-supported global arts and technology initiative the Creators Project and founder of the #ArtsTech New York-based Meetup group (now 2,500 members strong), the 26-year-old Kaganskiy is a major force in bringing together the visual art and creative technology communities. Aside from producing recent new media festivals in New York, San Francisco, and Beijing, she is also collaborating with Eyebeam to host a series of panels and lectures.

Ruba Katrib

You may not know her name, but you’ve probably seen her shows. At 26, Katrib began working at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami, where she curated trend-setting solo presentations of Cory Arcangel and Claire Fontaine. This year, the 30-year-old curator moved to Long Island City, where she’s working as curator at SculptureCenter. You can catch her this summer at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies, her alma mater, where she is organizing a conference on curatorial practice.

Emma Katz and Risa Shoup

Emma Katz and Risa Shoup (who is also an independent curator and the Associate Director at Brooklyn's Invisible Dog Art Center), both 29, launched Recession Art's new Lower East Side gallery space in January, where they program both monthly exhibitions and a store full of appropriately recession-priced art. Now, Katz and Shoup's influence is spreading beyond Manhattan: They've developed Recession Art shows in Brooklyn, Wassaic (that's in upstate New York), and Chicago.

Alison Klayman

Fresh out of Brown University, aspiring journalist Alison Klayman moved to China on a whim, and happened to meet dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. She followed Ai for two years, capturing some of the biggest moments in his life and career. What began as a short grew into a feature film, “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” which hits theaters July 27. Though the film won’t be released in China, Klayman, 27, told ARTINFO the authorities were asking Ai about her work well before the film was even finished. Now that’s influence.

Max Levai

The 24-year-old son of Marlborough gallery patriarch Pierre Levai has initiated an overhaul of the gallery’s Chelsea program aimed at attracting a younger audience. Since officially joining the family business last year, the junior Levai has signed a cadre of youthful artists including Rashaad Newsome, Robert Lazzarini, Jonah Freeman, and Justin Lowe. In March, he made a statement by giving Marlborough Chelsea its own booth at Pier 94, separate that of Marlborough New York at Pier 92.

Alex Logsdail

The 27-year-old associate director at Lisson Gallery certainly has pedigree: his father, Nicholas Logsdail, founded the London-based gallery in 1967. (Also, Roald Dahl is his great-uncle — but we digress.) Logsdail got his start as an intern for Artforum before taking on a job at Team Gallery in New York. In 2009, he returned to the family business in London, and has reportedly been instrumental in growing the gallery’s stable and managing its presence at art fairs ever since. Rumor has it he’s the one who convinced performance art queen Marina Abramovic to join the roster.

Douglas Murphy

When it comes to multitasking, Douglas Murphy may have a work schedule rivaling that of James Franco. The 29-year-old Royal College of Art graduate is an architecture correspondent for Icon Magazine, a visiting professor at institutions like the Glasgow School of Art, a freelance architect, and a composer whose pieces have been featured at venues like SFMoMA. Oh, and somehow he finds the time to keep a personal architecture blog, named by the Guardian as one of the top five in the field in 2009.

Mike Ovcharenko

At 21, Mike Ovcharenko is the youngest art dealer in Russia. He opened his own gallery, Art Berloga, before he turned 18, but closed its doors in 2009 to oversee the London branch of his father Vladimir’s established gallery Regina, which received positive reviews in Frieze magazine and the Guardian. Today Ovcharenko oversees the gallery’s presence at art fairs and can be spotted at Frieze London, Art Basel, and the Armory Show. “If you act professionally, at a proper level, they don’t care about your age,” he has said of his clients.

Stephanie Roach

The 29-year-old curator is at the helm of the FLAG Art Foundation, a rotating project space devoted to engaging, unpretentious displays of contemporary art. Roach met FLAG’s backer, financier and collector Glenn Fuhrman, when both were on the board of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. (Roach was a student board member while still on college.) Teaming up years later to launch FLAG, the duo has made the ninth-floor Chelsea space a must-see contemporary art venue. Best known for its themed exhibitions, FLAG once invited Shaquille O’Neal to curate a show called “Size Does Matter.”

Jessica Silverman

Jessica Silverman is a one-woman master class in how to parlay success as a big fish in a small pond into something even bigger. After a curatorial residency at Frankfurter Kunstverein, where she developed public programs and worked with the Martha Rosler Roaming Library, Silverman struck out on her own and opened a gallery in San Francisco in 2007. Though not known as a gallery hub, the city proved to be a viable base from which Silverman, now 29, gained entry into Frieze and FIAC, among other elite art fairs. She’s currently showing Dashiell Manley and has placed gallery artists like Hugh Scott-Douglas and Matt Lipps in a museum collections such as the Hammer, SFMoMA, and Dallas Museum of Art.

Jamie Sterns

The 30-year-old curator made her name at PPOW, where she worked for five year and organized exhibitions including “History Keeps Me Awake at Night: A Genealogy of David Wojnarowicz.” In December, she became the director of envoy enterprises, while also still working as a freelance curator and consultant. (She’s putting together an exhibition for BRIC Rotunda Gallery in September.) In her spare time — yes, we’re surprised she has any, too — she and redoubable writer Andrew Russeth (the editor of the Observer's Gallerist arts Web site and, incidentally, another one of our favorite art worlders under 30!) helm a new project space called New York City. You can follow her exploits through her arts and culture blog YaYaYa.

CK Swett

The 30-year-old leads a double life. As the Times explained in a recent profile, by day, he is a proposal writer for Phillips de Pury, persuading collectors to part with their beloved Shermans and Murakamis; by night, he is one of New York’s most sought-after charity auctioneers, prodding the wealthy to part with their money for the good of the cause. Recently, he led a record haul for Art Fag City’s Rob Pruitt Awards and Auction.

Leo Xu

The 29-year-old Shanghai-based curator, writer, and dealer left his post as associate director at James Cohan Gallery’s Chinese space to launch his own eponymous program last year. While at James Cohan, Leo organized some of the gallery’s most talked-about exhibitions, including “The Tell-Tale Heart,” on storytelling in Asian new media art, and “Alex: A Tribute to Alexander McQueen,” which is among the space’s most-visited exhibitions. His new venture, Leo Xu Projects, is devoted to young Chinese artists like Chen Wei and Li Qing.

Alex Zachary

Most enterprising young dealers open their first gallery in Brooklyn, or maybe the Lower East Side. Not Alex Zachary. When the 29-year-old art dealer left Gavin Brown’s enterprise to open his own space, he opted for an oddly configured duplex on the buttoned-up Upper East Side. Alex Zachary Peter Curie, as the gallery is called, now mounts exhibitions by edgy, critically adored contemporary artists like Ken Okiishi and Lutz Bacher.