MAY 11, 2018
How do you open an art gallery of your own in New York City, where real estate costs defy gravity, and focus on emerging artists of color who don’t yet fetch the kinds of prices necessary to cover commercial rent—while also selling to people who don’t think of themselves as buyers or collectors of art?
It was a question that vexed curator and writer Stephanie Baptist in the four years after she returned home to the US from the UK, where she had been working as the inaugural head of exhibitions and public programs for Tiwani Contemporary, a London gallery specializing in artists from Africa and its diaspora. Baptist thought back to her work as a graduate student at Goldsmiths, where she had been interested in transforming unused spaces—from abandoned parking lots to city blocks directly under elevated subway tracks—as platforms for arts and culture in underserved communities. [full story]