This summer, three New York-based galleries have invited galleries from other locales to present their artists' works in these spaces, enabling exposure to a new audience independent of an art fair. Hear from gallery leadership as they discuss the genesis and reception of their collaborations, positing how future joint endeavors might grow.
About the speakers
Luis De Jesus is owner and director of Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, founded in 2007. He was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in Maryland and Washington, D.C. De Jesus attended Parsons School of Design, Yale Summer School of Music and Art, and Santa Reparata Graphic Union in Florence, Italy. Before relocating to California, he spent two decades (1983-2003) living in New York City, working with seminal artists, galleries and museums in the East Village, Soho, and Tribeca. During that same period he also organized, independently, several critically acclaimed exhibitions including “Toward Form” which featured artists Iza Genzken, Meg Webster, Rona Pondick, Louise Bourgeois and Louise Fishman. In 1991, De Jesus was awarded an NEA-funded curatorial internship at The New Museum of Contemporary Art which culminated in his first museum curatorial project—the exhibition “$PENT: Currency, Security and Art on Deposit”—showcasing the works of a number of emerging artists, among them Glenn Ligon, Gary Simmons, Moyra Davey, Devon Dikou, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Jessica Diamond, Donald Moffett, Julia Scher, and Carrie Mae Weems. Luis De Jesus currently serves on the board of the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation. The gallery is a member of New Art Dealers Alliance (since 2010) and the Gallery Association of Los Angeles (since 2021).
Welancora Gallery was founded by Ivy N. Jones. The gallery is located in a 19th century brownstone in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
In 2014, the gallery mission and programming were updated to reflect a greater focus on contemporary art and criticism. The broader mission of the gallery is to represent artists from around the world by placing their work with individual collectors and institutions; publishing scholarly catalogues and monographs; and, participating in art fairs. From time to time, guest curators and writers of color are invited to mount exhibitions and contribute essays to buttress the work on view. Derrick Adams, Greg Tate and Antwaun Sargent are a few of the artists, writers and curators that we have worked with on exhibitions at the gallery.
Mary Sabbatino is Vice President and Partner of Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. She was appointed director of the New York location of Galerie Lelong & Co. in 1991 and became a gallery partner in 2007. In 2021, she was awarded the prestigious Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) from the Government of France.
Championing a diverse roster of contemporary artists from throughout the world, the gallery has pioneered the community both in presenting a balanced roster of male and female artists, and artists from the Global South. Contributing to the overarching contemporary art scene, she served on the boards of ArtTable and the Executive Board of the Art Dealers’ Association of America, during which she initiated and co-authored the ADAA’s first code of ethics. Sabbatino served on the Selection Committee for Art Basel Miami Beach (2013-2020), the Art Basel Joint Selection Committee, and is a founding member of the Council for the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. In 2020, along with colleagues from international galleries, she initiated the platforms Galleries Curate and SOUTH SOUTH. In addition to fostering the careers and legacies of the gallery’s artists, Sabbatino co-curated Art from Brazil in New York (1995) which presented the first solo exhibitions of the region’s most vital figures—Waltercio Caldas, Cildo Meireles, Hélio Oiticica, Mira Schendel, and Tunga—and curated Juan Downey: Video Installations and Drawings (1995), at the Museo Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile.
Kibum Kim works with Commonwealth and Council, a gallery in Koreatown, Los Angeles founded in 2010. Our program is rooted in our commitment to explore how a community of artists can sustain our co-existence through generosity and hospitality. Commonwealth and Council celebrates our manifold identities and experiences through the shared dialogue of art—championing practices by women, queer, POC, and our ally artists to build counter-histories that reflect our individual and collective realities.
Kim is a lawyer and writer, as well as the former Program Director of Art Business at the Claremont Graduate University. He specializes in art law and art market dynamics. Previously, Kim worked as an M&A investment banker at Société Générale and as a freelance journalist covering fashion and cultural trends. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the “Sunday Styles” section of The New York Times, Salon, Foreign Policy, and Hyperallergic.
Friedrich Petzel is the founder of Petzel, a contemporary art gallery with locations in New York City’s Chelsea and Upper East Side neighborhoods. Representing over 40 international artists, Petzel also operates a joint exhibition space in Berlin, called Capitain Petzel, in collaboration with Cologne’s Galerie Gisela Capitain.
Diego Singh was born in Salta, Argentina in 1980. He has exhibited his work at the de la Cruz Collection, Miami, FL; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, Castelbasso, Italy; Braverman Gallery, Tel-Aviv, Israel; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brazil; Palazzo Fruscione, Salerno, Italy; Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL; Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA; Galleria Macca, Sardegna, Italy; and the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, North Miami, FL, among others. His work is currently on view in the exhibitions There Is Always One Direction at the de la Cruz Collection, Miami, FL, and Figure Fire Fantasy, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Miami, FL. Singh was awarded the Knight Foundation award in 2019. He will hold his first institutional solo presentation at Fondazione MACC in Calasetta, Italy in 2023. Recently he has written essays on the works of Georgia Sagri for her monograph published by Sternberg Press, and on the work of Jen DeNike for a book published by Feld Haus Publishing. Singh acted as a regional juror for Southern USA and Latin America for the Future Generation Award, Ukraine, in 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020. He is in love and likes all animals (no exceptions). Singh loves fettuccine, all soups (cold and hot), and is extremely allergic to sea urchin, which is absolutely terrible. He lives and works in Miami Beach, FL.
Donald Johnson Montenegro is a Partner at Luhring Augustine, New York, and has been with the gallery since 2012. He holds a BA in English from Cornell University and an MA in Art History: Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University. Donald is a co-founder of ANCLA, an organization of Latin American and Latinx art world professionals in New York. He grew up in Quito, Ecuador, and lives in New York and Vermont with his wife Anna.
