Karen Jenkins-Johnson

Gallerist Karen Jenkins-Johnson has succeeded even in a system stacked against her. Until 2015, Art Basel Miami denied her participation. She got in with a show of Roy DeCarava. In 2018, she exhibited Gordan Parks in its Switzerland exhibition. These constitute significant wins in an industry where most white art professionals can count the number of dealers they know who are people of color on one hand. That inequity extends to the art market, where Black artists sell for far less than white artists. “We’re not playing on a level playing field,” Jenkins-Johnson recently told the New York Times. 

Jenkins-Johnson’s keen business acumen and engagement in social issues support the gallery’s rising profile. During the coronavirus crisis, she launched Conversations on Culture, a series of Zoom interviews and discussions she expertly curated and moderated. In August, she invited Barron Chamber, Bernard Lumpkin, Eric McKissack and Tracey Riese—each are board members at major museums—to address equity issues from the perspective of board oversight. In her latest upload, she engages gallery artist Wesaam Al-Badry in a discussion about his life and work as a journalist, refugee and conceptual artist. The conversations mark a refreshing break from the market-driven news that propels much of the art press. They focus on what’s important—art.