Skoto Gallery: Case Study

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SKOTO GALLERY Up on the 5th floor of 529 W20th building, you’ll find a modest sized gallery which nevertheless lacks nothing in character. The gallery is basically a 30x30ft box with white walls, and the earth tone hue of the floor matches the ceiling above the light fixtures hanging from black rafters. The box is complicated by two wall high partitions that create a right angle that flows from a beam near the middle of the room. These two walls manage to divide into two rooms, one is the gallery and the other the office. In the office there’s a glass counter filled with books and catalogues for sell; here is where one might be greeted by a staff member, which in this gallery means either of the two co-founders. Upon entering this gallery, besides the artwork, you might not realize it that this small gallery has one of the biggest voices in all of Chelsea, that it was the first New York gallery to represent such international artists as El Anatsui, or that it was rated best gallery in Chelsea in 2007 in the Village Voice. ------------------------------------------------- Skoto Gallery was established in 1992 by Skoto Aghahowa and his wife Alix Du Serech, both artists. The aim of the gallery was to promote and present contemporary art of African artists, and to challenge the idea still dominant then that African art is simply historic or anthropological or ritualistic. I was unable to speak with Alix, yet she sounds as if the Katherine Dreier type, prepared to persevere at all costs to bring light to a corner of today’s art world. Skoto gallery has been open for 21 years, and that’s as long as Dreier’s Societe Anonyme lasted. Skoto, the director of the gallery, is a bit of a shrewd man of the Stiglitz ilk (gallery is nearly as small) very much concerned with commerce in order to survive but more passionate about the art and artists than with money and a

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