Written by Vittoria Benzine
Art fairs are just glitzy trade shows. Over several days, convention halls host labyrinths where galleries peddle their wares. Each booth is labeled on the outside with its gallery’s name, as well as where they’re based. Dealers from London, Paris, and beyond populate these placards. New York often dominates, but Brooklyn galleries are sparse—though that’s not the case in the borough. Williamsburg has Pierogi Gallery, Bushwick has CARVALHO PARK, and DUMBO has Brackett Creek Exhibitions. Those galleries show at smaller fairs like The Armory Show, Untitled Art Fair, and NADA Miami, respectively. One Bed-Stuy brownstone, however, has infiltrated the major leagues. You can find Welancora Gallery at Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze LA, and more.
Ivy N. Jones founded Welancora Gallery in the early 2000s, but only started considering herself a gallerist once she left her day job in 2014. The following year, Jones moved Welancora into its current space, a slightly larger brownstone every ounce as elegant as the gallery’s original home, also situated on a residential block, featuring a grand staircase at its entrance and warm wood accents throughout. “Welancora” is an amalgamation of her parents’ and brother’s names.
Jones grew up by the Pratt Institute, in Clinton Hill, bordering Bed-Stuy. Biggie Smalls grew up in that same liminal space around the same time as Jones, while Talib Kweli, Lil’ Kim, and Chris Rock were coming of age in Bed-Stuy proper. When the A train arrived in 1936, connecting Bedford and Stuyvesant Heights with Manhattan, scores of Slavs and Italians joined the Irish, German, Jewish and Scottish population. Black folks from the Caribbean and the American south arrived throughout the 1940s, as Bed-Stuy was formed, and continued amidst the white flight and economic turmoil of the 1950s on, until gentrification turned the tides in the 2000s.
The legendary creativity of the ‘old Brooklyn’ was bubbling up around Bed-Stuy during Jones’s upbringing, especially amongst her family. Her uncle was an architect, and her aunt an artist. Her relatives all had cameras, and Jones’s uncle took her for photowalks. She loyally watched Gil Noble’s iconic show Like It Is and was inspired by an episode featuring a Harlem woman whose bohemian brownstone attracted artists and poets. Jones considered becoming a photographer for a long time, taking classes in high school and again after grad school, with the acclaimed Roy Decarava. But, Jones held fast most of all to visions of her own creative haven.
But first, Jones studied politics in Hampton, VA, attended graduate school in Atlanta, and relocated to Albany, where she worked in public policy. She then returned to New York in the late 1990s and bought a brownstone while prices were still cheap, to realize her teenage dream.
A few years later, Jones decided to turn the space into a gallery. She started teaching herself the art world ropes in the pre-internet era, when artists of color were still fighting for attention from museums and galleries. “During those very early days, I really didn't have a clue,” Jones told me. She attended openings and read trade publications like Art and Auction. “I would look at ArtNews back then and be amazed that June Kelly was like the only black sort of game in town.”
Welancora really took off after Jones left her day job, and her knowledge approached a tipping point. She cites a show that renowned artist Derrick Adams curated at Welancora as a watershed moment. “We had this one preliminary meeting, and I didn't see Derrick again,” Jones recalled, until the show opened. “But he came that first meeting and said three or four things, and those three or four things, I kid you not, were the three or four things I needed.” They were basic, hard-won platitudes on how to arrange the space and its programming. “I don't know how to explain it,” Jones continued, “But — I grabbed hold of those three things and ran with them.”
By then, she’d also learned group shows can help grow a gallery’s community, in terms of artists, curators, collectors, and critics. Since then, Welancora has shown cutting edge artists in Bed-Stuy, such as Helen Evans Ramsaran, Lakela Brown, and Renluka Maharaj. The gallery represents solely artists of color, with an active focus on intergenerational conversations—and an inadvertent focus on homegrown art stars like Na’ye Perez, Chris Watts, and Cyle Warner.
The pandemic and the murder of George Floyd massively advanced longtime advocacy by creatives of color pushing to expand art’s canon. “Perhaps, had George Floyd not happened, had the pandemic not happened, it might still be this situation where it's a real struggle,” Jones considered, regarding her self-funded mission to champion such excluded perspectives. “It's still a struggle, but having that happen, and having people become more intentional about how they purchase what they purchase, we've definitely benefited from that.” Welancora has since been featured in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, and more. Jones has been profiled in Cultured.
But, to attribute Welancora’s success to tokenization would be as disingenuous as the art world’s tendency to substitute representation for policy change. Time and effort have taught Jones how to foster effective artist relationships—and balance her own curatorial slant with what sells. She has the kind of eye art school can’t teach, acquired from gritty pavement pounding alone, with a particular taste for materially inventive and conceptually sophisticated storytelling.
Right now, the commercial art world’s at an impasse. It aspires to embody the progressive ideas most artists espouse, but it relies on the ethically tenuous ultra-wealthy. The gallery’s role in society is a hot topic. Jones says Welancora Gallery’s primary mission is to advance the careers of its artists—that’s why she does fairs, and inadvertently brings Brooklyn to the wider art world. “After that,” she told me, galleries should be “pulling the community in to experience the work.”
Thus, Welancora’s really working towards bringing the art world to Brooklyn—rather than the other way around. Increased press and acclaim are already driving more foot traffic to the gallery, Jones says, and even dilettantes can see that their openings offer incredible energy. Welancora is one of the few galleries not to offer wine, but that doesn’t stymie conversations one bit. Buttoned up art collectors visit and intermingle at Welancora with art students, and the gallery’s own neighbors. They host talks throughout the run of each show, so artists can connect more directly with her audiences. As the gallery continues to grow, Jones foresees their education and programming expanding. Most importantly, perhaps, Jones’s legacy will live on in the employees she’s at last been able to hire—a team of bright young Black girls who will take their formative times at Welancora into the wider fine art ecosystem the gallery’s now shaping.
“I think our program, and the way that we exist in the art world, is a testament,” Jones added, “that there are opportunities to be successful. And, depending on how you define success—there are opportunities to be successful, without necessarily being in Chelsea, or being in an arts district, or being physically located in a space that is just the white box. When you want to do something, and you execute, and you follow your vision, you can be successful.”
“I'm grateful to still be in this space, in this time when it's very difficult for people to afford to be here,” she said of Bed-Stuy, “to be able to recall the history of the neighborhood, of the space.”
Cover Image: Ivy N. Jones. Photo: Elliott Jerome Brown Jr.
Image 1: Ivy N. Jones at Welancora Gallery. Makeup by Stephanie Bell. Photo: Elliott Jerome Brown Jr.
Image 2: Installation view of BEHOLD group show in Welancora Gallery during late 2021. Photo: Adam Reich.
Image 3: Welancora Booth at Frieze LA, 2024. Photo by Silvia Ros.
About Vittoria Benzine
Vittoria Benzine is a Brooklyn-based journalist covering contemporary art with a focus on storytelling, counterculture, and magic. She writes for a number of cultural publications, including Artnet News, the Brooklyn Rail, Brooklyn Mag, Hyperallergic, and Maxim. Find her on Instagram at @vittoriabenzine or visit her website vittoriabenzine.com.