Teaching Resource
The Market
Makers
Twenty dealers, galleries, and collector-traders whose transactions, taste, and advocacy built the American market for African tribal art between 1960 and 2000 — and placed African objects inside the nation's great museums.
Historical Context
How a Market Was Made
The American market for African art did not exist in any meaningful form before 1950. A cluster of émigré dealers fleeing Europe, a handful of African-American gallerists breaking barriers, and a new generation of museum curators converged in postwar New York to create an entirely new collecting category.
By 1960 the Museum of Primitive Art had opened on 54th Street, the Klejman and Carlebach galleries had seeded the first major American collections, and Merton Simpson had established Madison Avenue as the center of gravity. The four decades that followed would see auction records shattered, museum wings dedicated, and African art transformed from ethnographic curiosity into one of the world's most contested collecting categories.
"Over the course of the '60s and '70s, Simpson became the most important dealer in the US in this field. Worldwide, you could say he was one of the two or three leading dealers — and this was especially remarkable for an African-American who began doing this in the time of segregation." — Heinrich C. Schweizer, Head of African & Oceanic Art, Sotheby's New York
Chronological View
Dealer Timeline
Click any dealer to jump to their full profile. Ordered by the approximate start of their US gallery activity.
Profiles
The Twenty Dealers
Biographical cards with chronological gallery histories. Click any card to expand the full profile.