Gallery owner plans a national art fair in New Orleans | Arts

Known as gallery row, the stretch of Julia Street near Camp Street has been a go-to destination for chic, contemporary arts since the 1980s. New along the strip is the Smith Contemporary gallery at 440 Julia St., founded by well-known former gallery owner Terrance Sanders-Smith.

Sanders-Smith recently returned to New Orleans after being away for several years. He has big plans, not just for his new space, but for the whole New Orleans art scene, including a new, national art fair as soon as next spring.

Smith Contemporary is a rarity, being one of just a few Black-owned galleries in the history of the area. 

Opening doors on Julia Street

Naturally, Sanders-Smith said, he plans to sell the work of racially diverse artists.

“I believe we, Black dealers, play an integral part in challenging systemic prejudices in the art market locally, regionally and nationally that rarely challenges the status quo,” Sanders-Smith wrote via text.

“In addition, I believe we provide a more welcoming environment for artists and audiences of color and a sense of belonging and not judgment,” he added. The presence of Black ownership, he wrote, “shows the art community here in New Orleans a different perspective and narrative that is sometimes lost in mostly white-owned mainstream galleries.”

Myesha Francis, who owned the M. Francis gallery at 604 Julia St. from 2010 to 2015, views Black-owned showplaces as doorways for Black artists to enter the gallery world. Those artists “feel more comfortable approaching somebody that looks like them,” she said. They may feel better understood, “in their voice.”

The same could be said of visitors to the gallery, she said. “When I had shows, Black people showed up.”

From Sanders-Smith’s perspective, race is only part of the picture. Gallery Row, he believes, has to keep an eye on future generations. In his opinion, the Julia Street scene, which was spurred by the founding of the nearby Contemporary Arts Center in 1976, has gotten a little long in the tooth.

“I’m 58, so I’m part of the old guard,” Sanders-Smith said. To continue to flourish, he said, “Julia Street has to reach out to a younger, more diverse audience.” He hopes that future exhibits and other cultural events at his gallery will help that happen.

City mouse, country summers

Sanders-Smith was born in Pineville, near Alexandria, but his family moved to New York City when he was a baby. As a kid, he spent most of his time in the big city atmosphere of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in a mixed community of Italian, Chinese, Puerto Rican and Jewish people.

But he wasn’t entirely a city mouse. Sanders-Smith came back to Louisiana every summer, where he could range around his uncle’s 40-acre spread in the country. He saw both worlds.

By the time he was a teen, Sanders-Smith was already attracted to the art world. He said he became pals with Jean-Michelle Basquiat and imitated the future superstar’s brand of topical expressionism until he developed his own style. Sanders-Smith said he sat in on classes at the renowned Parsons School of Design.

Sanders-Smith’s mother eventually left the Big Apple for Baton Rouge in 2003, and he followed.

He moved to New Orleans in early 2005, where he established an art gallery/studio/home on Magazine Street. As Hurricane Katrina approached, Sanders-Smith decided to ride it out there. After all, he reasoned, New Orleans was no stranger to hurricanes, many of which were false alarms.

But on Aug. 29, he said, “the house started shaking and I said, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die.’” When the winds passed, the city was a shambles. Sanders-Smith said he helped find bottled water, which he distributed to neighbors, and went back to his easel. What else was there to do?

Ironically, Sanders-Smith was working on a suite of paintings that memorialized the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center. Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose happened on Sanders as he painted. Rose considered Sanders-Smith one of the city’s reassuring stalwarts.

“I was thinking more about foraging for fuel and food, maybe fending off the roving gangs I had heard about,” Rose wrote, “and here’s this guy making art.”

A visual arts explosion post-Katrina

Sanders-Smith had a role in the visual arts explosion that took place in the city over the next few years. He opened a new gallery on Royal Street in the French Quarter, where he granted exhibits to local artists. He founded Artvoices magazine that, among other things, championed the new St. Claude Avenue art scene. And he was instrumental in the design of the Hurricane Katrina memorial at the Saratoga Building at 212 Loyola Ave.

The city had become a magnet for artists across the country, and Sanders-Smith welcomed them. “Artists saw this place as the new frontier,” he said. “It was a fertile environment. I thought of the city as a woman, calling out, ‘We need you.’” Sanders-Smith said the infusion of new blood broadened and energized the Crescent City art community.

Sanders-Smith’s art career took him to Los Angeles in 2012, where he owned and managed art spaces, before relocating to Baton Rouge in 2018. Meanwhile, his son, Lucien Smith, earned international acclaim for his abstract art.

Sanders-Smith said he didn’t think he was ever coming back to New Orleans, but he changed his mind last year. “I think I’m more needed here,” he said of his decision to return. The art capitals didn’t require another art gallery owner or another magazine publisher. But in New Orleans, there was room to make a difference.

“I’m an art dealer and artist,” Sanders-Smith said. “I understand the needs of both, and I can I facilitate that.”

A new national art event?

He also hopes to institute a new national art event. Sanders-Smith believes that New Orleans would be the perfect site for an art fair/trade show, like Art Basel in Miami Beach or Armory Show in New York City.

Such large-scale marketplaces feature displays by hundreds of contemporary art galleries from across the country. They draw huge crowds of visiting art lovers, collectors and dealers to their host cities.

Sanders-Smith believes a similar event in New Orleans is possible. What would make the Crescent City art fair special is that it would be restricted to galleries from 13 Southern states, Sanders-Smith explained. The big show could be held in any number of places in the city, perhaps the nearby Contemporary Arts Center, he mused.

Sanders-Smith said he already has an investor in the project, and he’s well acquainted with the companies that produce similar events elsewhere. Basically, the galleries bring the art and install it. “It’s not complicated,” he said.

The town itself would, of course, be part of the draw. “No other city in the U.S. is as beautiful and culturally rich as New Orleans,” he said. Sanders-Smith pointed out that visitors to a future New Orleans art fair would see great art, but they’d also say to themselves, “We’re going to go eat something great, and hear some great music.”

The time is ripe, Sanders-Smith said, since Prospect, New Orleans’ triennial, international art exhibition, recently announced that it has canceled plans for its 2027-2028 show. Sanders-Smith said there’s no reason to wait to fill that slot. He hopes to present the first New Orleans art fair as soon as April 2026.

White Linen Night

Smith Contemporary is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tues-Sat. The next opening reception, featuring works by James Macdonell, takes place Aug. 2, during the White Linen Night block party, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Myesha Francis, who is an artist as well as former gallery owner, is exhibiting her own paintings and works by Sharika Mahdi at The Public Belt bar in the Hilton Riverside Hotel at 2 Poydras St., on Aug. 2, during White Linen Night.