Episode 129

Myrtis Bedolla | Founding Director Galerie Myrtis | Fine Art & Advisory | Baltimore, MD
Image courtesy photographer Grace Roselli, “Pandora’s BoxX Project”

Ep.129 features Myrtis Bedolla. She is the owner and founding director of Galerie Myrtis, an emerging blue-chip gallery and art advisory specializing in twentieth and twenty-first-century American art with a focus on primary and secondary works created by African American artists. Bedolla possesses over 30 years of experience as a curator, gallerist, and art consultant. She provides professional curatorial services, lectures, and educational programming to corporate, civic, and arts organizations.
Established in 2006, the mission of Galerie Myrtis is to utilize the visual arts to raise awareness for artists who deserve recognition for their contributions in artistically portraying our cultural, social, historical, and political landscapes; and to recognize art movements that paved the way for freedom of artistic expression.

Bedolla’s curated The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined, currently on view at the 59th Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy, until November 27, 2022. The exhibit, hosted by Personal Structures, pays tribute to the resiliency, creativity, and spirituality that have historically sustained Black people.

In September 2022, Bedolla collaborated with Christie’s NY to bring diversity and equity to the art world. The relationship is highlighted in the NY Times article Christie’s and a Baltimore Gallery to Sell Work by Black Artists by Robin Pogrebin and Artnet News editorial A Black-Owned Baltimore Gallery Aims to Change the Game by Partnering Directly with Christie’s by Vittoria Benzine.

In June 2020, Bedolla gained national press in the New York Times article Black Gallerists Press Forward Despite a Market That Holds Them Back, by Robin Pogrebin and the self-authored article Why My Blackness is not a Threat to your Whiteness for Cultured Magazine in July 2020.

Bedolla holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from the University of Maryland, University College, received her curatorial training at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, and earned online certificates in Cultural Theory for Curators and Curatorial Procedures from the Node Center for Curatorial Studies, Berlin, Germany.

Board appointments: Association of Art Museum Curators & AAMC Foundation Trustee; University of Maryland Global Campus, Arts Program Chair; and the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Board.

Professional memberships: ArtTable; and the Association of African American Museums (AAAM).

Galerie https://galeriemyrtis.net/

NYTimes https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/arts/design/art-basel-black-owned-galleries.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/arts/design/christies-baltimore-gallery-black-artists.html

Baltimore Beat https://baltimorebeat.com/baltimores-galerie-myrtis-beautiful-and-the-damned/

Artnet https://news.artnet.com/market/galerie-myrtis-christies-sale-partnership-2176802

Christies https://www.christies.com/about-us/press-archive/details?PressReleaseID=10623&lid=1

Smithsonian https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-black-men-changed-the-world-180979710/

Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/02/08/painter-who-surrounds-her-black-subjects-with-gold/

Culture Type https://www.culturetype.com/2020/06/10/on-view-renaissance-noir-curated-by-myrtis-bedolla-at-uta-artist-space/

New York Public Library https://www.nypl.org/blog/2022/06/29/tribute-afrofuturist-deity-schomburg-center-artist-educator-m-scott-johnson

Bmore Art https://bmoreart.com/2022/05/parallels-and-meaningful-difference-activating-the-renaissance.html