About the Event

According to Arts Economics, 2021 was the first year in history when women collectors and arts patrons outspent men. Celebrated for their efforts to ensure equity, representation, and appreciation of women artists, leading curators and collectors will discuss how art moves through the modern market and is acquired, donated, and displayed. Learn how women and nonbinary people in these roles can influence the representation of women artists in private and public collections.

Schwanda Rountree, attorney and independent art consultant will be in conversation with Myrtis Bedolla, owner and founding director of Galerie Myrtis.

The panel will be followed by Catalyst Cocktail Hour.

About the Panelists

Schwanda Rountree is an attorney and independent art consultant. Schwanda works with galleries domestically and internationally in placing contemporary art in museums and private collections. She currently serves as National Advisory Council Member of Creative Capital, Collections Committee Member of the Ackland Art Museum, National Advisory Board Member at the Ackland Art Museum, and Accessions Committee Member of the Baltimore Museum of Art. She has also served as Advisory Panel Member of CulturalDC, an Executive Board Member of the Porter Colloquium on African American Art at Howard University, and a member of ArtTable. She has spoken on many panels over the years – including one recently with New York Academy of Art. She has been featured in Artsy’s “Inside My Collection” editorial profile, Artnet News, and the Cut.

Myrtis Bedolla 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 work created by African American artists. Bedolla possesses over 30 years of experience as a curator, gallerist, and art consultant. Established in 2006, the mission of the gallery 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 has recently gained national press in the New York Times article “Black Gallerists Press Forward Despite a Market That Holds Them Back” in June 2020 and authored “Why My Blackness is Not a Threat to your Whiteness” in Cultured Magazine in July 2020. Past coverage also includes being voted Best Gallery by the Baltimore Sun in 2017; “Black Art in the Spotlight,” Baltimore Magazine, September 2018; “Living with Art: Myrtis Bedolla Builds a Home and Gallery in Old Goucher,” BMORE Art, Issue 3; “Women in the Arts,” which honored women at the helm of the Baltimore art scene, Baltimore Style Magazine, October 2013.

About Women, Arts, and Social Change

Women, Arts, and Social Change is a public programs initiative that highlights the power of women and the arts as catalysts for change. Fresh Talk, the initiative’s signature program, features cause-driven conversations with leading artists, designers, activists, social innovators, and others.