“My interest lies in supporting female artists at the moment in their career when nobody’s looking” INTERVIEW WITH VALERIA NAPOLEONE BY THE DANISH ARTIST AUGUSTA ATLA
Valeria Napoleone is based in London and is part art collector, part art patron. Valeria has been collecting artworks by female artists for two decades and boasts a collection of over 400 works by women. In 2015, Valeria launched Valeria NapoleoneXX, an umbrella platform for projects working towards increasing the recognition of art practices by female artists through collaborations with contemporary art institutions. AA: Who has the power to make a change regarding gender equality in the contemporary art scene?
VN: Museums, curators, and directors of museums have the power to initiate change in the art scene. It’s the duty of museums to educate people about great art and challenge gender imbalance. If public collections, museums, and institutions start legitimising women artists by acquiring and exhibiting their work in their collections, this proactive stance will trigger something very powerful for the future. If the museums take on the responsibility of showcasing and invigorating critical analysis and discourse vis-à-vis the practice of female artists, everyone will follow. The programming, panel discussions,
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and seminars in museums will fuel critical and analytical discourse on the practice of female artists, many of whom have been silenced and erased from art history. AA:
For you, what is ‘a gallery’?
VN: A gallery’s mission is to take on an artist and support their practice, and to be willing to devote itself to a long-term journey with the artist. The practice of an artist lasts a lifetime; a gallerist needs to be there for that lifetime. I also see a gallery’s role as a service to collectors (and beyond), educating its audience about artists’ practices, providing guidance to collectors on how to create a collection, and information about the artists represented. In my case, it often happens to me that galleries I am close to—those in my art ecosystem—tell me: “Valeria, go and look at these artists, I think they are interesting,” even though the artists are not anyone they work with. I trust these galleries very much because over the years they have given me so many interesting and fantastic tips about artists that they weren’t representing. A gallery is a community, a family. And collectors become part of this family.
