COURTESY ANDREW EDLIN GALLERY
Andrew Edlin Gallery announced today that Phillip March Jones will be its new director. Newly relocated to the Lower East Side, the New York–based gallery was previously overseen by Becca Hoffman, who will continue to direct the Outsider Art Fair.
Jones comes from the Paris-based gallery Christian Berst Art Brut, where he was director of the New York branch, but he is perhaps best known as the inaugural director of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, the Atlanta-based organization that shows work by self-taught African-American artists from the South. The foundation has recently garnered attention in New York for donating 57 works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, notable among them 10 pieces by Thornton Dial.
Prior to working at the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Jones founded Institute 193, a gallery dedicated to artists whose work deals with the cultural landscape of the American South. Located in Lexington, Kentucky, the gallery opened in 2009. And, in addition to all this, Jones is an artist in his own right—he photographs vernacular imagery that he finds while traveling around America.
“We are pleased to welcome Phillip, whose expertise in Outsider Art and strong relationships with artists, collectors and curators, will prove a dynamic and invaluable asset to the gallery,” Andrew Edlin Gallery wrote in a statement.