Not Just Another Art Gallery in a Gentrifying Neighborhood

I spotted Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels from half a block away, a cigarette in one hand and a bodega coffee in the other. Bellorado-Samuels, the director of the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, was dressed in all-black, with oversized thick-rimmed glasses and a high bun.

We introduced ourselves in front of a storefront with a yellow neon sign that read, “Cash for Gold.” This is Bellorado-Samuels’s new side hustle: We Buy Gold, a roving art space that features artists of color. The name riffs on pawn shop signage seen around New York City, which got the gallerist thinking: People put immense value on gold—they invest in it, cling to it, and often in times of desperation or scarcity, they trade it in, she explains. If art is a commodity, what’s the value of artists of color?