Brent Sikkema (1948–2024)

Brent Sikkema, the founder and a co-owner of respected New York contemporary art gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Co., was found dead in a Rio de Janeiro apartment on January 15. He was seventy-five. According to multiple outlets, he had been stabbed; theDaily Mailreports that his death is being investigated as a homicide in connection with a robbery. Sikkema in 1991 established Wooster Gardens in SoHo; now known as Sikkema Jenkins & Co., the gallery in 1999 moved to Chelsea, where it remains today.

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. gave Kara Walker her first-ever New York show, in 1995, and helped to launch the careers of artists including Mark Bradford, Deana Lawson, Arlene Shechet, Shahzia Sikander, and Amy Sillman.RelatedFRANCE APPOINTS RIGHT-WING CULTURE MINISTERDENVER ART MUSEUM STAFF MOVE TO UNIONIZE Brent Sikkema was born in 1948 in Morrison, Illinois, a small town near the state’s Mississippi River border with Iowa. After graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute, Sikkema in 1971 took a job as director of exhibitions at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York.

From 1976 to 1980, he served as director of Boston’s Vision Gallery, which he purchased in 1980 and ran until 1989. Two years later, he moved to New York, where he founded Wooster Gardens within months of his arrival. In 1996, he named Michael Jenkins director of the gallery; three years later, Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

moved north to the burgeoning Chelsea arts district, landing on West Twenty-Second Street, with Jenkins becoming a partner in the operation in 2003.Artnewsreports that at the time of Sikkema’s death, the gallery’s roster included Jeffrey Gibson, the artist representing the United States at the upcoming Sixtieth Venice Biennale, as well as Anohni, Tony Feher, Louis Fratino, Sheila Hicks, Vik Muniz, Maria Nepomuceno, Jennifer Packer, and Luiz Zerbini. TheWashington Postreported that Sikkema in a 2021Instagram postnoted that he was “a chaos kind of guy” who was typically drawn to places like Cuba and Brazil, “where struggle is real every day.” BraziliannewsoutletO Globorevealed that he bought his two-story townhouse in the upscale Jardim Botânico neighborhood a decade ago and stayed there at least three times a year. According to the news site, Sikkema’s body was discovered by his Rio de Janeiro–based lawyer, Simone Nunes, who typically looked after the residence when he was not using it.

Nunes told police she became concerned when the gallerist did not answer any of her phone calls, beginning on Saturday. After he failed to attend a scheduled meeting on Monday, she entered his home and found him in bed. Nunes described Sikkema as “a wonderful person,” and as a “very kind, generous, defender of social issues.” Brazilian news portalG1quoted Muniz, one of the most renowned artists in Latin America as saying, “Brent was my gallerist for three decades and a friend for longer than that.

I owe incredible loyalty to the professional he was for being one of the first galleries to have a contingent of artists who were half white, half black, half woman, half man.” Muniz noted that he had once owned the house Sikkema died in. “He loved Brazil so much,” the artist concluded. “He didn’t deserve this.” “He was passionate about Brazilian art, with a wonderful sense of humor, a happy person,” the Brazilian-born Zerbini, also a leading Latin American artist, told G1.

“Tragic news for the international art scene.” “It is with great sadness that the gallery announces the passing of our beloved founder, Brent Sikkema,” Sikkema Jenkins & Co. wrote in a statement. “The gallery grieves this tremendous loss and will continue on in his spirit.”.