14 | PENTA | December 2020
No Age Limit
On ‘Greatness’
At 25, Destinee Ross-Sutton
is the go-to curator, advisor,
and manager for the
rising stars of Black art
By ABBY SCHULTZ
I
n early October, the curator, art
advisor, artist advocate, and
sometime muse, Destinee
Ross-Sutton posted on her Insta-
gram feed a portrait of rapper
Lil Nas X by the Ghanaian artist Otis
Kwame Kye Quaicoe that had just
fetched US$137,500 at a Phillips auc-
tion in New York.
The final price, with fees, for Quaicoe’s
Old Town Boy, 2018—a vividly painted
open-shirted image of Lil Nas X posing
country-style, thumbs in his belt loops,
against a bright orange backdrop—
was more than four times a presale
low estimate.
The object of Ross-Sutton’s post,
however, was Yuval Hanina, director of
Hanina Fine Arts in London, who
reportedly had bought the work from
the artist in 2019. At the time Hanina
“ensured Quaicoe it was for his personal
collection for his new house,” she wrote.
Calling out “flippers”—collectors
who buy works by rising artists only to
quickly sell them for a huge profit as
their secondary market soars—is trade-
mark Ross-Sutton, who has become a
go-to mediator, supporter, and protector
of Black artists.
At only age 25, the Harlem, N.Y.-born
Ross-Sutton, who has had her portrait
painted by artist stars Kehinde Wiley
and Amoako Boafo, and whose long,
colorful braids inspired a painting
by Derrick Adams, represents several
artists. She also advises collectors—
including television actor Hill Harper
in Detroit—on buying works by artists
from Africa and the African diaspora. In
April, she curated “Black Voices/Black
Microcosm,” an acclaimed exhibition of
“ I was lucky
enough
to be heard.”
Destinee
Ross-Sutton
about 30 Black artists at Stockholm’s
CFHill Art Space.
Christie’s learned of Ross-Sutton and
her advocate streak when Celine Cunha,
a postwar and contemporary art special-
ist, reached out to Eniwaye Oluwaseyi, a
Nigerian artist, to ask if he would partic-
ipate in an exhibition the auction house
was planning. Unsure of what Christie’s
had in mind, Oluwaseyi directed Cunha
to Ross-Sutton, confident she would
“know the right questions to ask,”
Oluwaseyi says.
Ross-Sutton ended up curating that
selling exhibition, titled “Say It Loud,
(I’m Black and I’m Proud),” which
awarded 100% of sale proceeds to the
artists, and included a baseline contract