Turner Carroll Gallery History
Turner Carroll Gallery + Art Advisors is committed to exhibiting emerging to established museum collected artists from all over the world. Turner Carroll was founded in 1991 by Tonya Turner Carroll and Michael Carroll, both of whom have extensive experience in galleries, museums, and auction houses, as well as degrees in the history of art. Turner Carroll and Carroll have handled artist estates, written artist monographs, served on boards of art museums and foundations, and served as independent curators and art advisors for corporations, hotels, and art museums.
The vision of the gallery since its inception is to source significant artwork of our era from diverse areas of the world. The gallery is constantly considering the new international art movements/developments which presuppose historical significance, and the gallery owners travel extensively to curate exhibitions for the gallery from other parts of the world. Thus far, the gallery has featured important contemporary exhibitions from Romania, Ireland, France, Russia, and Mexico. From its opening 31 years ago, Turner Carroll Gallery has dedicated its program to showing a gender and racially diverse group of museum collected artists who address the most relevant issues of our time. In recent years, TCG has curated exhibitions by artists whose prescient work considers immigration, women’s contributions to the art historical canon, BIPOC realities, and what it means to live in this world. Turner Carroll is widely known for exhibiting top artists in the world such as French sculptor Camille Claudel, feminist icon Judy Chicago, top Chinese-American artist Hung Liu, and the most successful female street artist—Swoon.
Turner Carroll regularly contributes to the greater contemporary art world by authoring monographs and essays, speaking, working with museums on acquisitions, programming, and loans to curate exhibitions such as Judy Chicago’s de Young Museum retrospective, Swoon’s Metropolitan Museum of Art Gallery exhibition, the Art Institute of Chicago and Getty’s upcoming Camille Claudel exhibition. As primary strategic and legacy advisor for Hung Liu’s estate, Turner Carroll interfaces with museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Whitney, Nasher, Honolulu Museum of Art, Williams College Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, National Portrait Gallery, de Young Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and others to negotiate acquisitions, loans, and exhibitions. Some of the museum permanent collections which feature works by Turner Carroll artists include Russian Academy of Art Foundation, The Vatican Museum (contemporary collection), Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Museum of Modern Art, The British Museum, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
We proudly represent the following contemporary artists: John Barker, Jamie Brunson, Judy Chicago, Natalie Christensen, Steven Cozart, Traian A. Filip, Raphaëlle Goethals, Scott Greene, Stephen Hayes, Clarence Heyward, Mildred Howard, Etsuko Ichikawa, Mokha Laget, David Linn, Hung Liu, Monica Lundy, Beverly McIver, Igor Melnikov, Greg Murr, Rex Ray, Walter Robinson, Meridel Rubenstein, Rusty Scruby, Matt Shlian, Hunt Slonem, Shawn Smith, Swoon, Saba Taj, Drew Tal, Lien Truong, Karen Yank, and Wanxin Zhang.
In addition, we have a robust secondary market platform for resales. Curated resales include pieces by Judy Chicago, Leslie Dill, Jim Dine, Joseph Eads, Kiki Smith, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Charles Arnoldi, Nicola Lopez, Philip Guston, Alfred Jensen, Louise Bourgeois, Vernon Fisher, and others.
In October 2022, we opened CONTAINER at 1226 Flagman Way in Santa Fe in a very special building made of shipping containers. Art institution meets commercial gallery meets private collection, CONTAINER introduces an innovative vision for art exhibitions. CONTAINER will bring touring museum exhibitions to the artistic heartland of Santa Fe, New Mexico, offering collectors an opportunity to purchase artworks by sought-after artists directly from its institutional exhibitions.
Michael E.S. Carroll
Owner
A 1988 graduate of the history department at Duke University, Michael was, along with his wife Tonya, the co-founder of the Turner Carroll Gallery in 1991. He brings a historical perspective to curating Turner Carroll exhibitions. Michael studied the arts at Duke, in New York City, in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. He was a two-term, past president of the Santa Fe Gallery Association, and was twice named one of the 40 most influential New Mexicans under 40 years of age. In addition, he has helped raise several hundred thousand dollars for arts education through the SFGA’s charity arm, Art Smart. Michael is frequently asked to lecture on topics like artist-gallery relations, and he continues to serve on several boards.
When Eastern Europe underwent historic changes economically and politically in the late 1980s, Michael designed curatorial trips and exhibitions around these themes. In the past fifteen years his focus on the use of craft in fine art, the work of women artists, and the work of people of color and their stories has taken the gallery in a new direction. Michael is an avid collector of contemporary art. Original work in his collection includes pieces by Kara Walker, Judy Chicago, Hung Liu, Louise Nevelson, Mulyana, Sui Park, Frances Gallardo, Richard Hambleton, Charles White, and Agnes Martin.
Tonya Turner Carroll
Owner
Tonya Turner Carroll advises private collectors and corporate clients on art acquisitions, assisting them in research, value estimations, and collecting. She has curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art for museums, art centers, and cultural centers in the U.S. and abroad. Among them, Hung Liu: Women Warriors, at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Others include numerous exhibitions of contemporary Mexican artwork at the Four Seasons Resort Cultural Center in Punta Mita, Mexico; and Mexican contemporary art at St. Regis Punta Mita Resort’s Cultural Center. With husband, Michael Carroll and their children, Turner Carroll created Arte Mita, an organization bringing international artists together with school children of different countries. Via youth art sales, Arte Mita has helped form art programming at schools in Sayulita and Punta de Mita, Mexico, as well as in New Mexico and the Navajo Nation.
Turner Carroll and husband Michael Carroll wrote the definitive monograph on Romanian contemporary artist Traian Alexandru Filip, which won a small press book award upon publication. She has also authored several articles, blogs, and catalogue essays on contemporary art and artists. Turner Carroll has served on the boards of the Santa Fe Gallery Association and Friends of Contemporary Art for the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. She currently serves on the Governing Board of 516 Arts, a contemporary museum in Albuquerque, as well as the aM Contemporaries Council of the Albuquerque Museum.
Art Advisory and Curatorial Services for Private and Public Collectors
Turner Carroll works closely with all levels of public and private collectors, in both the U.S. and internationally. Turner Carroll takes an art historical approach to helping collectors visualize their aesthetic and intellectual desires for their collection, presenting artworks to them which not only meet their objectives, but which expose them to new ideas and opportunities, as well. Turner Carroll prides itself in establishing long term relationships with collectors purchasing works through the gallery, helping them express their artistic interests coherently, through a carefully curated collection. Turner Carroll offers art advisory services from concept development and sourcing sought after artworks, to art education, research, studio visits, acquisition, and de-accessioning.
Over the decades, Turner Carroll has worked as independent curator with such museums as the Sangre de Cristo Art Center (Pueblo, Colorado), and Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (Kalamazoo, Michigan). Corporate clients Turner Carroll has advised include the Four Seasons Resort (Punta Mita, Mexico); Sidley Law Firm (Dallas, Texas); La Posada de Santa Fe, a Rock Resort (Santa Fe, New Mexico); and The St. Regis (Punta Mita, Mexico).
Gallery Affiliations
