ARTE: WWD

Thank you Women's Wear Daily for profiling us! And for writing about the arts revolution we are hoping to spark in Leimert Park.  It has been an incredible 6 months being open in our new neighborhood and we couldn't be more happy to be adding to Leimert's rich legacy and creating new history.

On a recent August afternoon in Los Angeles, Michelle Joan Papillion was taking a break inside her sprawling, whitewashed gallery in Leimert Park. She was a few days away from finishing preparations for a new exhibit and was enjoying a rare moment of peace before an upcoming opening. 

Papillion, in a loose-fitting tank and skirt, hasn’t had many of those moments lately. 

Since she opened her first gallery four years ago, the 32-year-old has emerged as one of L.A.’s gallerists to watch, thanks to her hit shows and prominent supporters, like Jeffrey Deitch and Franklin Sirmans, chief curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

“I wanted to be stimulated by many different things and different types of people in one space,” she says casually by way of explaining her rise in the art world. “And I know how to do that through art.”

Papillion grew up in Oakland with a deep interest in the arts, though she wasn’t quite sure what form that interest would take. After high school, she pursued an art history degree at Howard University in Washington, D.C., but her real education came from the people she encountered socially on trips to gallery openings in Manhattan in the early Aughts.

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