Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta’s premier photography gallery, has a new home.
Both elegant and welcoming, the 4,000-square-foot, two-story Buckhead building is just across from the converted bungalow that served as its previous digs, and practically around the corner from the original space Jane Jackson opened in 1989, a tiny gallery on the second floor of a frame shop on East Paces Ferry.
But the metaphorical distance is far greater. Jackson spent that first year hustling a portfolio around town. Jackson Fine Art now has a staff of 14, including new COO Alexandra Sachs. In the 20 years since Creative Director Anna Walker-Skillman and business partner Andy Heyman, founder of ASH Atlanta and ASH IP (a private equity firm focusing on technology investing), purchased the gallery, its budget has increased tenfold.
The new building, then, is also an embodiment of longevity and success not typical in Atlanta’s gallery scene. The story of its evolution includes that rare elixir of smarts, people skills, timing, business acumen, capital investment — and luck.
When Jackson began the venture, it seemed quixotic. She had no gallery experience, and photography as a collectible fine-art medium was, she says, in its “toddler stage. At that time there were more photographers than collectors.”
Yet, Jackson, who had begun collecting photography with her husband Clay, felt there was a need, and she plunged in. A few Atlanta collectors helped keep her going, among them the late philanthropist and photographer Lucinda Bunnen and Bertram Levy, who was building a collection for his law firm, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP.
She also benefitted from the late High Museum of Art director Gudmund Vigtel’s prescient decision in the ‘70s to build a photography collection. The High stimulated awareness of and credibility for the medium.
Starting early in the game also had its perks. Says Jackson: “The community of dealers was small. It was nice because New York and European dealers needed to expand their markets, so they were helpful in consigning work to me.”
Then came a life-changing stroke of luck. Elton John came into her little gallery on New Year’s Eve 1990 looking to buy photos for friends attending his holiday party. He seemed interested, so she loaned him a stack of books, which he read. Soon he became a collector himself, eventually amassing a sterling trove of 12,000 photos and counting.
Working with someone as motivated, wealthy and famous as John had a huge impact on the gallery’s growth. It was not just a matter of sales. “Having him as a client gave the gallery power. I was able to get better artists and higher quality works,” Jackson says.
She was able to move to larger digs on East Shadowlawn Avenue in 1992 and six years later hired Walker-Skillman, who ran the late artist Todd Murphy’s studio, as gallery director.
“She was a real fireball,” Jackson says. “She soaked in everything. She was great at getting people to look and see things and to pull the trigger.”
Walker-Skillman fell in love with the medium. A couple years after she joined the gallery, she became a collector herself, using her sales commissions to do so. Her focus is female artists. What was fascinating and surprising to her, however, was how her taste changed as she experienced life. Each work she owns creates a vivid memory and represents a time in her life such as marriage, then children, followed by divorce, then remarrying and, most recently, experiencing her children going to college.
“It is a 23 year history that demands reflection and still inspires me,” she says. “Some collectors find it easy let go of work, but for me, the works are the architecture of my life, they tell my story as well as their own.”
Walker-Skillman’s story also included a big shift in her role at the gallery. In 2003, Jackson became the director of John’s collection and spoke to Walker-Skillman about buying the gallery.
Intrigued, Walker-Skillman set about looking for a partner. “Todd [Murphy] mentioned that I should speak to his close friend Andy. I knew Andy, though not well, but he was a patron of the gallery, and we decided to meet.”
For Heyman, it seemed like fate. Growing up in Atlanta, he had always wanted to see Atlanta’s cultural life expand but didn’t have the financial wherewithal to help. By the time this opportunity came up, he did.
Heyman assessed the business’s growth potential. “I felt that photography is uniquely capable of being marketed from afar, through digital marketing and art fairs,” he said. In addition, his private equity firm ASH Atlanta specializes in providing small businesses expertise in the types of systems — digital marking, database-building, employee management — that would help the gallery grow. He was in.
“It was a perfect fit, a meeting of art and business minds,” Walker-Skillman says.
Heyman immediately beefed up the website, which jump started a new revenue stream. The partners developed a budget to support regular attendance at key art fairs, which Walker-Skillman notes are important for visibility and marketing.
Both she and Heyman have described their modus operandi as “high-touch.” That attention to client experience is reflected in the building’s design. Walker-Skillman worked with Siegel Construction and Design to create a welcoming atmosphere.
The new structure suggests a house, a nod to the bungalows on the street and to the former gallery, which Walker-Skillman loved. Warm woods and lots of light through windows contribute to the effect. “I wanted it to feel like a house — but with lots of storage!” she says.
The main floor features gallery spaces of different scales to accommodate the medium’s many permutations, from classic black-and-white to digital manipulations and mixed-media work. There is art everywhere, and no room feels off-limits. A visitor might walk past an employee arranging cut flowers or sit in the sun at the patio table outside the front door.
A stairwell lined with vintage photographs leads to the second story, housing back-of-house facilities, a conference room and a library filled with art books, which visitors are encouraged to study. The space overall is scaled to be a cozy place for conversations.
Like most gallerists, she considers education part of her remit, and she has observed a change among visitors and clients. “Atlanta’s prosperity is bringing in younger people,” she says. “There is an increase in the level of sophistication.”
If, given the often-precarious nature of art galleries in Atlanta, this investment in bricks and mortar is a statement of confidence in the gallery’s momentum, perhaps it also reflects confidence in Atlanta ‘s future as a marketplace for art.
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Catherine Fox, an award-winning art critic, co-founded ArtsATL and served as its executive director and executive editor for five years. Fox was the art critic for The Atlanta Journal Constitution from 1981 to 2009.
