MARCH

MARCH oozes a kind of friendliness and charm that lights us up the minute we see its gleaming, double-wide storefront windows in a (relatively) quiet residential strip of Avenue A.

The gallery’s owner, Philip March Jones, is from Kentucky by way of Louisiana, so they show a handful of Southern artists working in the visionary tradition of Black craftsmanship as well as up-and-coming painters living in the NYC area.

The Southerners include notables such as Richard Dial, Ronald Lockett, and Joe Minter. Their deeply spiritual work, made from old metal farm machines, is imbued with an acute sense of the magic of making art out of whatever’s in front of you.

The up-and-comers pour light on the parts of self-worth that we must hold on to, no matter what. Their work is often confessional, always tender, and dreams of worlds the artists desire their worlds to be.

When taken in together, both are acts of resistance against the degradations of prejudice and the creeping influence of commercialism ubiquitous in other parts of the art world.

MARCH’s proprietor, Philip March Jones, is an artist. Before founding MARCH in 2020, he created Institute 193 in Lexington, a nonprofit dedicated to documenting cultural production in the modern South.

MARCH is one of the few galleries registered as a public benefit corporation. They support Burnaway Magazine, a contemporary magazine that covers the American South, Summertime, an organization that celebrates neurodiverse artists, and Visual Aids, because, as we all know, AIDS is not over.