Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba

Wilmer Jennings Gallery is one of those rare places where you feel history taking shape under your feet. Since 1990, this doublewide storefront in Alphabet City has been a home for Black artists, showing work that reaches back to the 19th century and forward into today.

The gallery is named for Wilmer Angier Jennings, a jeweler and printmaker who documented Black life during the Great Depression. His legacy of witness is alive here — where Black creativity is preserved, illuminated, and given space to breathe and expand.

More than 7,000 artists have exhibited in these sunlit rooms. Exhibitions range from Hudson River School–style landscapes to black-and-white portraits of jazz culture. Many women of color who are now celebrated on global stages first found their footing here. That matters.

This is where we come to see how communities lift one another up. Where aesthetics take shape and turn into movements under the care of people who made space for them.

Founded in 1990 by artist Joe Overstreet and his wife Corinne Jennings, the gallery sits across from Kenkeleba House, the nonprofit they established with music historian Samuel C. Floyd in the 1970s to preserve and uplift Black art and culture. Housed in a turn-of-the-20th-century building, Kenkeleba includes their home, a sculpture garden, and a vast collection of art. Together, the gallery and Kenkeleba House have been touchstones for generations of artists and audiences ever since.