After two decades as the senior director of Anthony Meier Fine Arts in San Francisco, Rebecca Camacho is branching out on her own. This May, the industry veteran launched her own downtown contemporary art gallery, Rebecca Camacho Presents. In the newly opened 928 square-foot space located at 794 Sutter Street, the gallerist focuses on championing women and local artists, including Oakland-based Sahar Khoury, collage artist of African American girlhood Deborah Roberts, and Leilah Babirye, the Ugandan-born artist who sought asylum status in the United States because of her sexual orientation. Learn more in our Q+A below.
How did you get your start in the art world?
I began as an intern at The Capp Street Project, a site-specific artist residency program in San Francisco. It was a very inspiring program. Artists were given a blank space and allowed to create exhibitions with no formal rules or requirements; the only parameter was that the space be restored to original format at the close of the residency. It was a finite experience. I saw incredible installations there.
It was through Capp Street that I met Tony Meier; he was on the Board of Directors. I started at Anthony Meier Fine Arts in a part-time assistant role that grew and grew. I ended up working with Tony for 20 years.
What inspired you to make the jump to being a gallery owner and what was the process like to launch your own space?
Working at AMFA I had a direct hand in building the gallery program and profile, I knew how to do this work and I was ready to speak in the first person—so the jump to opening my own space has felt very natural. It was about 6 months after I left AMFA that I decided to open a gallery. I’ve always been most interested in the direct connections with primary artists and audience. I love the long arc of dialogue, seeing years of conversations reflected in artists’ work, building trust and language to be the voice of that work in a larger forum.
My first step was to reach out to artists. Many I had connections to but many I did not; lots of blind emails! But everyone agreed to meet with me and regardless of whether or not the conversations progressed to working together, we had great visits and those dialogues really helped me shape and fine tune how I wanted to proceed...
Michelle Konstantinovsky
