Pioneering gallerist Jonathan Carver Moore focuses on LGBTQ+ artists

Jonathan Carver Moore often walks his dog past his eponymous gallery on Market Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district and stops to listen to passersby’s reactions to the artworks in the giant glass windows. It may seem like a simple eavesdropping exercise, but for Moore it’s a serious effort to take the local community’s opinions into account.

“I know what it’s like to be an outsider,” Moore tells Artsy. As the first openly gay black male gallerist in San Francisco, Moore opened his gallery with the belief that the art world should be accessible. Moore, who has lived in the Tenderloin since moving to the Bay Area nine years ago, founded his gallery in 2023 with programming centered around BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and female artists. “How can we make sure that their voices are truly heard and that we do so in a space or gallery that understands what they’re going through?” the gallerist says of his approach.

Less than a year after breaking ground, Jonathan Carver Moore has become a well-known figure in the Bay Area art world and is making a splash elsewhere. He has already participated in five art fairs, including the Chicago Fair, Investec Art Fair in Cape Town, and Untitled Miami, and found time to launch a residency program on the gallery’s first anniversary, occupying a vacant 2,600-square-foot space next door. The first artist to participate in the seven-week program is Ghanaian painter Aplerh-Doku Borlabi, who just wrapped up his solo show at the gallery, “BOLD,” which ended on June 15.

For a newcomer to the commercial art world, such a huge success is almost unprecedented. Moore grew up in a military family and studied sociology and women’s studies before earning a master’s degree in public relations from George Washington University. Moore’s love of art began as a child, and he recalls visiting museums such as the Louvre, the Hirshhorn Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother as a child – an experience he believes allowed him to integrate art into every aspect of his life from an early age.

Moore began his career in the nonprofit world, working at United Way Worldwide and Out & Equal before joining the Rosenberg Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to racial and economic equality in California. While at Rosenberg, he had the opportunity to immerse himself in the Bay Area art scene and proposed curating a group of local artists, such as Lucky Rapp and Lena Gustafson, at the foundation’s headquarters.

In 2020, Moore founded the online magazine Clarity Sharing the art and stories of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women artists from around the world, in 2021 he took a step of faith and fully entered the art world, joining the San Francisco Institute of Contemporary Art. Despite this, Moore found that the institutional world often lacked the agility required to promptly address social issues. “Unfortunately, you’re not always able to move as quickly as people would like you to in response to things that are happening to us or around us,” he says. Fueled by this realization, he decided to open his own gallery, a space designed to quickly adapt and engage with the changing cultural landscape.

The gallery’s inaugural exhibition features Taiwanese immigrant Kacy Jung, whose work explores themes of identity and cultural assimilation—a moving choice that embodies Moore’s commitment to providing a platform for voices that resonate deeply with personal and collective narratives. Moore realized her work was a perfect fit with his personal vision after seeing her work at Root Division, a San Francisco-based nonprofit focused on arts education, where Moore serves on the board of directors. The exhibition laid the foundation for the gallery, underscoring its commitment to bringing marginalized voices to the forefront.

Moore stressed the need to carefully balance commercial considerations with pushing boundaries. This considered, pragmatic approach gives gallerists time to take risks with new artists while prioritizing the safety of the gallery and the artists participating in the exhibition.

“I need to balance what I want to continue to show with why I started the company, my true vision versus something that’s just there to sell,” Moore said. “So if you’re doing six shows a year, maybe four of them you can count on… but then I have a wild card, right? And that ‘wild card’ is often the one that surprises everybody, and then you have another breakthrough artist.”

Through the gallery’s new residency program, Moore hopes to build connections between Bay Area artists and the global art world. For example, during Boaraby’s residency, the gallery organized events that allowed locals to engage directly with the artist. Visitors were able to talk with Boaraby, observe his creative process, and gain insight into his artistic journey. Most importantly, this is the foundation for building the art world with inclusivity rather than obscurity, Moore said.

“I feel like when you have a deep connection to art, you better understand its value, worth and beauty,” Moore said. “We hope to do the same for the other people who participate in the residency.”

Moore just held her ninth exhibition at the gallery, “Infinity,” featuring work by lens-based artist Victoria Mara Helwell. In the future, the gallery owner plans to invite Cameroonian artist Ceci Elangwe and Indian artist Anoushka Mirchandani to the gallery for residencies, and the gallery owner hopes to exhibit Indian artist Anoushka Mirchandani’s work at the FOG Art and Design Fair in her hometown next year.