Quinci Baker, a 2017 graduate of the School of Art, has teamed up with fellow artist and writer Maleke Glee to found Down Gallery, a nomadic gallery based in Washington, D.C. that uses multiple exhibition formats—dynamic exhibition, publications, and programs—to showcase innovative artwork. Both the featured art and the means of exhibiting it are meant to raise questions about established gallery practices and the machinery of marketing and selling art. Down Gallery’s mission is to provoke dialogue, scholarship, and economies that go beyond the traditional limitations of the fine art market.

“As an artist first and foremost, I feel called to this side of the artist–gallery relationship due to the lack of agency I have felt as an emerging artist,” Baker says. She points out that many artists, after they graduate from art school—following Cooper, Baker earned her M.F.A. at Yale—are vulnerable to “intimidating and sometimes predatory relationships with mid- and higher tiered galleries. There is not much done to prepare artists for this experience and trial-and-error is how you get your footing typically.”

Down Gallery’s first exhibition, What a Wonderful World, which ran from October 10 to 26, showcased the work of artists hailing from nearby Prince George’s County in Maryland, many of whom are also Cooper Union graduates. The county is a majority-Black suburb, and Baker grew up there surrounded by Black professionals, including many graduates of HBCUs who pledged Black sororities and fraternities. It was an environment that spoke to a wide range of professional possibilities. Baker says, “Being raised in an environment that defied societal projections on what a majority black region in the US should look like gave me a certain confidence in myself and my culture.” The impact of her upbringing hit home when she moved to New York to attend college in a predominantly white environment. She realized that her background in Prince George’s County provided a “foundation that would color my perspective moving forward.”

The gallery’s name comes from the experience of Baker and other DC-area teenagers who, traveling to downtown Washington from nearby suburbs, referred to their jaunts to Gallery Place Metro Station as going “down gallery.” She and her contemporaries depended upon the cultural opportunities of DC, namely the city’s free art museums, to nurture and educate their burgeoning interests and sensibilities. “We had to pay homage to this place and chapter of our lives that instilled our artistic vision,” Baker says of the gallery name.

What a Wonderful World showed work of great variety in scale, material, and conceptual framework, but as Baker points out, the art was born of a particular visual, historical, and societal vantage point. From that shared point of departure, this cohort utilizes different conduits to traverse time, space, and place. As Down Gallery’s press release notes, “Grounded in a shared knowledge of tradition, aesthetic formalism, and social codes, these artists defy monolithic projections and their ontological constraints. The essence of this place shapes a worldview that is both deeply rooted and radically expansive.” Sydney Vernon A’21, Sam Vernon A’09, Eric N. Mack A’10, and Rush Baker IV A’09 all contributed work to the exhibition.

Baker gives Suitland High School great credit for exposing its students to fine arts. But her time at Cooper, she says, changed her life. “I learned to look deeply at everything. My education at Cooper instilled an unwavering commitment to collaboration and education. I also began my Cooper journey in 2012, at the height of the Free Cooper movement. That experience taught me what collective action could accomplish, and I was deeply empowered by the experience.”

She sees Down Gallery as its own form of collective action. While she’s witnessed opportunities for artists of color diminish in the current political climate, she’s been heartened by programs like the A.I.R. Fellowship for Emerging and Underrepresented Women and Non-Binary Artists that refuse to censor fellows like Baker, who was awarded the grant in 2024. “Down Gallery makes the same pledge to our artists,” she says.

Down Gallery’s programming includes two to four annual publications, artist residencies, and art advisory. The gallery will eventually be available on virtual platforms to give the public access to exhibitions and writing. They are also developing an emerging artist and collector program, which they hope to unveil in fall of 2026. In keeping with the gallery’s mission, the program aims at creating a more equitable relationship between artists, collectors, and cultural institutions.