Fashion
The Artist, the Gallerist and Their Liver
Far from the dizzying auctions, splashy galas and angling dealers, a precious gift sheds light on a gentler way the art world works.
Jennifer Doran was in a desperate place on the evening of Feb. 23, 2023, when she quietly interrupted a celebration that Robischon Gallery was throwing for its 45th anniversary and summoned the artists in attendance to join her in a back room.
There, Doran, who owns the gallery, let out a secret. She was dying, she told the artists, some of whom had been on her roster for many years. Her liver was failing. A transplant was the only option. She needed to find a donor, and members of her family were not a match.
Doran implored the artists to help spread the word, and explained that a donor would have to give up only a portion of their organ for the procedure. She just needed one person to step up.
Among the group was Derrick Velasquez, an artist who had signed on with the gallery in 2010, when he was just out of grad school. “I just remember kind of, like, staring off into the distance,” he said. “I was thinking how difficult it must have been to ask for something like this.”
Velasquez was recalling that moment during a recent interview, a few hours before his latest exhibit opened at Robischon. The show, which runs through Dec. 31, is his first at the gallery since an operation in July 2023, when doctors removed 58 percent of his liver and gave it to Doran, thereby saving her life.
He is doing fine now, he said. His liver has grown back to 90 percent of what it was before the procedure. The thin vertical scar on his abdomen is fading.
