Jennifer Packer
Value#17
Egon Investment Scores
Liquidity
4/10
How easily works can be bought and sold at auction
Institutional
9/10
Museum collections, biennials, and institutional recognition
Momentum
8/10
Recent price trends, gallery moves, and market buzz
Discovery
4/10
Undervaluation opportunity relative to peer artists
Risk
2/10
Investment risk factors — higher means more volatile
Market Position
- Pricing
- Pricing Intelligence
- Availability
- Works rarely appear at auction; most sales are gallery-direct
- Primary Market
- Gallery-controlled through Sikkema Malloy Jenkins and Corvi-Mora
- Collector Access
- Contact galleries for current pricing on available works
- Market Trajectory
- Steady institutional validation suggests sustainable market versus speculative peaks of some peers
- Liquidity
- Low secondary market liquidity with limited auction appearances indicating strong primary gallery control and collector retention
- Auction History
- Date
- May 19, 2022
- Sale
- New Now Evening Auction
- Work
- Fire Next Time (2012)
- Medium
- Oil on canvas, in two parts, 70⅛ x 156 inches
- Estimate
- $600,000-$800,000
- Amount USD
- $2,349,000
- Performance
- Nearly 3x high estimate
- Auction House
- Sotheby's New York
- Auction Results Summary
- Market Activity
- Limited secondary market presence indicating strong primary gallery control
- Price Range USD
- 13,970 - 2,349,000
- Record Established
- Since 2021
- Total Lots Tracked
- 6 artworks at auction (MutualArt data)
- Recent Auction Highlights
Work Venue Fire Next Time Sotheby's Untitled (2010) Sotheby's Contemporary Day Auction
- Market Position
- Market Positioning
- Tier
- Contemporary Black figurative painting
- Peer Artists
- Kerry James Marshall, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Christina Quarles, Simone Leigh, Jordan Casteel, Tomashi Jackson, Eric N. Mack
- Market Context
- Part of 2019-2022 surge in Black figurative painting market that coincided with BLM movement
- Comparative Performance
- Article noted 'painterly intelligence of Jennifer Packer is undeniable and poignant' - positioned as exception among quality artists in the boom
Institutional Presence
Whitney Museum of American Art
Art Institute of Chicago
Smithsonian Institution
Studio Museum in Harlem
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles
Smith College Museum of Art
Jimenez-Colon Collection
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
- Exhibitions
- Major Group Exhibitions
Year Venue Exhibition — Whitney Museum of American Art Whitney Biennial 2019 2018 — 33rd Bienal de São Paulo 2021 New Orleans Prospect 5: Yesterday we said tomorrow — Whitney Museum of American Art Edges of Ailey — National Portrait Gallery, London The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure — The FLAG Art Foundation, New York Friends & Lovers 2023 Museum Brandhorst, Munich La Vie en Rose 2019 — Young, Gifted, and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art
- Museum Collections
- Tier 1 Museums
- Whitney Museum, MOCA LA, Serpentine Galleries, Art Institute of Chicago
- Acquisition Momentum
- Strong - multiple major museum acquisitions 2018-2021
Career & Biography
- Identity
- Current Location
- New York City (Bronx)
- Personal Context
- Partner
- April Freely (poet, deceased July 2021)
- Impact on Work
- Current exhibition 'Dead Letter' (2025) addresses grief and loss following partner's death
- Significant Awards
Year Award 2013 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant 2020 Hermitage Greenfield Prize 2021 John Koch Award in Art 2025 Heinz Award for the Arts - Teaching Positions
- Status
- Current
- Position
- Associate Professor, Painting Department
- Institution
- Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)
- Residencies Fellowships
Institution Year Program Studio Museum in Harlem 2012-2013 Artist-in-Residence Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts 2014-2016 Visual Arts Fellow American Academy in Rome 2020-2021 —
- Artistic Context
- Focuses on intimate portraits of friends and family, viewing representation as political act. States: 'I hope to make works that suggest how dynamic and complex our lives and relationships really are.' Emphasizes 'shameless generosity and accuracy' in depicting Black lives.
Artistic Profile
- Evolution
- Early Work
- 2011-2013: Small, loose portraits painted in early morning hours during Yale MFA
- Mid Period
- 2014-2018: Development of commemorative floral still lifes, refinement of technique
- Mature Work
- 2019-present: Large-scale works, increased institutional recognition, deeper engagement with loss and mourning
- Influences
- Theoretical Influences
- Fred Moten (blur as political aesthetic)bell hooks (essay on representing whiteness)Christina Sharpe (wake work theory)Jazz and poetry rhythms
- Movements and Periods
- Key Works
Title Year Significance Subject Fire Next Time 2012 Auction record holder, 13-foot diptych — Say Her Name 2017 — Commemorates Sandra Bland Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!) 2020 — Memorial to Breonna Taylor A Lesson in Longing 2019 Monumental work featured in Whitney Biennial, acquired by Whitney — The Body Has Memory 2018 — Portrait of artist Eric N. Mack Tia 2017 Exemplary portrait work — Transfiguration (He's No Saint) 2017 Addresses stop-and-search racial profiling — - Primary Subjects
- Intimate portraits of friends, family, and fellow artistsFloral still lifes (described as funerary bouquets)Interior scenesCommemorative works responding to racial violence
- Formal Innovations
- Uses incompleteness, blur, and material removal to protect subjects' interiority while maintaining presence. Resists straightforward legibility, requiring sustained viewing.
- Political Dimension
- Explicitly political practice centered on Black visibility and representation. Packer states: 'My inclination to paint bodies, especially from life, is a completely political one. We belong here. We deserve to be seen and acknowledged in real time.'
- Techniques and Mediums
- Color
- Monochromatic or limited palettes - often pinks, reds, blues, earth tones
- Style
- Loose, improvisational brushstrokes with limited color palettes
- Medium
- Primarily oil on canvas, also works on paper with charcoal and pastel
- Process
- Made through 'undoing' - scraping, blotting, removal of paint
- Technique
- Uses turpentine to blur colors and lines, emphasizes transparency
- Composition
- Figures often merge with or retreat into backgrounds; incomplete areas left visible
Critical Reception
- Critical Reception
- Critical Consensus
- Universally praised for technical virtuosity, emotional depth, and political significance. Distinguished from speculative market boom artists as having substantive practice. Noted for 'painterly intelligence' and ability to balance intimacy with formal innovation.
- Key Themes Identified
- Memory, loss, mourning, Black visibility, tender representation, resistance to easy legibility, protection of subjects' interiority, funerary imagery, institutional violence, grief as political
- Publications and Media
- Catalogue Publications
Title Year Publisher Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing 2021 Serpentine/Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König Jennifer Packer: Tenderheaded 2018 Renaissance Society - Major Publications Coverage
- Critics
- Barry Schwabsky, Beau Rutland, Juliana Halpert
- Frequency
- Multiple features and reviews
- Assessment
- Serious critical attention from leading contemporary art journal
- Publication
- Artforum
- Recent
- December 2025 review of 'Dead Letter' exhibition
- Publication
- The New York Times
- Critic
- Adrian Searle, Laura Cumming
- Assessment
- ★★★★ rating, described as 'paintings that creep up on you'
- Publication
- The Guardian
- Quote
- If you only have time to visit one [show], go to the Serpentine Gallery
- Critic
- Will Gompertz
- Rating
- ★★★★★
- Publication
- BBC Arts
- Dates
- Multiple features including December 2019, November 2025
- Contributor
- Amber Jamilla Musser
- Publication
- The Brooklyn Rail
- Feature
- Interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist
- Publication
- Cultured Magazine
- Coverage
- Multiple interviews and exhibition coverage
- Publication
- The Art Newspaper
- Recent
- December 2025 review - 'paintings that cut deep'
- Publication
- Hyperallergic
- Year
- 2021
- Assessment
- Included in annual coverage of significant artists
- Publication
- ArtReview
- Year
- 2016
- Feature
- 'With Shameless Generosity: An Interview with Jennifer Packer'
- Publication
- Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters
- Significance
- Extensive scholarly interview
Gallery & Representation
- Fair Presence
- Represented at major fairs including Frieze London (noted '30 Artists to Watch at Frieze London' 2015)
- Representation
- Market Strategy
- Controlled release with emphasis on institutional placement over speculative secondary market
- Gallery Tier Assessment
- Strong Tier 2 galleries with excellent institutional relationships
Jennifer Packer's fundamentals are strong. But is the timing right for your collection? Egon analyzes fit against your aesthetic thesis, risk tolerance, and portfolio gaps.
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