Opening an Art Gallery in a Pandemic

Former Documentary Filmmaker Turns to a New Medium

When artists wander into Debbie Morton’s art gallery to show her their portfolios, she usually asks them to email them to her instead. “It’s impossible to look at everyone’s work,” she explains. “If I did, nothing in the gallery would ever get done.”

But Suave Gonzales was different.

Suave Gonzales (right) and Debbie Morton with a new Gonzales painting. Photo courtesy of Morton Contemporary

“He came into the gallery a few times,” recalls Morton, who lives in Swarthmore. On his third visit, they started chatting, and she felt there was something special about him. When he mentioned he was an artist, Morton decided to take a chance and look at his work. She was not expecting what she saw. 

Even on his phone screen, she could see that his work “was so spectacularly beautiful and well done,” she recalls. Intrigued, she asked him to tell her his story. It was a remarkable one.

Not long ago, Gonzales had been released from Graterford Prison after serving 31 years of a life sentence. His first years there had been rough, he told her, but eventually he found a way to turn his life around. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Villanova University. And he discovered art.

“He taught himself how to paint,” Morton explains. “Initially, he would use the raw materials in the prison — sugar, coffee beans, plastic utensils. He would take shavings from the walls of his prison cell.”

That was three years ago. Today, Gonzales is a community organizer, a radio host, and a podcast producer, as well as a professional artist. “He does a lot of portraiture of change-makers and popular figures,” Morton says. “He also does social-justice-themed pieces that are close to his heart.” 

Combining social justice work and art is close to Morton’s heart, too. It’s part of the mission of her new gallery, Morton Contemporary, which opened last fall on 13th Street in the Midtown Village section of Center City. She says that many of the artists whose work she shows have amazing backstories like Gonzales’s.

Religion to Documentary to Art

Debbie Morton opened Morton Contemporary last September. Photo courtesy of Morton Contemporary

Morton grew up in Chicago. One of seven children of Arnold Morton, the founder of Morton’s Steakhouse, she has a good backstory of her own. After studying English at the University of Pennsylvania, she spent a year on a fellowship in Jerusalem. Then, thinking to try something more practical, she moved to Hollywood to try to break into film and TV. “It wasn’t for me,” she says.

She next spent three years at Harvard Divinity School, studying comparative religion and earning a master’s in theological studies. While in graduate school, she learned that Boston’s public television station, WGBH, was looking for a research intern to help with a documentary on the life of Jesus. Morton was an excellent fit. And she liked the work. After graduation, she stayed on at the network as a senior researcher for the documentary series FRONTLINE.

For the next 15 years, Morton wrote, produced, and directed documentaries. Beginning in 2012, she directed Fast Times at West Philly High for FRONTLINE, spending two years filming at the troubled Philadelphia public school. The film followed students and teachers as they participated in a $10 million competition to design and build the world’s first 100-mile-per-gallon car. “These extraordinary high school kids were up against industry giants like Tesla, Tata Motors, and MIT,” Morton says. (To find out what happened, stream the film.)

Morton loved documentary work. But, after her three children were born, she didn’t love the amount of international travel it required. She started looking around for something that would keep her in the arts but closer to home. For a few years, she ran a franchise of the art gallery Carré d’artistes, whose mission is to make art accessible to everyone. 

By 2019, she was ready for a gallery more completely her own. She wanted to choose her own artists, work with larger-format pieces, and organize exhibitions. The plan was to open on March 16, 2020. 

Then came the Covid-19 pandemic. On March 13, the city shut down. Morton Contemporary wouldn’t open its doors until September 1.

Two Galleries in One

Morton Contemporary consists of two spaces. One is dedicated to selling painting, photography, and sculpture by emerging artists. The other, next door, is reserved for special exhibitions: works by M.C. Escher (and some of the artists he influenced) are on view there through June. 

Morton works with artists from the United States and around the world: Spain, Belgium, France, Australia, Iran, Lebanon. “There’s a lot of texting,” she says. 

Sally K, a Lebanese-American painter based in Qatar, is one such artist. “She’s got these gorgeous, large-scale images of women,” Morton says, “with floral arrangements that cover their faces.” Often working with gold and silver leaf, Sally K paints women from the shoulders up. Her models are often Thai, African American, and Hispanic. With small paintings priced from about $400 to $700, and larger works going for about 10 times more, Sally K is currently the gallery’s best seller.

Once people are able to gather in groups again, Morton has plans. She wants to host salon-style talks by artists, social activists, and Buddhists, bringing people together to listen to each other and discuss topics over food and beverages. (She has a culinary heritage, after all!) She envisions “a kind of speakeasy art space” centered on one of the gallery’s best features: an 11-foot bar equipped with a three-tap kegerator and a wine fridge — which currently functions as the check-out counter. 

“I can’t wait to be able to open it up!” Morton says.

Morton Contemporary is online at mortoncontemporary.com.

Morton Contemporary is currently co-sponsoring a fundraising auction to help fight gun violence and support its victims. Read about it here.