“It is with great sadness that the gallery announces the passing of our beloved founder,” Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Art Gallery said in a statement. “The gallery mourns this tremendous loss and will live on in its spirit.”
Scott Briscoe, the gallery’s director, declined to comment beyond the official statement.
Sikkima’s lawyer, Simone Nunes, told the Brazil-based newspaper O Globo that she tried to contact Sikkima over the weekend but was unable to reach him. The newspaper reported that she said she found him dead when she entered his house with a key she had from monitoring his house when he was not in Rio.
Firefighters in Rio de Janeiro removed the body from the apartment, according to local reports, and transported it to the Medico-Legal Institute in Rio. The Washington Post was unable to independently verify these details.
“We can confirm that an American citizen has died in Rio de Janeiro,” a State Department spokesperson said when asked about Sikkema’s death. “We extend our deepest condolences to the family. We are providing all appropriate assistance to the family. Due to privacy concerns, we have no further comment.”
Sikkema, who was born in 1948 and grew up in Illinois, graduated from the now-defunct San Francisco Art Institute, according to her biography posted on the gallery’s website. He began working in art galleries in 1971 as exhibition director at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, and later served as director of the Vision Gallery in Boston from 1976 to 1980 and then became owner of that gallery from 1980 to 1989.
In 1991, Sikkema moved to New York City and opened his own contemporary art gallery called Wooster Gardens, named after the location on Wooster Street. In 1999, the gallery moved to Chelsea’s Arts District, where it eventually became Sikkema Jenkins & Company, the name it still bears.
The gallery, widely known for representing contemporary black artists, currently represents 32 artists, including Kara Walker, Louis Fratino, and Sheila Hicks, among others.
The program also features Jeffrey Gibson, an artist representing the United States at the 60th Annual Venice Biennale. Gibson, who is of Cherokee descent and a member of the Choctaw Band of Mississippi Indians, will be the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States at the event.
Rachel Tashjian contributed to this report.