COMMUNITY & CULTURE
20 PEOPLE TO KNOW
FREIDA
WHEATON
Arts Activist
St. Louis Community
Freida L Wheaton has had two distinct careers, as a
professor at her alma mater, Tougaloo College, and as inhouse counsel for two major corporations over a 30-year
legal career.
She now dedicates herself fully to St. Louis’ nonprofit arts
and culture arena. Freida established Salon 53, a private
residential art gallery in 2006, providing numerous artists
with exhibition opportunities. Focusing on curatorial
work over the years has led to collaborations with other
art institutions. In 2008, she curated T
exture in Art, a
group show at the Gallery of Contemporary Art at St.
Louis Community College at Forest Park; and co-curated
the 2007 Black Fine Arts Show of the Urban League of
Metropolitan St. Louis.
Recently, she curated a 14-venue exhibition, Hands Up,
Don’t Shoot: Artists Respond that included over 100
artists from across the U.S. presented by the Alliance
of Black Art Galleries, which she founded in 2013. In
November 2014, she accepted the invitation to curate on
behalf of Philip Slein Gallery and presented Now! Vibrant
Traditions with an Unexpected Twist.
Freida is director and curator of the Vaughn Cultural
Center, a program of the Urban League of Metropolitan
St. Louis; a member of the Lambert-St. Louis International
Airport Art Advisory Committee; and has been a
member of the board of commissioners of the Saint Louis
Art Museum for over 14 years. She also supports the
Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts. Freida
is an avid art collector with an interest in Cuban and Latin
American art, a global traveler, and an excellent host of
many gatherings held at her residence and gallery. Notably,
she hosts an annual Martin Luther King Day brunch for up
to 80 guests, a tradition she began in 1985, a year before
the MLK national holiday was observed.
GAZELLE STL