As a child, Claire Thriffiley showed up to her youth soccer team photos wearing lipstick. Not because she was trying to make a statement on the, apart from her, all-boys team — she just wanted people to know she was a girl. It’s a humorous anecdote, but one that says something essential about the woman who would go on to open Claire Elizabeth Gallery in the French Quarter: she has always known exactly who she is.
Thriffiley grew up in New Orleans, the youngest of three and the only daughter in a large, close-knit family that shaped her in ways she’s still discovering. Two painters — her great-aunt, Georgia Nebel, and her cousin Amy Palmer — lit the earliest spark.
“When I was younger, my family would help host art openings for Amy at her house, and it was amazing how everyone pitched in from hanging art to serving sangria to making wall labels,” says Thriffiley. “The gallery may have my name on the door, but I really think of it as a testament to my family.”
Her education took her far from Louisiana — the College of Charleston, the American Business School in Paris, the Sorbonne, and ultimately a Master’s in Arts Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York — before a career in fine art insurance managing some of the country’s most significant private collections. Formative, if unglamorous. Then a family loss brought her home.
Back in Louisiana, she moved through the Office of Cultural Development and Neal Auction Company before opening her French Quarter gallery inside La Galerie Hotel. Her curatorial eye gravitates toward nature, ecology and what she calls “a bit of whimsy.” Artists like Ida Floreak, Megan Lightell and photographer Ben Depp all reflect pieces of her own story.
“Every work of art in the gallery is something that I would personally want to hang in my home,” she says.
When not curating, Thriffiley volunteers at Manning Family Children’s Hospital, where she founded Amy’s Art Cart in 2014 in memory of her cousin, who died after a long battle with Multiple Sclerosis. The program has distributed more than $150,000 in art supplies to young patients.
“Occasionally a patient will ask me — ‘Are you Amy? Is this your cart?’ — and it always makes me tear up,” she says.
Her approach to collecting is equally unguarded: buy only what makes you feel something. Credentials and gut instinct both count. She navigated years of ageism and sexism in the field by staying calm, curious and connected to her purpose. The best advice Thriffiley ever received about running a gallery? “There are no art emergencies.”
Claire Elizabeth Gallery, @claireelizabethgallery
