Art Scenes Around the World: Ghana with Alumna Chantel Akworkor Thompson

Sotheby’s Institute alumna Chantel Akworkor Thompson, founder of DēpART Consultancy and winner of the Institute’s 2025 Gavel start-up pitch competition, shares her insider perspective on what makes Ghana’s art scene one to watch.

The Vibrant Spirit of Ghana

Beyond the global market attention, what makes Ghana truly distinct right now is the rise of women-led creative infrastructures: alternative museums, creative research labs, digital archives, feminist creative economies, and craft-based incubators shaping new futures from the ground up.

These women aren’t just contributing to the ecosystem — they are redesigning it. Their work prioritizes community over spectacle, research over trend cycles, and intergenerational memory over fast-paced cultural consumption. Together, they are expanding what we understand as “art infrastructure” in Ghana: not only galleries and residencies, but healing spaces, knowledge labs, digital commons, and participatory platforms that center women’s agency.

“This moment is not simply a rise in visibility, but a shift in authorship. Women are defining the terms, rewriting the archives, and building new institutional possibilities with global relevance, but first and foremost deeply locally grounded.”