Bio

When Courtney Collins shows you around her art gallery in Big Sky Town Center, Montana, she does so as though she were introducing you to her close friends. Courtney is the owner and director of her art gallery with a focus on both emerging and established artists and photographers covering Contemporary, Western and Native works. She opened her Gallery in July of 2020 and has not looked back. Courtney had a life experience at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts at a Herb Ritts photography show titled “WORK” in 1996. Ritts’s stark black and white images of celebrities and supermodels blended with classic fine art works left a lasting impression on her. Courtney collected artist contacts to bring her gallery to life just as she collected experiences as a child to build her career’s foundation. Her father, who worked for a company that manufactured men’s clothing textiles, raised her in Long Island, New York and she remembers, as a child, being fascinated by the different patterns of the ties in his closet. She attended an Anglo-American International private high school in New York City where she says she was introduced to an eccentric and affluent group, followed by attendance at Syracuse University. Once fascinated by fashion design, Courtney ultimately found it outside of her wheelhouse and settled instead on a degree in textile design. Already familiar with the area from spending summers with her mother, Courtney moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she spent 15 years working in interior design learning from Barclay Butera, a notable name in the industry. While in Jackson, she grew her relationships with Western art and fell in love with the idea of selling pieces to those who would cherish them. Back in Big Sky, Courtney notes: “I want my gallery to leave the viewer challenged and stimulated and have thought-provoking work that’s important and beautiful.”