About STROBEL Gallery

Strobel Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded by curator and gallerist Sheila Strobel, dedicated to presenting artists working at the intersection of conceptual inquiry, functional design, and visual expression. The program brings painting, sculpture, glass, and mixed-media practices into active conversation, guided by conceptually driven and materially informed approaches.

With a particular strength in the Studio Glass Art Movement, the gallery engages artists working regionally, nationally, and internationally who use glass as part of a broader conceptual and aesthetic practice. Studio glass is presented not as a category apart, but as an active participant in a global, interdisciplinary conversation—placed in dialogue with contemporary painting, sculpture, and mixed-media work within the wider fine art ecosystem.

Based in Palm Springs, Strobel Gallery operates from a dedicated gallery context while engaging audiences through exhibitions, fairs, special projects, and online presentations. The program is rooted in place while remaining outward-looking, allowing for dialogue across regions and disciplines within a clear curatorial center.

Mission

Strobel Gallery’s mission is to support artists building rigorous, sustainable practices and to place materially informed work into thoughtful, long-term collections. The gallery prioritizes clarity, integrity, and context—presenting work in ways that respect both the artist’s intent and the collector’s relationship to the object.

The program emphasizes:

• Conceptually driven, materially informed practices across media
  
  
• Contemporary painting, sculpture, glass, and mixed-media work in active dialogue
  
  
• Functional and design-forward objects with conceptual depth
  
  
• Emerging and mid-career artists whose practices challenge traditional categories
  
  
• Secondary-market and experimental presentations that offer new perspectives on established work

Strobel Gallery believes that works shaped by care, intelligence, and conviction hold enduring value—culturally, emotionally, and intellectually.

Curatorial Approach

The gallery’s curatorial vision is grounded in connoisseurship, collaboration, and curiosity, with an emphasis on conceptually driven, materially informed work. Exhibitions are developed through close dialogue with artists, studios, and estates, with careful attention to process, provenance, and presentation.

Group exhibitions are curated to honor the relationships between objects, artists, and the spaces they inhabit, allowing works to speak to one another with clarity and generosity.

In addition to exhibitions, the gallery supports edition programs, commissions, and site-responsive projects, offering collectors access to both one-of-a-kind works and thoughtfully produced editions.

About Sheila Strobel

Sheila Strobel is a curator and gallerist with deep roots in contemporary art, shaped by a career that bridges fine art, material-led practices, and spatial design. Her work centers on practices in which material intelligence informs—rather than dictates—conceptual and aesthetic direction, including modern expressions of traditional materials.

She most recently served as Gallery Director of Vetri, where she worked closely with leading and emerging artists to develop exhibitions, secondary-market initiatives, and long-term collector relationships grounded in trust and stewardship. Earlier in her career, she was a director at Fetherston Gallery, where she platformed emerging artists through the popular One Night Stand series, supporting experimentation and early career visibility.

Strobel is also the founder of PLAY, an artisan finishes and interior design studio based in Seattle that approached interiors from a fine art perspective. Through PLAY, she showcased historic plaster techniques and helped pioneer the use of microcement in contemporary interior design, contributing to a broader dialogue between material history and contemporary form. Her background further includes work as a high-end real estate stager and experience designer, developing spatial strategies for high-net-worth clients through Experience Design Project and Seattle Staged to Sell.

These professional experiences are complemented by a family history deeply embedded in modern and contemporary art. Her grandmother co-founded the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and her father was an influential modern artist. Together, these influences inform Strobel’s curatorial sensibility—one that values rigor without rigidity, material awareness without hierarchy, and a sustained commitment to artists, ideas, and context.