Rose Skinner

Rose Skinner MBE (, 30 December 1900 – 17 September 1979) was an Australian art dealer. She established the Skinner Galleries in West Perth with her husband Joe Skinner, which became one of Western Australia's first successful commercial galleries.

Personal life Skinner was born on 30 December 1900 in Perth, Western Australia. She was one of five children born to Mary (née Coyle) and Samuel Dvoretsky. Her father, of Jewish descent, was born in present-day Belarus and moved to Australia in the 1890s. He purchased a farming property at Kwinana Beach and was a long-serving chairman of the Rockingham Road Board.

Skinner was educated at Methodist Ladies' College, Perth. She married businessman Herbert Varley in 1924, but was divorced in 1930. She subsequently began a relationship with John Wastell Harrison, an Australian-born tea planter in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka). They married in Kegalle in 1934, but she had returned to Perth by 1939, working as a censor during World War II. She was divorced again in 1945 and the following year married English-born Josiah Skinner, a builder and real estate agent who was also a collector of art and antiques. They met through the Workers' Art Guild.

After several years of ill health, Skinner died in Subiaco on 17 September 1979 at the age of 78. She was cremated with Anglican rites. She persuaded her husband to build a gallery on the property, an "attractive, exposed brick and glass edifice [which] reflected his interest in contemporary architecture and design".

The Skinner Galleries opened on 14 October 1958 and held 214 exhibitions until its closure in 1976, which occurred after Skinner suffered a severe stroke. During the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games she staged a Nolan exhibition which was opened by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Skinner and the gallery were involved in several controversies relating to her exhibitors' modernist art. In 1965, a nude painting by Jon Molvig was removed and examined by detectives on obscenity grounds. In 1971, she publicly criticised the Perth City Council for its unwillingness to display Sid Nolan's paintings of Western Australian wildflowers, stating "an artist of international reputation cannot be expected to be the butt of the casual misjudgmentsor is it the deep-rooted and uninstructed prejudices?of city councillors in the world's most isolated capital".

Legacy and honours Skinner and her husband "were hugely influential as tastemakers for, and supporters of, the Australian art scene".

Skinner was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1972 for "services to art". She initially planned to return the honour on the grounds that she had expected an award of a higher rank, describing it as "an insult to the art medium". She subsequently decided to accept the award.

Skinner's contribution to the cultural life of Perth, as well as the efforts of fellow gallerists Rie Heymans, Elizabeth Blair Barber and Cherry Lewis, were remembered in 2026 as part of an exhibition at the North Metropolitan TAFE entitled "Pioneering Spaces: Four Women Who Shaped Perth's Art Scene".