Victoria Scott was born in Bluffton, Indiana in 1943, and graduated from Bluffton High School like her mother before her. She was deeply interested in art from an early age. In 1965, she graduated in art history from Smith College where her interest focused on African art. She was profoundly influenced by the trilogy of books on the subject by anthropologist/philosopher Robert Plant Armstrong and she went to Dallas to study with him.  Shortly thereafter he contracted cancer and passed away – a tragic event that was deeply disturbing and disorienting.

The scant literature on African art in those days focused on wood sculpture, always with the caveat that colonialism and “development” degraded and distorted the tradition. Victoria refused to believe that Africa no longer produced art; she was correct. She spent the 1970s in Nigeria, and in Osogbo, a Yoruba town 80 miles north of Lagos, she found a unique “folk art” which was at its most vibrant during this time. She collected Osogbo art and documented the emerging of post-colonial culture.

In 1980, Victoria returned to the U.S. where she raised her two children and continued to promote the work and careers of Osogbo artists. In 1990, she relocated from New York to Santa Fe. She returns to West Africa periodically to collect art and textiles.  Currently she is putting work online to sell and tell the story of modern Nigerian “folk art.”