lyndon house art center's annual juried show's jurors program

11

40shows

43jurors

09.24.2015

A Brief History of the

Lyndon HouseArts Center’sAnnual

Juried Show’s Jurors

#J0J1D3 #J0L1A8#J0K1S7#J0J1H6#J0J1R5#J0J1R4

#J0H2P4#J0N2G3#J0N2P2#J0N2B1#J0M2P0#J0T1M9

#J0W2W9#J0G2V8#J0A2T7#J0R2S6#J0R2P5 #J0W3W0

#J0C3F5#J0B3F4#J0B3A3#J0A3F2#J0A3C1 #J0C3S6

#J0D0L8 #J0J1D2#J0W1H1#J0G1N0#J0G0S9

#J0A0C1 #J0A0F2 #J0C0S6#J0C0F5#J0B0A3 #J0B0F4 #J0A3T8#J0N3B7

#J0R4S3#J0G4V2

#J0H4P0#J0N3P9

#J0D0H7

#J0G4V2

by Marilyn Wolf-Ragatz

INTRODUCTION

I am so excited about this project—a staggering undertaking conceived by Marilyn Wolf-Ragatz—to research all 43 jurors and follow them into the present. It’s a captivating, thought-provoking glance into the careers of 43 remarkable individuals who are connected only by the fact that over the past 40 years each has spent a 3–4 day interlude judging artwork for the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show.

Reading their histories it is evident that although the jurors are alike in that they are highly accomplished in the world of art, they are very different in background, passion, goals, and achievements. This aspect is fitting as it was one of my original objectives in selecting jurors to inject a wide variety of geographies, interests, perspectives, and experiences so that each year’s show would be different than the others.

I became familiar with each juror from the memorable moments we spent together, yet when reading the details of the following pages I feel as if I am meeting them all over again. Even now it is fascinating to learn of the different course each took on their professional journey, and it demonstrates that career paths in art don’t often form a straight line. It is also enlightening to discover that there are more career opportunities in the field of art than one would realize. It is my hope that these shared experiences and opportunities will inspire others to pursue art as their life’s work—be it in collection, curating, education, history, preservation, studio, theory, or a combination thereof.

My sincere thanks go out to the jurors for their contributions to the Annual Juried Show and for their lasting impact on art, artists, and art awareness in our communities—impact that is evident before, during, and after their individual interludes of time in Athens.

I want to thank Kelly Howard for her dedication to the project and for her invaluable contribution in helping this project go from idea to something tangible.

Finally, I want to express my eternal gratitude to Marilyn for her enthusiastic research and for—literally—going the extra mile to connect with each juror. And, more importantly, to thank her for her continued dedication and commitment to the success of the Lyndon House Arts Center and the Annual Juried Show. Thank you so much, Marilyn!

Nancy Lukasiewicz

I have just completed what may have been the most fascinating experience of my life—the opportunity to interview and write about the 43 incredible arts professionals who over the past 40 years have accepted the invitation to jury the Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC) Annual Juried Show. I am indebted to them for broadening my understanding of true dedication to art, and for educating a public that is hungry to appreciate and understand creativity and genius through visual art. Their knowledge, passion, kindness, and generosity continue to astonish me.

Thank you, Nancy Lukasiewicz, for the vision you and Ronnie held as you began your work in 1974 to create an outstanding community arts center that is a gift to the Northeast Georgia community. Thank you for working tirelessly to keep the LHAC alive no matter the requirements or cost to you. A particular thanks to you for the dedicated efforts you made each year to bring the finest arts professionals in the country to Athens as jurors for the show. You gave each artist the opportunity to have their work reviewed by jurors with impeccable real-world expertise, reputation, and knowledge of the jurying process. Their collective experience certainly leveled the playing field.

I’m extremely grateful to the dedicated LHAC employees and volunteers who researched, interviewed, and wrote about the jurors and the Lyndon House for the show’s catalogs. Their work was invaluable to me, and gave me the foundation I needed to begin this project.

There is no annual show without the enthusiasm of the talented artists who continued to bring their artwork to the Lyndon House year after year. This past year, a record 862 pieces were submitted. Thank you, artists!

A huge thank you to Kelly Howard, my dear neighbor and friend, who turned out to be the technical genius, designer, and editor I was desperate to find! She was willing—and extremely able—to take this publication from a well-intended yet awkward piece of writing to a professionally designed and worded publication. Kelly, you’ve made me look good!

If it hadn’t been for Madeline Darnell and her amazing ability to talk me into doing a project before I even realize what I’m doing,

I would have never had this fortunate opportunity. Thank you, Madeline, . . . but can you wait a few months before you ask again?

Marilyn Wolf-Ragatz

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I remember having coffee with Marilyn and hearing about these amazing people in the art world she was interviewing for a project she was doing about their contributions to the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show.

Fast forward a year later and Marilyn’s project is something we can now hold in our hands and share with others.

I hope my contributions complement and convey the rich and colorful histories Marilyn has assembled for you.

Thank you, Marilyn, for the opportunity to help you with this project, and for being a believer in me and my work.

Kelly Howard

CONTENTS

1. Glen Kaufman 2. H. Douglas Pickering Bernard A. Solomon3. Gudmund Vigtel4. Edwin Ritts5. Annette Cone Skelton6. Michaelangelo Pistoletto7. David Heath8. Leon Arkus9. Nina G. Parris10. Marge Goldwater11. Gerald Nordland Roy Slade12. Thomas M. Messer13. Judy Chicago14. Lee Fleming15. James Demetrion16. Carlo M. Lamagna17. Neal Benezra18. Walter Hopps19. Michael David Hall 20. Audrey Flack21. Richard Waterhouse Debra L. Wilbur22. Eva Forgacs23. Susan Lubowsky Talbott24. William Wiley25. Gary Sangster26. James D. Dean27. James Rondeau28. Rachael Blackburn Cozad29. David C. Levy30. Benny Andrews31. William A. Fagaly32. Leslie A. Przybylek

33. Charles Wylie34. Karen Shaw35. Ron Platt36. Carla Hanzal37. Heather Pesanti38. Mark Sloan39. Gilbert Vicario40. Carter Foster

Appendix

LHAC Juried Show Statistics

Photos

All photos of the Lyndon House Arts Center were taken by Kelly Howard on October 2, 2015.

Exhibits photographed in Lyndon House Arts Center galleries include:Return from Exile: Contemporary Southeastern Indian Art; andMARK: An Exhibition Investigating the Nature of Mark-Making

Retirement Announcement (inside back cover)

Juror Histories

40 Shows, 43 Jurors: A Brief History of the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show’s Jurors

6

40 Shows, 43 Jurors: A Brief History of the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show’s Jurors 7


8


10

Imagine being invited to jury an art show—the first of its type in Athens, Georgia—that is to be held in an old historic

house being used as a community recreation center. You would have to place complete trust in those inviting your participation and feel confident that they would be successful in entirely revamping the first floor of the building. Revamping, in this case, required converting the space from recreation spaces that were in poor condition to a clean, white-walled, reasonably well-lit and inviting space that was ready to show selected artworks in a professional manner. With only two weeks to complete this daunting task, you would also have to know the participants well, trust their intentions, their skills, their ability to possess a clear and developed vision, and to be realistic about the challenges that lay before each of them.

That was Glen Kaufman’s situation in 1974 when he accepted the invitation to participate as the first juror of the Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC) Annual Juried Show titled The Joy of Art. He never doubted that what had been promised would happen as envisioned. Ronnie Lukasiewicz had the original vision and brought together a team of friends to complete the

renovations. Nancy Lukasiewicz extended Glen’s invitation to jury the artists’ many submissions. That event became the first of the 40—to date—annual juried shows at the LHAC. Glen knew Ronnie well enough to fully believe in his abilities. He also knew and completely trusted Nancy Lukasiewicz who was a star student in his fiber arts MFA program.

Glen Kaufman has always put his trust in the creative ideas of the artists with whom he has taught and worked. His career in fiber art began in just that way. He grew up in Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin, where he was a speech education major. Graduation was followed by a period of time in the Air Force during the Korean War. Kaufman and his new wife were sure they’d be sent on an adventure to far and exciting new places, instead they were sent to Columbus, Ohio, where Kaufman wound up working a 9 to 5 job. This was a disappointment until he realized that his hours allowed him time for participation in a local parks and recreation arts program. Kaufman dove right in and soon met a weaving instructor at the recreation center who convinced him to take one of her classes. He fell in love with weaving and was such a natural in his use of the medium that his teacher insisted he apply to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. After a bit of nudging, he applied, and was accepted.

Kaufman had some difficulty adjusting to his new roles as weaver and student, but soon fell in love with the endless possibilities he found in various fiber arts and the use of dyes. He and a cohort

“As I recall, it [the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show] was the first juried exhibition in Athens and we were surprised at the overwhelming number of works submitted.”

11974 – Professor of Art, Head of Fiber Arts Department, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia

2015 – Professor of Art Emeritus, Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia

Internationally recognized fiber artist; active in Athens, Georgia, and Kyoto, Japan

Career Highlights

Glen Kaufman


wrote Design on Fabrics which was published in 1977, the same year he was hired by the Lamar Dodd School of Art and given the opportunity to establish a new fiber arts program. He loved the freedom he was given in the art department to teach, complete his own work, research, and travel.

Travel seems to have been the incentive that continues to offer Kaufman the creative energy necessary to develop his artistic talents and exhibit his art around the world. He began by traveling to London where he was able to teach and complete some of his research. In 1979 he traveled the world in 90 days, 30 of which were spent in Asia. It was his trip to Kyoto, Japan, that influenced Kaufman the most and inspired him to branch

out as an artist.

Glen Kaufman retired from the University of Georgia after 40 years dedicated to teaching, researching, and building the program in fiber arts. For the past 30 years, he has spent half of each year in Kyoto and the other half in Athens. Kaufman’s work can be found in museums throughout the United States and Japan, and he continues to exhibit new works using contemporary fibers and man-made materials. Kaufman said in an interview that he believes his experiences in Japan have strongly influenced his work, and that changes in fabrics, techniques, and culture are his primary motivation.


12

It is difficult to imagine that in the early years of the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show there was no funding

for the printing of exhibition catalogs and no World Wide Web onto which articles and images could be uploaded. This made research of the earliest jurors, particularly those who have died, especially challenging. Information that has been located indicates that Douglas Pickering was a fine teacher and sculptor with an enormous personality and ability to inspire, and that he was greatly admired by his students. He approached each piece of art and each student’s work (as he had done as a juror) by looking for their merits and drawbacks. He avoided categorizing artworks and enjoyed pushing the limits of his own work by eliminating media restrictions, traditions, and scale.

Pickering spent most his life as a resident of Pennsylvania. He earned a BFA from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1943 and an MS from Pennsylvania State University in 1952. He earned a second graduate degree from the University of Colorado. While a student, Pickering had the privilege of studying with Max Beckmann, a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer best known as an Expressionist artist. Beckmann

came to the United States following World War II and taught at a number of universities across the United States. In 1949 Pickering studied under Beckmann at Mills College in Oakland, California. Critical to Pickering’s education were four study grants he received that allowed him the opportunity to work in the Scandinavian countries in 1955, in Greece, in the Cycladian Islands in 1970, and in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s.

Before becoming a professor of art and head of the sculpture department at Carnegie Mellon University, Pickering taught at Allegheny College, the University of Florida, and the Tyler School of Art. Pickering remained at Carnegie Mellon University until his death in 1991. Carnegie Mellon has always ranked very high among universities in the United States and its School of Art is no exception.

Douglas Pickering was happiest when he was actively creating and installing large-scale sculptural installations throughout the United States. He strongly believed that art should be an integral part of community interaction. It was Pickering who fought to pass the 1% for Art ordinance in Pittsburgh which funded the city’s first public art installation—a colorful brick relief designed by Pickering and installed on the exterior wall of the Magee Community Recreation Center in 1980. A writer once stated that Pickering, “Spent four spirited years as Chairman of the Mayor’s Art Commission in Pittsburgh.”

In 1985 local newspapers carried a story about a public art

“Professor Pickering was an inspirational man and beloved teacher. He dealt with each of his students on an individual basis.”

21975 – Head of the Sculpture Department, Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

2015 – Retired Professor of Art, Carnegie Mellon University

Sculptor until his death in 1991

Career Highlights

H. DouGlas PicKerinG 1921–1991


installation which Pickering spent nine years creating called Clarion Call, a 10 ft. high sculpture made of stainless steel and aluminum. At a time when Pittsburgh suffered the collapse of its steel manufacturing industry, the sculpture was designed to represent hope and optimism for the city’s residents. The 800 lb. sculpture was placed in its new outdoor park location by the installers to be permanently secured the next day. Unfortunately, what was designed to uplift the spirits of the community was uplifted by a thief and sold to a scrap metal yard for $35! The incident was a reflection of the history and controversy surrounding public art in Pittsburgh during that period.

Pickering had many successes during his life. His work has been exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and is in many

corporate and private collections. Upon his death, the Douglas Pickering Art Award was created in his honor and has been awarded to gifted young artists in the Pittsburgh area.

Pickering’s greatest success beyond his work as a sculptor was his marriage to college sweetheart Anna May. May, like Pickering, was an artist who worked in fiber. Together they created new designs and from them May completed many exquisite wall hangings. She died in March, 2015, at the age of 94. Her last commissioned artwork was a wall hanging for Shaare Torah Congregation which was completed when she was 90 years old. Just one week before her death, May was still taking French lessons. It’s easy to see that Pickering and May gave each the support and grounding every artist seeks.


14

Bernie Solomon teamed with Douglas Pickering to jury the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show in 1975.

The search for information about Bernie Solomon became a fascinating hunt. Little is written about him, but as small pieces of information were gathered- a captivating sketch of a highly creative, dedicated, and focused artist appeared.

Solomon was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was a contemporary wood engraver and only one of three across the United States who taught the craft in the 1970s and 1980s. Solomon studied printmaking at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 1968, while still a student, Solomon was awarded for his superior work by the Northwest Printmakers Organization.

In 1973 Solomon was hired by Georgia Southern University’s art department where he worked with each student to hone their

skills and help develop their individual style. A former student of Solomon’s shared that he was one of her favorite teachers, gifted as an artist, and passionate about the importance of art for everyone. There were times, she noted, when he pushed a little too hard but the result was worth a little discomfort. “We grew and accomplished so much from his guidance,” she said—a testimony to Solomon’s success in empowering his students as artists.

Solomon developed an international reputation for his unusually well-designed and skillfully developed wood engravings and woodcuts. His detailed work is exquisitely crafted and required considerable time for completion. A small number of his books were handmade and many contained a portfolio of his prints and decorative hand-painted design work. Solomon’s original prints were generally very limited in number. For example, there were only 20 impressions made of his woodcut Head Study which was completed in 1975. The theme of religion runs through many of his pieces, particularly as it relates to Judaica.

It is important to note that the skill of wood engraving is seen today as a dying art. Solomon was quoted by the St. Petersburg Times in 1974 as saying, “If no one works to re-establish wood engraving, the chances are that it will die out eventually.” Solomon made a dedicated effort to keep that from happening.

A passion for art and teaching did not keep Solomon from

21975 – Professor of Printmaking; Contemporary American Wood Engraver, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia

2015 – Wood Engraver and Graphic Designer until his death in 1995

Career Highlights

BernarD a. solomon 1946–1995

“Bernie’s passing leaves an irreplaceable void in the world of prints and artists’ books. The example of his life and work, as well as his simple philosophy of giving more of himself than he took, will serve as his extraordinary legacy.”

—From the 2009 Southern Graphics Council Conference Program


actively reaching out to the community with the goal of bringing artists and the public together. Bernie assembled printmakers from the Southeast by founding the Southern Graphics Council. He worked diligently to organize exhibitions on campus and coordinate art exchanges with artists outside the college. He continually searched for grant opportunities to support the art program at Georgia Southern University and to highlight art in Statesboro. One result of his search was an art event that began as an exchange of artwork between southern printmakers and a group of printmakers working in the Soviet Union. The exhibition took place in the United States and was titled Festival of Yiddish Spirit. It was the first of its kind in the United States with only two having previously taken place in Europe.

The unique quality of Solomon’s work has been recognized for its excellence. His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art in Tulsa, Georgia’s State Art Collection, and in Georgia State University’s permanent collection. His work has also been the subject of many exhibitions across the United States. He was the recipient of the 1988-89 Award for Excellence in Research/Creative Scholarly Activity at Georgia Southern University, and a memorial scholarship was created in his name.

Solomon’s work continues to be in demand as artistic talent in the art of wood engraving has become increasingly rare.ch for information about Bernie Solomon became a


16

As is true of many of the jurors who came to the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show and then rose

to the highest levels of success in the visual arts profession, Gudmund Vigtel’s life took him on a long and surprising path towards his career in art. That path culminated in his final position as the highly respected director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

Vigtel was born in Jerusalem in 1925. At the age of four, his parents moved the family to Vienna where the culture of art and music surrounded him. In 1936, as Vienna began to feel political unrest, his family moved to his father’s homeland of Norway. The invasion of Germany by Norway in World War II forced the Vigtel family to flee to Sweden in 1940. Just two years later when Vigtel was 17 years old, he was given the amazing opportunity to study under recognized Swedish artist Isaac Grunewald, a student of Matisse.

In 1944, having joined the Royal Norwegian Air Force, Vigtel

was sent to Canada where he was introduced to North America for the first time. After his return to Norway, he met a gentleman from Savannah who informed him that the Savannah Rotarian Club was offering European students scholarship opportunities to study in Georgia. Within a year, Vigtel had applied applied to the program and was accepted to the Atlanta College of Art. His talents were soon noticed and he was given a full scholarship to the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, where he earned both a BFA and MFA in art under the supervision of Lamar Dodd. Following his graduation from UGA in 1954, Vigtel moved to Washington, D.C., where he was hired as assistant of installations at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. His hard work and reputation for excellence resulted in his being named assistant director of the museum.

A few readers will remember that in 1962, a group of Atlanta Art Association members had completed a tour of Paris and were returning home on an Air France plane that crashed on takeoff from the Orly Airport. A total of 130 passengers died in the accident; 106 of those passengers were members of the Art Association, as well as patrons from some of Atlanta’s most prominent families. The city was devastated by the event. Civic leaders held a fundraising campaign to remodel the museum and wisely chose Gudmund Vigtel as the person most capable of accomplishing this task. Vigtel accepted the offer and arrived in Atlanta in May, 1963.

After successfully developing a fundraising program and

“So be proud of your status as artists, as interpreters of the unknown, as defenders of independence . . . the world will be grateful for your passion.”

—The final comment from a commencement speech given by Vigtel to UGA, LDSOA graduates, May 7, 2009

31976 – Director, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia

2015 – Retired as Director of the High Museum of Art in 1991

Continued to be involved in the growth of art in Atlanta until his death in 2012

GuDmunD ViGtel 1925–2012

Career Highlights


reaching the goals he had set, Vigtel oversaw the design and construction of the new center. Vigtel introduced the new Memorial Arts Center to Atlanta in 1968. The building housed the High Museum of Art, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the Atlanta College of Art. A few years later, Vigtel began a new fundraising campaign to erect a new stand-alone art museum. After searching for a contemporary architect, Vigtel recommended New York architect Richard Meier. Meier was respected at the time but not well-known, and he had never designed a museum. Vigtel worked diligently to convince city leaders that Meier was the right choice.

The result was the High Museum of Art, a contemporary and sculpturally-designed building which opened in 1983. The new building was honored with a Pritzker Architecture Prize yet criticized by those who considered the interior poorly designed and lacking in space to house the High’s growing permanent art collection. Ultimately, however, praise for the building won the majority and the High Museum of Art is now regarded as Vigtel’s “crowning achievement.”

During his 28 years as director of the High Museum of Art, Vigtel moved the museum from a small, boxy building to its present site on Peachtree Street with 135,000 sq. ft. of floor space. He was credited with increasing the museum’s operating budget from $60,000 to $9 million, expanding the staff from four members to 150, and establishing more than $15 million in endowment and trust funds. He tripled the permanent collection and, as a result of his dedication to improving the quality of the museum, established Atlanta as the premier center for the arts in the Southeast.

Gudmund Vigtel retired from the High Museum of Art in 1991, but continued to make significant contributions to the museum as an ex-officio member of the board of directors. His achievements continued as he authored the book One Hundred Years of Painting in Georgia, received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture, was awarded the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany, and was the first recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Georgia Association of Museums and Galleries.


18

Most would find it difficult to reflect clearly on a place or experience that occurred 38 years ago, but most of us

aren’t Edwin Ritts. During a recent phone conversation, Ed recalled his visit to the Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC) Annual Juried Show in Athens, Georgia. He was chief curator at the Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, South Carolina, when he was invited to jury the show. “I didn’t live far from Athens and had friends on the University of Georgia (UGA) School of Art faculty. I believe one actually recommended me,” he exclaimed. “I liked Athens very much and admired all that Lamar Dodd had accomplished for the visual arts in the South.”

When Ritts juried the LHAC’s Annual Juried Show in 1977, the center was not unlike the early Greenville County Museum of Art in that both were located in historic homes that had been converted into art centers to satisfy community needs for an art venue. The Lyndon House was still new to many Athenians. Nancy Lukasiewicz was director and developing programs and offering classes to residents who were hungry for arts opportunities. Ritts was at the beginning of his career as an arts administrator and curator and recognized the potential for visual

art growth in both Greenville and Athens.

During our discussion, I asked Ed what he considered to be the most fascinating experience of his career. He recalled that it was during his Greenville years when he lived for almost a week in the New York City studio of American artist Jasper Johns. At the time, Ritts was in New York to secure several paintings for the new Greenville Museum’s inaugural exhibition of paintings by N.C. Wyeth. The museum’s director was a friend of Johns and arranged for Ritts’ week-long stay. “My room was very near his [John’s] large first floor studio space so that I could spend a lot of time there investigating new works many of which were still on easels. It was such a treat to see his brushes, pigments, and paper for printed works. I would wonder where he was going with a particular painting and the next thing I knew, I would see the work reproduced in an art periodical. It was magical.”

By 1980 Ritts chose to tackle the challenges of another area art venue, the Asheville Art Museum (AAM) in Asheville, North Carolina. It, too, had started out small. It was first located in a stone building in Grove Park—a neighborhood in Asheville— then moved to an office floor in a building in downtown Asheville, and after that to a home in the Montford Area Historic District. In 1975 the AAM moved to the basement of the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium which was being renovated as part of the city’s new Civic Center. Ritts encountered a space that was quite dirty and a collection of art that was in desperate need of curatorial attention.

“The exhibition [Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show] is a consistent blend of well crafted works that any community would be proud to present.”

eDwin ritts41977 – Chief Curator, Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, South Carolina

2015 – Retired Director of the Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, Iowa

Career Highlights


Ed shared one of the most amusing stories I’ve ever heard concerning the growing pains of a museum. “The [AAM] was located contiguous to the new center’s arena floor separated at one point by a large, roll-up metal door. The new center was used for all manner of presentations from spring boat and camper shows and Sunday wrestling matches to regional college basketball tournaments. It was also used annually to house the Ringling Brothers Circus complete with lions, tigers, bears, and elephants. While the elephants were housed on the floor below, their odor permeated the entire structure, including, of course, the [AAM] and its galleries. You can perhaps imagine how difficult it was to keep public hours during the Circus’ three-day run. And, in fact, I would have to close it down for the period. It would take a good week before the odor was completely gone.”

Never allowing a challenge to deter him, Ritts worked with greater dedication to find a new and better home for the AAM. According to the current museum director, Ritts’ greatest achievement while director was to move the facility from the old Civic Center location to its present location in the city’s historic Pack Library as part of the Pack Place Education, Arts & Science Center at Pack Square where the AAM has thrived ever since. When asked what he thought was his greatest accomplishment at the AAM, Ritts said it was spearheading the professional accreditation process using criteria specified by the former American Association of Museums (now The American Alliance of Museums). “Accreditation increases a museum’s credibility and raises its community standing in the eyes of potential funders, the community itself, and policy makers. It also offers peer-based validation for the museum.”

When Ritts left Asheville in 1995, he moved the AAM to a larger and more visible space, built several new collections, curated a

large number of notable exhibitions, increased the number of personnel, raised the level of private and public funding, and completed the invaluable process of accreditation.

Eager to take on a new challenge, Ritts returned to Greenville and became director of the Historic Greenville Foundation. His objectives as director were to raise the visibility of the organization, increase funding, and oversee construction of a museum. The result of his efforts is now the Upcountry History Museum. Having met these objectives in just under six years, Ritts moved to Thomasville, Georgia, where he worked once again to handle the challenges of a cultural arts center that required a vision for the future.

Ed shared with me that the role that brought him the most satisfaction was that of director of the Dubuque Museum of Art in Dubuque, Iowa. He became director in 2005, and worked in this capacity for five years before retiring. By the time he left Dubuque, he had breathed new life into the museum by adding programming initiatives, eliminating its construction indebtedness, initiating new fundraising projects, and reducing annual expenditures, while at the same time keeping program content at a high level. Although retired, Ed continues to be an active board member of the museum and looks forward to assisting with another capital campaign project to enlarge both the facility and its operational endowment.

When I asked Ed how he felt about his move to Dubuque, he didn’t hesitate to share his enthusiasm for the city, its residents, and the museum. “The arts are blossoming here. We have a wonderful symphony, the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, several vibrant theater groups, and, of course, a wonderful art museum. It’s a great time to be here.”


20

Annette Cone Skelton is a former Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show juror who continues to live

and work in our own backyard. She is an artist, writer, teacher, curator, gallery director, museum director, and CEO—an impressive list of careers! There isn’t much that exhausts Annette. She’s admitted that she was blessed with intense energy, a passion for art, and a high level of motivation— exactly what she relies on to achieve her goal in giving Atlanta greater recognition for its arts and artists. I spoke with Annette at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA) in Atlanta which she and David Golden founded in 2000. Her daily schedule is consumed with running the museum, meetings, events, and community work, but she graciously made time to meet with me. During our interview, Annette was an absolute delight and generous in sharing her interests with me.

Annette has always been passionate about her home state of Georgia, and has focused much of her career on bringing well-deserved recognition to its artists. When she came to Athens

in 1978, she was the managing editor of Contemporary Art/Southeast, a publication founded in 1977 by David Heath, former owner of the Heath Gallery in Atlanta. Cone Skelton was its managing editor for two years until it merged with another local arts publication and the two became the now prominent Art Papers.

Cone Skelton grew up in LaGrange, Georgia, and attended LaGrange College. She was honored as a Ford Foundation Scholar and moved to Atlanta to study at the Atlanta College of Art. She shared, “I was born an artist and will always be an artist.” She taught at the Atlanta College of Art and Oglethorpe University while continuing her work as an artist.

In 1978 Cone Skelton became director of the Heath Gallery where her responsibilities were extensive. She curated monthly exhibitions of work by artists who were of regional, national, and international note. She served as the liaison between artists and collectors, and supervised every aspect of producing mailers and brochures. She also coordinated gallery and community benefit events. Cone Skelton and Heath worked as a team to build an exceptional national reputation among artists, collectors, art centers, and museums.

After nine years at the gallery, Cone Skelton realized a new opportunity to build an appreciation for Georgia artists through her work as an independent fine arts consultant. In this position, she developed stronger professional relationships with art

“It is our goal to strengthen Georgia as a place where artists can live, work, thrive, and to serve as a platform to launch local artists and their works into the global artistic conversation.”

—As written by Cone Skelton in a description of MOCA GA’s goals

annette cone sKelton51978 – Managing Editor, Contemporary Art/Southeast

2015 – President/CEO/Director/Founder, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA), Atlanta, Georgia

Career Highlights


collectors and Atlanta corporations, augmented and strengthened existing collections, and assisted those without a collection to begin the process. She achieved incredible success in this work for 14 years.

A turning point in Cone Skelton’s career came when she contemplated starting her own museum. She stated that she and friend David Golden had long recognized, “The need for a major institution devoted to the collecting and showcasing of contemporary arts of Georgia.” With works from Golden’s personal collection and from a collection donated by CGR Advisors, Cone Skelton established MOCA GA in 2000. The initial collection began with 250 works from 110 Georgia artists. “All the things I’ve done in my life prepared me for the MOCA and brought me to this point in my career,” she said.

The museum’s first location in Atlanta was on Peachtree Street and its first exhibition was held in 2002. The museum’s second exhibition, Artists of the Heath Gallery: 1965 to 1998, was a tribute to her friend and mentor David Heath. Heath assembled a distinguished and talented group of artists who, under his guidance, became nationally and internationally successful. The group made significant contributions through the establishment of arts organizations and with their on-going campaign to make a difference in the world of art. An exhibition featuring their art was extremely well-received and resulted in immediate credibility for MOCA GA.

In September 2007, MOCA GA moved to the TULA Art Center on Bennett Street where it remains today. The center has grown significantly in both its size and art collection. The lower level has a large gallery, storage, and workspace for archiving. It also houses a library, a video installation room, and a research area. The upper level is primarily used for exhibitions and offices. MOCA GA now has 150,000 items in its archives and is home to a number of works by recognized Athens artists.

When Annette and I were walking through the storage area of the museum, I asked to see her work. Each is a canvas of exquisitely crafted contemporary work that invites the viewer to stand and carefully study the fine detail of what can be perceived as three-dimensional fabric patterning. She spoke of her work and her hopes of returning to the studio soon. “That, and to see more of my husband and grandchildren,” she confessed.

Among the many honors that have been awarded to Cone Skelton are the 2012 Governor’s Award for Arts and Humanity, 2012 Museum Educator of the Year, the Inspiring the Passion Within Us award, and the Georgia Women in the Visual Arts Achievement award. Her art can be found in private collections and among a number of museums which include the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.


22

Michaelangelo Pistoletto is an internationally recognized contemporary artist living and working in Turin, Italy.

From 1979 to 1981, he toured the United States completing a series of installation exhibits. In 1979 he spent time working in Atlanta where he installed Creative Collaboration, a performance work. He visited Athens for a short period, producing work at the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art. Pistoletto completed an installation at the Georgia Museum of Art and accepted Nancy Lukasiewicz’ invitation to jury the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show. He selected 89 of the 210 submissions. Although there was no exhibition catalog that year, it’s worth noting that more than 20 of the artists included in the show continue to live and work in Athens.

Pistoletto was born in 1933. His artistic training began when he worked with his father—a painter and restorer—in his workshop. In the 1950s, he attended Armando Testa’s advertising design school and began to exhibit self-portraits and figurative works. He received the San Fedele Prize in Milan in 1957.

In the 1960s, Pistoletto began painting portraits on gold, silver, and copper backgrounds which he layered with transparent varnish to give the effect of mirrored gloss. By 1962 Pistoletto had perfected his technique and was placing his large portraits on mirror-finished stainless steel. His 1963 exhibition Mirror Paintings brought him international acclaim. He received the grand prize at the Bienale of Sao Paulo, as well as the Belgian Art Critics award in 1967. His reason for using polished steel instead of canvas, and for painting figures and photographic images on the surface, was to bring the viewer into the artwork and its environment. His art begged the question, “What is reality and what is representation?” As a man who has always had the creative energy of ten men, it was also in 1967 that Pistoletto began developing ideas for performance and installation art, forms that require the viewer to become a participant.

Pistoletto’s work is worth a further look. His creative perspectives and exploration of social issues through his art communicate strong personal and political statements.

Pistoletto continues to be exhibited internationally. Most recently, his solo exhibitions have been held in Hong Kong, Beirut, Paris, Buenos Aires, and Brussels. His works are in the collections of over 44 leading contemporary and modern art museums, and he has participated in the Venice Biennale 12 times.

“Above all, artists must not be only in art galleries or museums, they must be present in all possible activities. The artist must be the sponsor of thought in whatever endeavor people take on, at every level.”

61979 – Visiting Artist, Painter and Installation Artist, Turin, Italy

2015 – Painter and Installation Artist, Turin, Italy

Career Highlights

micHaelanGo Pistoletto


David Heath had a tremendous impact on the early contemporary art scene in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as

on the present appreciation and recognition of contemporary art and artists who have found their success in Georgia, the Southeast, and internationally. John Howett at Emory University wrote in his 2005 article about the history of the arts in Georgia, “In 1965 David Heath opened in Atlanta a commercial gallery devoted to contemporary art. The long-lived Heath Gallery exhibited both local and international artists, and exhibition catalogs for the gallery were written by experienced critics.” Even at the young age of 24, Heath was a man with vision, passion, and purpose, and he was determined to bring Atlanta to the attention of those in the art world.

Heath’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect as it was during this time that Atlanta was discovering contemporary art. Positive relationships were being formed between artists, galleries, museums, art critics, and collectors. Heath was strategic

by building on these relationships in two ways—by bringing international recognition to his artists and the gallery, and by creating a journal that would foster an appreciation for art criticism. In 1977 Heath published Contemporary Art/Southeast with artist Annette Cone Skelton as its editor. At the same time, Laura Lieberman began publishing The Atlanta Art Workers Coalition Newsletter which later became a newspaper. In 1980 the two publications merged to form the now nationally-distinguished journal of art criticism, Art Papers.

Heath’s accomplishments were significant. In 1982 he sponsored the historic exhibition Out of the South which highlighted southern-born and internationally important contemporary artists. Heath and Gudmund Vigtel, director of the High Museum of Art, understood the importance of contemporary art and the artistic strength of regional artists. In 1979 the High sponsored Avant-Garde: 12 in Atlanta and, five years later, Heath was able to bring this influential exhibition to his own gallery.

Heath owned and directed the Heath Gallery until its close in 1998, when a number of area galleries were forced to do the same. A tribute to the compelling contributions David Heath made to contemporary art in the Southeast (and beyond) was organized by Annette Cone Skelton in 2002 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Georgia’s premier exhibition Artists of the Heath Gallery: 1965 to 1998. Artists represented in this exhibition are nationally and internationally prominent, with many having lived and worked in Athens, Georgia.

“The Heath Gallery was a meeting place, a place where artists from all over the state and the Southeast could come together to share common goals and ideas. It was a place to meet with artists from elsewhere—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago—it was a fertile environment for growth.” Annette Cone Skelton

71980 – Owner, Heath Art Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia

2015 – Owner of Heath Art Gallery until it closed in 1998

Career Highlights

DaViD HeatH 1940–2005


24

Leon Arkus was the fifth director of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During his years at

the museum (1954–1980), it was his vision and drive that transformed the Carnegie from a fairly small space that was staffed with 13 employees (six of who were members of the work crew) to one of the most prestigious art museums in the country. It’s interesting to note that when he visited the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show in 1981—already a master of curating—he shared that he actually hated the task of judging. “Having to boot someone out is always unsettling.” Those who worked with Arkus understood his feelings. He was always interested in the work of developing artists and often opened his door to them, sometimes making a call to meet for lunch or to critique their work. He regularly supported the best of those works by purchasing a piece or organizing exhibits of artworks created by talented area artists.

Arkus has a fascinating history. He grew up in New York City and earned a BS in business at City College. He served as captain in the U.S. Army during WW II and ran Radio Teheran, the largest overseas transmitter operated by the U.S. Army during the war. In 1939 he was a sales promotion director for the

Masterpieces of Art exhibition at the New York World’s Fair, a job he immensely enjoyed. Immediately after the war, he organized an El Greco exhibition in New York City to benefit the Greek War Relief.

His wife Jane wrote that Arkus was able to learn anything if he felt it necessary and that he never had formal training for any of the jobs he was hired to do. It has been theorized that Arkus inherited the genes of an artist from his grandmother. She was among the founders of the New York art gallery A La Vieille Russie which specialized in Russian art.

Upon his return to New York City following the war, Arkus was hired as special assistant to the president of the American Federation of Arts. While there, he met Gordon Washburn, Director of the Carnegie Museum of Art. Washburn invited Arkus to become the museum’s assistant director and Arkus accepted. He and Washburn worked well as a team and in 1969 Arkus became his successor. His initial achievement, with the assistance of decorative arts curator David Owsley, was to oversee the construction of the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Gallery. Ms. Bruce died that year and left her complete decorative arts collection to the Carnegie Museum. Arkus oversaw the building of the Sarah Mellon Scaife Galleries (opened in 1974) and tripled the size of the museum. The final addition to the museum was the Heinz Galleries. The expanded space allowed the museum to take its place as one of the finest American museums of art. Arkus can be credited with bringing the Carnegie to this esteemed level.

“All I can say is that my fundamental thesis about art is that there is never going to be an end to it; that without it, we cannot exist. It’s a moral force.”

81981 – Director Emeritus, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

2015 – Retired as Director of Carnegie Museum of Art in 1980

leon arKus 1916-1999

Career Highlights


Some arts professionals make their mark in the world of art quietly, steadily, and with great focus and drive—Nina Parris

is one such person. Born in 1927, she and her family escaped from the Nazis in Berlin, Germany, and came to the United States in 1937. Both her parents were physicians and her father was also a poet. Parris married in 1949, and began raising her children in the Philadelphia area before attending college.

It is interesting to note that Nina had to overcome the challenge of being an older student as she was seeking acceptance into college. Bryn Mawr College was the first college in the area to begin an adult learning program and Nina was one of the first to become a member. She graduated in just three years and went on to earn an MA and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Parris was awarded a Woodrow Wilson fellowship in 1968 and a University Fellowship from the Ford Foundation from 1968 to 1972. These works allowed her to complete her graduate work.

Parris’ career began as a lecturer with the Philadelphia College of Art from 1970 to 1971. At the same time, she was a research assistant at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1971 Parris moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where she became chief

curator of the Columbia Museum of Art. From 1979 to 1989, and from 1992 to 2003, Parris joined the MFA program at Vermont College of Norwich University as an instructor for what was then a very innovative, distance learning program for adult learners from all over the world. She also chaired the visual arts program at Burlington College in Vermont from 1996 to 1999.

Nina Parris did a considerable amount of writing and authored several books during her career. Best known are her books on the art of the Columbia Museum and on the collections housed in the Robert Hull Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont. Parris has also shown her photography in solo and group shows throughout the eastern United States.

For someone who was told by college entrance offices that she was, “Too old to be molded by them,” Nina Parris has proven them all wrong and has made quite an impact on the world of art and art education.

“Athens, Georgia gives strong evidence to the thesis that good art is created all over the United States and that the American art world is no longer confined to a single artistic capital.”

91982 – Chief Curator, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina

Faculty, Norwich University, Vermont

2015 – Retired as Chair of the Visual Arts Department, Burlington College, Burlington, Vermont

Career Highlights

nina G. Parris


26


28

Marge Goldwater’s career has taken her across the country delivering exciting and innovative programs to a

number of arts and education institutions. Her enthusiasm for programming in the arts and education is evident throughout her career.

Goldwater was born in New York City, New York. She earned a BA in art history at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and an MA in art history at UCLA. While living in Los Angeles, she served as director of Womanspace, a non-profit community art gallery and performance center.

In 1976 Goldwater was curator at the Fort Worth Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. During her tenure at the museum, she also served as consultant for the Texas Commission on the Arts and as the museum’s interim director. She left Texas for Minnesota where she became curator for the Walker Museum of Art in Minneapolis. While at the Walker, Goldwater introduced

patrons and visitors to a number of cutting-edge events and expanded the range of works exhibited.

In 1991 Goldwater moved back to New York City and opened her own gallery, the Marge Goldwater Gallery and Drawing Center in Soho. As gallery owner, she supported a large number of contemporary artists through exhibition and education. In 1995 Goldwater became executive director of the Jewish Foundation for the Education of Women (JFEW). As director, she substantially increased the number of young women who benefited from the generosity of the foundation. In a 2007 report, JFEW and Goldwater celebrated the fact that over 500 women representing 18 nations received foundation support for higher education. Goldwater also worked as a consultant for the Foundation for Jewish Culture, a non-profit organization that successfully supported the arts and culture in New York City for 53 years before its close in 2013.

Goldwater became director of arts and cultural programs at the Israel Institute where she currently directs the Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artist Program headquartered in Washington, D.C. This program brings Israeli artists of different disciplines—filmmakers, choreographers, writers, musicians and visual artists—to American college campuses to teach for a semester. To date, she has enlisted campuses such as Amherst, Harvard, the University of California Berkeley, and Wesleyan as participants.

“It has been my pleasure to come to Athens and serve as juror for the 10th annual juried exhibition at the Lyndon House Arts Center. Jurying an exhibition in another part of the country is always a welcoming opportunity to see new work, though one inevitably struggles with tough decisions during the process.”

10 1983 – Curator, Walker Museum

of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota

2015 – Executive Director, Arts and Cultural Programs, Israel Institute, Washington, DC

marGe GolDwater

Career Highlights


30

Gerald Nordland was born in 1927 and grew up in Hollywood, California. Both his father and mother worked

in film production. As a teenager, Nordland enjoyed both music (particularly jazz) and theater but really had no interest in the visual arts. That changed when he attended the University of Southern California. Rather than preparing for law school, Nordland often found himself skipping his studies to visit the local museum across the street. He went so often that he came to know the museum’s curators. While Nordland managed to earn his law degree in 1950, he never formally practiced. Instead, he found part-time work and continued his informal study of art. During this time, he frequented every museum and gallery he

could find and began cultivating relationships with area artists and arts professionals.

Nordland connected with those who interested him. An artist’s biographer working in New Haven, Connecticut, responded to one of his letters by suggesting he come to New Haven to take over one of his projects. Nordland accepted the offer, earned enough money to purchase a car, and made the trip to New Haven. Although he couldn’t afford to take classes, he could attend art lectures for free and use the Yale Library to further his studies. Nordland supplemented his studies by working part-time jobs—even writing a few arts-related articles—and eventually earned enough income to pay for classes and even acquire some small pieces of art. His progress was interrupted by a call from the U.S. Army, but he later returned and resumed his studies in art.

During the late 1950s and 1960s, there was a visual arts movement gaining momentum in America. In Washington, D.C., the Gallery of Modern Art opened in order to exhibit new art forms. Artist Robert Rauschenberg coordinated the gallery’s first “happening,” and Nordland was hired as the gallery’s director. Although his tenure at the gallery was brief, Nordland curated one of the most important shows of that era, The Washington Color Painters.

Following his time in Washington, D.C., Nordland returned

“For many in the late 20th century and today, drawing is avoided by contemporary devices. If, however, drawing is an intellectual discipline, the basis of all artistic training, a means of scientific discovery, and a tool for developing and exploring ideas, that avoidance carries a heavy cost. The price can be a loss of independence, and the freedom to express the uniqueness of personal vision.”

—Nordland writing about the Chouinard Art Institute where he worked for a short time.

11 1984 – Director, Milwaukee Art

Museum, Milwaukee, Minnesota

2015 – Art Critic, Curator, Educator, Art Historian, and Author, Chicago, Illinois

GeralD norDlanD

Career Highlights


to California and became director of the new San Francisco Museum of Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) where he served for six years. He then became curator at UCLA’s Frederick S. Wright Art Gallery. In 1977 he left Los Angeles to serve as director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, and it was during this period that Nordland juried the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show. He retired from his position as

director in 1985, but continued his work as an art critic and author. In May, 2004, Nordland was interviewed by Susan Larsen for the Archives of American Art in Chicago, Illinois. The interview reveals his astounding knowledge of art and artists he’s encountered throughout his career. Nordland’s is the fascinating story of a brilliant and resourceful man who was driven to share his passion for art with the rest of the world.


32


Slade was born in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom (UK) in 1939. He attended the Cardiff College of Art and the

University of Wales. His first position was head of the arts and crafts department at Heolgam School in Wales from 1956 to 1960. He then spent four years as a lecturer in art at Clarendon College in Nottingham, UK. The following year he was a lecturer on painting at Leeds College of Art in Leeds, UK. He served as director of post diploma studies at Leeds, at the same time having been honored as a Fulbright-Hays scholar in 1967 and 1968.

In 1968 Slade was invited as a visiting artist to the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. When he arrived, he was introduced to a number of surprising situations. The classes were enormous, with 50 students or so in each. There were also few art supplies and materials, and the teachers were poorly paid. As a newcomer and visiting artist/teacher/scholar in America, Slade felt uncomfortable approaching the school’s administration about these situations so he returned to Leeds College. No sooner had he returned than Slade received a surprising phone call from the Corcoran inviting him to return as associate dean. He realized his job responsibilities would be very demanding but also knew that his opportunities in the arts profession would be

greater if he returned to the United States. Roy accepted the position and began a journey that brought significant recognition to both the Corcoran and his career.

Within a year, Slade became the Corcoran School of Art’s new dean. He worked tirelessly to offer new energy and transparency to the institution, eliminate situations that had become deficient, raise standards, engage students, and, most importantly, bring accreditation to the Corcoran. In addition to serving as dean of the school, Slade was appointed director of the Corcoran Museum. His accomplishments catapulted both the school and museum to new heights.

The Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, recognized Slade’s achievements at the Corcoran and hired him as both president of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and director of the Cranbrook Art Museum in 1977. Cranbrook had a fine reputation but restructuring was needed. The institution faced significant challenges following a financial crisis and continuity issues related to rapid changes in administration. Once again, Slade took the reins and used his organizational skills to strategize objectives, collaborate with others, and develop a plan for bringing new life to Cranbrook. His mission was successful and Slade went on to retire as director emeritus of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1997.

“To jury an exhibition is an opportunity to review work in different regions, to encourage artists, and to bring art to a wider public.”

roy slaDe

1984 – President, Cranbrook Academy of Art and Director, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

2015 – Retired as Director Emeritus of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Cranbrook Art Museum

Painter, Florida

11

Career Highlights


34

Thomas Messer was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in 1920, and grew up in Prague. His youth was filled

with interesting experiences and surprising turns, all leading to his highly successful career as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Messer’s father was an art historian and his mother the child of musicians. Messer enjoyed art but his parents made him study chemistry instead. In reaction to political unrest in Europe, Messer boarded a ship to England on September 2, 1939. The following day, England declared war on Germany and the ship was torpedoed and sunk. Fortunately, Messer was rescued and later traveled to the United States. Once in the United States, Messer resumed his study of chemistry at Thiel College in Pennsylvania. His studies at Thiel were short-lived and he left to study modern languages at Boston University where he graduated in 1942. With his multi-lingual skills, Messer began working for U.S. military intelligence. He became an American citizen in 1944, joined the Army, and served as interrogator for military intelligence in Europe.

Following the war, Messer remained in Europe and began the formal study of art at the Sorbonne in Paris, earning a degree in 1947.

Upon graduation, Messer returned to the United States and served as director of the Roswell Museum and Art Center in New Mexico, from 1949 to 1952. During this period, he took a year’s leave of absence and earned an MA in art history and museology from Harvard. In 1953 he became assistant director, then director, of the American Federation of Arts. In 1957 Messer became director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and taught courses on modern art at Harvard.

Well-trained for the challenges that lay ahead, Messer became director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 1961. The Museum’s structure (built in 1959) was his first challenge. The building—designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright—had sloped floors, curved walls, and oddly-shaped rooms. Messer found a way to make the design work and in 1962 installed an exhibit that combined the Guggenheim’s paintings with the Hirshhorn Museum’s sculpture. The exhibition was a tremendous success and earned the museum and Messer newfound and well-deserved respect, resulting in the museum’s acquisition of the Justin K. Thannhauser modern art collection in 1963. Messer continued to acquire additional new works for the Guggenheim. In 1979 Peggy Guggenheim (no fan of the museum) was encouraged to donate her private collection. She also donated her palazzo in Venice, Italy, which later became

“Here we are, three decades later, with Guggenheims in Bilbao, Berlin, Venice, and soon to be Abu Dhabi. The foundation for all this was laid by Tom Messer. And I can tell you, he laid that foundation under budget.”

—Peter Lawson-Johnston, Guggenheim president during Messer’s directorship, on Messer’s 90th birthday.

12 1985 – Director, Solomon R.

Guggenheim Museum, New York City, New York

2015 – Retired Director Emeritus, Guggenheim Museum, 1988

Writer, Teacher, Curator until his death in 2013

tHomas m. messer 1920–2013

Career Highlights


the Guggenheim’s second museum.

Thomas Messer was director of the Guggenheim for 27 years—one of the longest tenures among major museum directors. He was known for his charm, grace, warmth, spirit, and diplomacy. Following his retirement from the Guggenheim in 1988, Messer

was appointed director emeritus of the museum. Between 1990 and 2012, Messer was curator of several exhibitions in addition to being a teacher, writer, and lecturer. He is remembered as a distinguished curator, eminent scholar, beloved professor, and friend to many.


36

When Judy Chicago came to Athens, she was well known for her collaborative project The Dinner Party and had

just completed five years of work on a second collaborative piece, Birth Project. It was the only year that a Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show juror refused to select Merit Awards. “Once I had made the selections of work I thought were interesting, I don’t think I even could have come up with which were most interesting. They are all interesting or I wouldn’t have selected them,” she explained. As an alternative, a small committee was appointed by City Hall to select four purchase prizes that became property of the city and which were displayed in public buildings for the community.

Judy Chicago was born Judith Cohen in Chicago, Illinois, in 1939. She was able to communicate through drawing before she was able to read. Her mother supported her artistic gift and found the means to give her lessons whenever possible. Judy moved to California to attend college, earning both a BA and MA (1964) in art from UCLA. Her passion for painting and sculpture—and the development of an artistic style that was uniquely her own—gave Chicago the opportunity to show

her work at the highly-respected Rolf Nelson Gallery. Nelson would often tease her about her accent and started calling her “Chicago.” He later suggested she adopt “Chicago” as her own name. She gave it a try, it felt comfortable, and “Judy Chicago” has been her professional name ever since.

In the 1970s, Judy Chicago pioneered feminist art and art education through a unique program for women at California State University Fresno. She celebrated the women’s movement, “found” herself as a woman artist, and focused on helping others do the same. She was resolute in her mission to bring attention to the struggles of women. By 1974 Chicago turned her attention toward the subject of women’s history. It was then that she created—with the help of hundreds of volunteers over a five year period—The Dinner Party, a project that is a symbolic history of women in western civilization. It has been seen by more than one million viewers spanning six countries, has been the subject of countless articles and art history texts, has been referenced in numerous publications across diverse fields. In 2014 Chicago published The Dinner Party: Restoring Women to History which was an updated version of her earlier book.

Chicago is best known for her major collaborative projects. For five years she worked on Birth Project. Based on her observations of western art, she noted an absence of iconography about the subject of childbirth so she designed a series of birth and creation images for needlework which were executed (under her supervision) by 150 skilled needle workers around the country.

“Ah, do I wish that we lived in a world where gender didn’t figure so prominently? Of course. Do I even think about myself as a woman when I go to make art? Of course not.”

13 1986 – Artist, Educator, Author,

Feminist, New Mexico

2015 – Artist, Author, New Mexico

JuDy cHicaGo

Career Highlights


Exhibition units from Birth Project can be seen in numerous public collections around the country. As Birth Project was being completed, Chicago focused on individual studio work to create PowerPlay. In this unusual series of drawings, paintings, weavings, cast paper, and bronze reliefs, she brought a critical feminist gaze to the gender construct of masculinity by exploring how prevailing definitions of power have affected the world in general and men in particular.

Chicago’s long-standing concern with issues of power and powerlessness, along with a growing interest in her Jewish heritage, was evident in her exhibit The Holocaust Project: From Darkness Into Light which premiered in October, 1993. This comprehensive project involved eight years of inquiry, travel, research and artistic creation. For her last collaborative project, Resolutions: A Stitch in Time, Chicago enlisted the same skilled needle workers with whom she had worked with on Birth Project. The exhibit combined painting and needlework in a series of exquisitely crafted and inspiring images that playfully reinterpreted traditional adages and proverbs.

Two recent events have served to keep Chicago’s work in the forefront. In 2011 and 2012, her important contributions to southern California art were featured in “Pacific Standard Time,”

a Getty-funded initiative documenting and celebrating the region’s rich history. In 2014, in honor of Judy Chicago’s 75th birthday, a series of exhibitions and events were held around the country at various institutions and galleries. Her birthday was capped off on April 26 when she presented A Butterfly for Brooklyn—a complex pyrotechnic performance in Prospect Park that was attended by 12,000 people who following the performance burst into spontaneous applause and sang “Happy Birthday” to Chicago.

In addition to her art-making, Chicago has written a number of books. Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist and Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist chronicle her immense struggles to become a highly recognized and respected artist, and her quest to share her strong social commentary through art.

In 2015 and 2016, Chicago’s work can be seen both nationally and internationally in prestigious venues such as Krakow, Poland, the Tate Modern in London, the Expo Milano in Milan, Italy, Bilbao, Spain, and Bordeaux, France. In 2016, Chicago’s work will be on display at the Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia.


38

What has astonished me during my research on those who have juried the Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC)

Annual Juried Show is the high level of accomplishment each has attained in his or her career. Lee Fleming is an excellent example. Lee has been a designer, curator, National Public Radio (NPR) radio host, art critic, and award-winning journalist—and that’s just for starters! Her achievements are quite impressive.

Fleming began her career at Yale University where she earned high honors in English literature. She was awarded a University Open Fellowship and moved to Toronto, Canada, where she earned an MA in English in 1974. Lee was hired the same year by the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., as assistant director of cultural resources development. As assistant director, she wrote speeches, prepared congressional testimony for Chairman Nancy Hanks, and developed opportunities for public-private sector joint ventures in cultural funding.

Lee Fleming came to the LHAC as a juror in 1987, while working as vice president of creative services with Felton Harjess Severson Associates in Washington, D.C. Her roles included speech writing for non-profit and corporate clients, and serving as creative director for the U.S. Mint. She was awarded a 1988 ADDY award for Creative Options Corporation and a 1988 Citation for Excellence from the Art Directors Club of metropolitan Washington.

Before arriving in Athens, Fleming had curated national and international exhibits. Her art and art criticism articles have been published in ARTnews, Art Forum, The Smithsonian Magazine, and Art in America—to name just a few. By 1986 Fleming had been listed in Who’s Who in American Art, was awarded a Canadian government research grant for visual arts, and received the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Critic-In-Residence grant from Women’s Studio Workshop in Kingston, New York.

In December, 1989, Fleming became senior editor of Museum & Arts Magazine. Her primary goal was to revamp the magazine’s editorial content and within 18 months she had succeeded. Her efforts were awarded when the magazine won best in category for arts and literature at the 1991 MagazineWeek awards. Fleming left Museum & Arts magazine to become editor of Garden Design magazine. Before leaving in 1993, Fleming was hired as a public commentator for NPR’s “Performance Today.” On “Performance Today,” Fleming interviewed major art figures, did “walk-throughs” with curators,

“I believe that the best art—the kind that’s going to last fifty years or more—has to have it [content] on many levels. Psychological. Political. Social. The abstract elements—composition—all that—must be there, too. But, there’s got to be a depth—a gut to it.”

14 1987 – Curator, Art Critic,

Washington, DC

2015 – Retired as Senior Director for Creative Services, American Bankers Association

Nonfiction/Feature Writing Instructor, The Writer’s Center, Washington, DC

lee fleminG

Career Highlights


and created a series of art and culture segments. While working for NPR, Fleming also served as managing editor/acting editor for Landscape Architecture magazine where she ran day-to-day operations until she was hired in 1996 to be a contributing writer for The Washington Post where wrote the column “Fixes.”

In 1998 Fleming joined the American Bankers Association (ABA) as managing associate director and lead speech writer. As director, she recognized a need for creative services so in

2000 co-founded ABA Creative Services with the goal of increasing the quality of its marketing efforts. Fleming recently retired from ABA but continues to assist writers with their work at The Writer’s Center in Washington, D.C.

Fleming continues to amaze. She is a multi-faceted woman whose prolific work and accomplishments have made a significant, positive, and lasting influence on art.


40

Humble, amiable, and kind-hearted—James Demetrion seems a bit surprised that life and art have taken him on

such an incredible and successful journey. I met Jim at a small coffee shop in a lovely Arlington, Virginia, neighborhood. 15 minutes early for our appointment, I found myself pacing a bit and looking for just the right spot to greet him. This was only my second juror interview and, admittedly, I was quite nervous. Jim would be easy to recognize; I had seen photos and read the hilarious description he’d written of himself. I waited near the front door and am quite sure I literally pounced on the man as he entered. I introduced myself and offered to buy coffee. No doubt he was taken aback by my enthusiasm, but I regained my composure and we managed to get our coffee and find a small table in a quiet spot to begin our interview.

We began our conversation by sharing the fact that we both grew up in Ohio. Jim’s parents were a part of the Greek minority that

had lived in present-day Turkey for centuries, and who—in the turmoil resulting from WWI— immigrated to the United States. Jim went to school in Middleton, Ohio, and earned a BA in education from Miami University in Ohio.

Following graduation, Demetrion was drafted into the service and was stationed in Germany, where he became seriously interested in art after happening upon the dramatic paintings of Rubens at a museum in Munich. Soon after being discharged, he married his college sweetheart and moved to California, where he taught high school social studies for three years. For his years of military service, Demetrion received the GI bill which enabled him to pursue his continuing interest in art and which led to his enrollment in art history courses at UCLA. While at UCLA, Demetrion received a Fulbright grant to Vienna, Austria, where he studied and completed his research on Austrian and German Expressionism with a concentration on Austrian painter Egon Schiele.

After a year of teaching art history at Pomona College in California, Demetrion was thrilled to be contacted by the charismatic Walter Hopps, Director of the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum). Hopps hired Demetrion as the museum’s curator. Hopps left the museum in 1966, and Demetrion succeeded him as director. In 1969 the Des Moines Art Center hired Demetrion as director. During his tenure, Demetrion built a substantial contemporary art collection, curated a number of quality exhibitions, and raised

15 1988 – Director, Smithsonian’s

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC

2015 – Director Emeritus, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC

“Jim Demetrion is one of the most level-headed, clear-thinking directors in the museum field. His vision for the Hirshhorn has kept our visitors informed, excited, and knowledgeable about the art of our time, and coming back for more.”

—Smithsonian official, speaking of Demetrion upon his retirement

James Demetrion

Career Highlights


the visibility and level of respect for the museum. After 15 years, Demetrion left Des Moines to become the new director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Smithsonian’s leading museum of contemporary art in Washington, D.C.

Demetrion directed activities and events at the Hirshhorn for 17 years and, in addition to administrative functions, headed the educational and curatorial programs. Well-established artists whose works were exhibited and/or acquired under Demetrion included Bacon, Bourgeois, Dali, Giacometti, and Morris Louis. Mid-career artists included Abakanowicz, Nauman, Puryear, and Gerhard Richter. Emerging artists included Jim Hodges, Byron Kim, Alison Saar, and Krzysztof Wodiczko. Also included were artists infrequently seen in large exhibitions across the country during that time such as Lucian Freud, Eva Hesse, Stanley Spencer, and Clyfford Still. Among a number of group exhibitions curated by Demetrion was one that explored the concept of beauty and yet another that challenged visitors to examine their own reasoning process in how they judge works of art. An active de-accessioning program of redundant artworks in the collection was a significant factor in increasing the museum’s acquisition budget. The program avoided public scrutiny and controversy as a result of its transparent process and procedures.

Upon Demetrion’s retirement from the Hirshhorn in 2001, he was extolled for his dedication and level of professionalism, and for contributions he made to the success of the museum. Robert Lehrman, former chairman of the Hirshhorn Museum’s Board of Trustees, said, “Jim’s retirement marks the end of an era. His old-fashioned combination of hard work, scrupulous integrity, and art-world savvy has singularly shaped the collection and made the Hirshhorn into a world-class art museum. His exemplary service to our nation leaves a legacy of great exhibitions and art that will inspire and amaze generations to come.”

Following his retirement, Demetrion served in a variety of art-related capacities. His first was as interim director of The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, where he worked for 18 months implementing a number of administrative changes that improved the museum’s operations. He recently served as consultant and active member on several art advisory committees in Abu Dhabi, Charlotte, North Carolina, Denver, Colorado, and at the Aspen Institute.

Earlier this year, Jim retired from the board of Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection. The Hirshhorn honored him with the establishment of the James T. Demetrion Lecture Series. Jim shared that he’s currently writing his memoirs for his grandsons. His work and contributions have made a substantial impact on the appreciation of modern and contemporary art, on American art museums, and on the artists and arts professionals who have had the privilege of working by his side.


42

In the introduction to this publication, I noted that the accomplished jurors about whom I write share a number

of characteristics. The first is a continued passion for their work—another is humility. Carlo Lamagna is not one to seek the limelight, nor is he comfortable discussing his successes. However, during our conversation it was clear that he strives for deep knowledge and understanding of each new challenge and adventure he is about to pursue. “I enjoy a varied work diet, trying new things, always challenging myself.” His work truly seems to be his diet for living. He has worked successfully in every aspect of art, yet remains a very humble man.

During our conversation, Carlo recalled his visit to Athens and his reason for returning to jury the Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC) Annual Juried Show. He had been to Athens previously for an art opening of Davis Cone’s work. Lamagna knew Cone from having worked with him at the OK Harris Gallery in New York City, New York. The Athens environment appealed to Lamagna and so he eagerly accepted the invitation to jury the show. He believed it would be a wonderful opportunity to see the art of this region. The LHAC was still housed in the Ware-Lyndon building that year and exhibition space was limited. Only 60 artworks were selected. However, in that year’s catalog Lamagna answered a record 44 questions from artists—a

generous gift to everyone involved in the show.

Carlo Lamagna began his studies at the College of Holy Cross, earning a BA in English. He obtained an MA from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he studied classical art, Baroque and Rococo, Renaissance, and modern art. Ironically, in business he often focused on contemporary art. Lamagna’s first career position was as curator at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. In 1974 he opened the Lamagna Gallery in New York City. In 1976 Lamagna was offered the rare opportunity to work as director of Ivan Karp’s internationally recognized OK Harris Gallery. He accepted the position and during his nine years there built an excellent reputation for his abilities and successes.

At the time of his visit to Athens in 1989, Lamagna had opened another art gallery, the Carlo Lamagna Gallery in New York City, where it became a well-known and highly respected contemporary gallery. New York supported a thriving and highly competitive gallery scene in the first years of the 1980s, but this is a business that requires a high level of experience, knowledge of national and international art activity, the capability to network, an understanding of ever-changing art movements, a knowledge of art history, a love for working with artists, and, of course, appropriate training to handle the demanding financial requirements of the business. These challenges were difficult for the best of gallery owners, but the national economic situation and the competition became so intense that by the end of the

“It’s not possible today to be a visual arts professional without having a global perspective.”

1989 – Owner and Director, Carlo Lamagna Gallery, New York City, New York

2015 – Senior Faculty, Visual Arts Administration, M.A. Program, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University

16

carlo m. lamaGna

Career Highlights


decade a large number of galleries were forced to close. Lamagna made the decision to close his gallery in 1990. Fortunately, Lamagna loves education and started teaching contemporary art history courses at New York University (NYU). His positive experience at NYU, his enjoyment in sharing his passion for art with young people, and his expertise in the field allowed him to make an easy career transition from gallery owner to university educator.

In the world of academia, Lamagna found new energy and purpose. His experience with every aspect of art culture helped develop an informed and broad view of the subject. He understands how society functions, learns, and communicates through art. He teaches arts professionals and non-professionals alike, develops curriculum, and has successfully organized innovative programming. NYU describes Lamagna as an art historian of modern and contemporary art and material culture.

Lamagna has been reorganizing curriculum for a number of years in order to create additional international study opportunities and has recently added to his resume the teaching of historic preservation—a topic that has grown in popularity. He has collaborated on, created, and led study abroad programs, including a bi-annual course that examines the management of cultural institutions in the Netherlands, Paris, and Berlin.

Carlo is the academic co-director for the school’s international leadership program in visual arts management, a collaboration between NYU Steinhardt, the Deusto Business School, University of Deusto Bilbao, Spain, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain. For seven years, Lamagna led a course in London on the exhibition and display of art and material that reveals the way exhibitions affect audiences, economic considerations, and social and curatorial perspectives. He described his career at NYU as extremely satisfying. “We have excellent art and culture professors, offer incredible networking opportunities for our students, and in an era when students have a greater interest in the economics of art, we can satisfy their need for that training. It’s a program that gives students a leg up in the job market.”

As we neared the end of our discussion, I asked Carlo about his future plans. The question seemed particularly timely in that he was taking some time off during the year to consider his options. A quick review of his latest plans indicate that he’ll proceed to direct his study abroad in the Netherlands and Berlin, and I sense that the opportunity to develop new art and education programs—as well as his eagerness to share his enthusiasm for art and culture with his students—will keep Lamagna active in his international art career for many years to come.


44

Most of what you see and read about Neal Benezra today relates to his position as the highly effective director of the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Benezra stepped in as director in 2002 when the country’s economic crisis began. Benezra’s predecessor, David Ross, had successfully added a large number of pieces to the museum’s collection and implemented several new programs. Unfortunately, the country’s economic downturn took the museum into a $2 million deficit and resulted in a significant reduction of staff. With a successful record in programming, budgeting, organization, acquisition, curatorial achievement, and building expansion, Benezra was recruited to San Francisco and SFMOMA from the Art Institute of Chicago. During his tenure at SFMOMA, he took a prominent national museum from instability and financial crisis to one of exceptional growth and prosperity.

Benezra has always felt an attachment to SFMOMA, one of the

first museums to feature modern and contemporary art. Benezra grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and recalls visiting the museum for the first time with his father, a high school art teacher. He was struck by a particular painting that still hangs in the museum today—Clyfford Still’s Self-Portrait. Benezra went on to study law and political science (and a few courses in art history) at the University of California Berkeley. He earned both his MA and PhD in the art history from Stanford University and an additional MA from the University of California Davis.

Benezra’s professional career began in 1980 as curator of the Anderson Collection exhibition at SFMOMA. In 1983 he became a curator for the Des Moines Art Center and worked his first year under the direction of James Demetrion. In 1985 Benezra was a curator in the department of 20th century painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago and remained there until 1991, when he was offered the opportunity to work again with Demetrion as chief curator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. He was later promoted to assistant director for art and public programs. In 2000 the Art Institute of Chicago came calling once again and offered Benezra the dual position of deputy director and Frances and Thomas Dittmer Curator. One of his most important achievements at the Art Institute was the work he accomplished with Director James Wood in developing and designing plans for the Institute’s Modern Wing—an expansion that houses several collections of European contemporary art.

“I loved studying art. For me, it’s always been about the art of our time. It wasn’t just another discipline. It was a living discipline. You could really be engaged with the artist. I suppose some aspect of me is a missionary to tell more people about modern and contemporary art.”

17 1990 – Curator of 20th

Century Painting and Sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

2015 – Executive Director, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California

neal Benezra

Career Highlights


Neal Benezra is accomplished in every area of art and museum administration. He has curated magnificent exhibitions, developed progressive programming, written a number of books, and received recognition for his advancement of contemporary art in the United States. However, it is his remarkable transformation of the SFMOMA that is considered by many in the art world to be his most outstanding contribution.

Benezra was the first to establish agreements with other museums to jointly purchase acquisitions. He brought the revered Doris and Donald Fisher Collection to SFMOMA and successfully carried out a campaign to secure 200 gifts of art. In 2009 SFMOMA opened the Rooftop Garden, a 14,400 sq. ft. space

which allowed the museum to increase its programming. In 2016 SFMOMA will open its new expansion that will double the size of the museum. This new expansion could only be accomplished by someone with great vision, determination, and passion for art—and that someone is Neal Benezra.


46

Brilliant, unorthodox, inspired, eccentric, genius, and controversial are just a few of the terms used to describe Walter Hopps—probably the most colorful of the 43

jurors to visit the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show. Certainly, nothing about the life and work of Walter Hopps is boring or typical. He grew up in a family of physicians living in Los Angeles, California. He was home-schooled, attended private schools, yet graduated from public school. He studied microbiology and art history at UCLA and later attended the universities of Stanford, Harvard, and Yale, but never managed to earn a degree. Instead, he began his career with the singular purpose of bringing world-wide recognition to contemporary art. With two friends, Hopps opened the Syndell Studio in Los Angeles, California, in 1952. The free-form exhibition space’s first exhibition took place at the Santa Monica Pier in California, where Hopps rented a carousel for $80 from which he hung 100 works of art by over forty artists!

In 1957 Hopps partnered with Ed Kienholz to open the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, California. The Ferus became a major force on the Los Angeles art scene. In 1962 Hopps left Ferus to become curator for the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum). Two years later Hopps was promoted

to director making him—at 31 years old—the youngest art museum director in the United States. He brought international recognition to the Pasadena Art Museum and curated retrospectives of Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell, and Marcel Duchamp. Regrettably, Hopps’ eccentric and often unpredictable work habits forced the museum to ask for his resignation in 1967.

Despite his unconventional work habits, the arts community recognized Hopps’ ability to identify and work with the most talented contemporary artists of the day. He was hired in 1967 to work at the Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, D.C., where he exhibited cutting-edge modern art. In 1972 Hopps was hired as director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art but was soon fired for his habit of disappearing for long periods of time without notifying his colleagues. That same year, Joshua Taylor of the Smithsonian American Art Museum hired Hopps as acting U.S. commissioner for the Venice Biennale.

Hopps is most often recognized for his work with The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. Dominique de Menil and her late husband had assembled an extraordinary collection of art and in 1980 she hired Hopps to assist with building a museum to house the collection. Hopps urged her to hire the innovative architect Renzo Piano and asked that Piano design a roof system that would allow control of light into the museum. Piano developed an ingenious system that more than fulfilled their request and which helped bring international recognition to the museum

“One of the largest criteria for art is as a carrier of society’s values, whether visual or metaphysical.”

18 1991– Consulting Curator,

The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas

2015 – Curator, The Menil Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and other museums;

Adjunct Curator until his death in 2005

Career Highlights

walter HoPPs 1932–2005


for its beauty and design. The Menil Collection opened in 1987 with Hopps at the helm. Unfortunately, he was moved from director to curator within two years.

Hopps was most successful (and incredibly gifted) at curating exhibitions of contemporary art. He mounted retrospectives of artists whose names have become familiar to most such as Andy Warhol, Max Ernst, Yves Klein, John Chamberlain, James

Rosenquist, and many more. Hopps is credited for bringing contemporary art to the west coast and for supporting and promoting young, talented, American artists. In 2001 The Menil Collection established the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. Until his death in 2005, Hopps was continually called upon by the finest art museums in the United States to curate ground-breaking exhibitions.


48

“Our ordinary speech and conversation is thoroughly cliché ridden, yet we find that the most interesting writers among us are able to turn words and conversation into eloquent new-made things in the world —so too, it is with art and the visual language.”

Michael Hall came to Athens soon after retiring from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills,

Michigan. Over the span of 20 years, he was an artist-in-residence, teacher, and director in the school’s sculpture department.

Hall was born in Upland, California in 1941. He earned a BA in art from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and returned to the west coast in 1964 to attend the University of Washington, where he earned an MFA in sculpture. Hall has been the recipient of several awards including the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship, the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, an NEA grant for visual arts, the Visual Artist Fellowship award from the Utah Arts Council, a Pollock/Krasner Foundation grant, and an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts grant.

Known as an artist in the Abstract style, Hall has worked for much of his career with materials such as steel, copper, and

constructed metals. In 1996 he began exhibiting work in both group and solo exhibitions. His art has been on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum, and at the Hirschl and Adler Galleries in New York. His sculpture can be seen at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, the Dag Hammerskjold Plaza in New York City, and the Detroit Institute of Art in Detroit, Michigan. His artwork is in several public, private, and corporate collections both in the Detroit area, specifically, and the United States and abroad, generally. Hall is an authority on folk and regional art and has been an avid collector. In 1990, after 25 years of collecting folk art, the Milwaukee Museum of Art acquired the Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art consisting of 273 pieces of work that represent a broad range of art considered premier by the Milwaukee Museum of Art.

Since jurying the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show, Michael Hall continues making and exhibiting his art. He has written a number of articles and occasionally lectures. In the past ten years he has published several books which include The Artist Outsider: Creativity and the Boundaries of Culture, Emerson Burkhart: An Ohio Painter’s Song of Himself, and Carvings and Commerce: Model Totem Poles, 1880–2010. Recently, Hall and Patricia Glascock curated the exhibition Great Lakes Muse: American Scene Painting from Upper Midwest 1910–1960 at the Flint Institute of Art in Flint, Michigan. Hall has also served as a member on the board of directors of the International Sculpture Center in Washington, D.C.

1992 – Sculptor, Critic, Retired Educator, Detroit, Michigan

2015 – Sculptor, Writer, Critic, Curator, and Community Activist, Hamtramck, Michigan

19

micHael DaViD Hall

Career Highlights


50


52

When first reading Audrey Flack’s quote, I couldn’t help but feel that her use of the term ‘boundaries’ reflects the

sum of her life; she has always been confronted with boundaries. However, she doesn’t step outside them; instead, she identifies them and aligns them to meet her needs and goals. It’s a strategy that has worked extremely well for her. When we first spoke, I anticipated that I would be required to stay within the social boundaries of appropriate conversation between a stranger from Athens, Georgia, and an extremely talented, highly celebrated, international artist. Audrey was charming, and our conversation was comfortable and filled with colorful stories and frank comments on the everyday. Perhaps it’s her ability to be honest and direct that makes Audrey Flack so fascinating and refreshing.

Audrey clearly recalled that soon after arriving in Athens, a terrible snowstorm hit the Northeast and prevented her from departing as scheduled. However, the delay gave her additional time to make her selection from a record-breaking number of artists’ submissions. She was satisfied at having selected 145

pieces, making the 1993 Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show the largest since its inaugural show in 1974. Audrey explained that she always looks for truth in artworks—for the artist’s ability to reveal something honest to the viewer. She complimented the quality of works submitted and was pleased that so many appealed to her.

Flack grew up in Washington Heights, New York. She loved art and literally carried a book of Rembrandt’s portraits with her at all times. She attended The High School of Music and Art in New York City and went on to attend Cooper Union. Flack was at Cooper Union until 1951, when the newly appointed chair of Yale University’s School of Art and Architecture, Josef Albers, recruited her. Albers was trying to raise the caliber of art students in his department and Audrey’s talent met his standards. Audrey did not agree with Albers’ insistence that she adopt his theories of geometric expression; nevertheless, she graduated with a BFA from Yale in 1952, then promptly returned to New York City where she studied art history at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. During this time, Flack became one of the “boys,” painting in the Abstract Expressionist style alongside well-known artists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline.

Audrey continued to paint in the Abstract Expressionist style through the 1950s, but in the 1960s returned to the style she loved most—Realism. She worked diligently to develop a hyper-

“For me, art is a continuous discovery into reality; an exploration of visual data which has been going on for centuries; each artist contributing to the next generation’s advancement. I wanted to go a step further and extend the boundaries.”

1993 – Sculptor, Art Educator

2015 – Sculptor, Painter, Mixed-Media Artist, New York City, New York

20

auDrey flacK

Career Highlights


realistic approach to painting in spite of being regularly chastised by a few colleagues for what they considered to be unorthodox techniques. Flack’s work developed into the Photorealism style for which she is most often remembered and, in 1966, she became the first Photorealist to have a painting purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for its permanent collection.

In the 1970s, Flack explored the topic of feminism and many of her paintings feature religious figures and goddesses. In the 1980s, she turned from painting to sculpture and began her long and successful period of making massive and majestic goddess and heroine sculptures.

At the time of her visit to Athens, Audrey had for several years been dedicated to the art of sculpture and was working passionately to create a series of enormous Neoclassical goddess figures made of plaster, bronze, and fiberglass. Civitas: Four Visions (Gateway to the City of Rock Hill) was a series of 13 ft. high figures installed in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The 10 ft. high Islandia: Goddess of the Healing Waters was designed for installation at the New York City Technical College in Brooklyn. The task of designing and fabricating such large figures was an immense challenge, but Flack knew that to fully communicate the strength and power of women throughout history it was necessary to work on a large scale.

Flack has earned numerous awards and honors for her visionary work and her commitment to art education, among them the

U.S. Government National Design for Transportation Award, the Honorary Ziegfield Award from the National Art Education Association of New York, honorary professorships from George Washington University and Bridgeport University, and honorary doctorates from both the Lyme Academy of Art and Cooper Union.

I doubt I could find a happier and more vigorous woman than Audrey Flack. Each morning she awakes to new ideas and an eagerness to create. Retirement is a thought she has considered, but only briefly. In her eyes there is too much yet to be accomplished. When I asked about her intense level of energy, she responded that she has always had it and is forever grateful for it; it’s what gives her the impetus to play her banjo or ukulele each morning, to play music with her group—Audrey Flack and the History of Art Band— and to write the lyrics for their tunes. By the way, she plays a mean game of poker.

Audrey continues to live and work in her New York City apartment. She and her husband often spend time at their home on Long Island. Her sculptures have become smaller, and she has been working regularly with a variety of printing techniques, drawing, and other two-dimensional media. She frequently works on multiple projects, lectures, and exhibits. When I asked what she still hopes to accomplish, Flack said that she would love to create large sculptures of Michelle Obama and Gloria Steinem that would proudly overlook the Hudson River. Thankfully, there are clearly no boundaries to her Audrey’s perspective, lifestyle, and creative imagination.


54

“Every year the Cahoon Museum presents a stunning, intriguing, and captivating set of exhibits that enlivens the art scene on Cape Cod and attracts artwork and viewers from all over our region, our state, and our nation. At the same time, it maintains an outstanding permanent collection of works by Ralph and Martha Cahoon and more widely, by American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries and contemporary artists of the Cape and the Northeast.”

—An Introduction by Waterhouse to the Cahoon Museum of American Art.

Richard Waterhouse knew Athens fairly well when he came to the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show

in 1994. He had visited a number of times during his work with the Georgia Council for the Arts (GCA). This particular visit, however, held a wonderful memory of purchasing a painting from the show by artist Joni Johnston. Much later in 2011, Johnston’s painting was included in the Lone Figure and the Landscape exhibition that Waterhouse curated at the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Cotuit, Massachusetts—a wonderful compliment to Johnston’s work and characteristic of Waterhouse’s penchant for making artistic connections in all that he does.

Waterhouse grew up in Tennessee and attended Centre College in Kentucky where he earned a BA in art history in 1981. At Centre, he acquired three years of invaluable experience as house manager at the Norton Center for the Arts. Following graduation, Waterhouse interned at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. His first position as an arts administrator was with the Okefenokee Heritage Center in Georgia where he was art coordinator and director. In 1984 Waterhouse moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and began directing docent coordination and education at the High Museum of Art. In 1986 the Southern Arts Federation hired Waterhouse as their interim director. One of his many responsibilities and accomplishments as interim director was coordinating 27 art exhibitions that traveled throughout the Southeast. In 1988 the GCA recognized Waterhouse’s talents and brought him to the State Office where he served as GCA’s visual arts manager, where he was responsible for the planning, development, and administration of the state’s visual arts and dance programs. He also assisted individual artists with project grants, managed Georgia’s State Art Collection, and curated two gallery programs at the Carriage Works Gallery and the Governor’s Office Exhibition Series.

The Southeastern Museums Conference headquartered in Atlanta offered Waterhouse the position of executive director in 2002. His responsibilities were extensive and included planning and coordinating long range plans, maintaining finances, providing necessary liaison and staff support, and

1994 – Visual Arts Manager, Georgia Council for the Arts, Atlanta, Georgia

2015 – Executive Director, Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit, Massachusetts

21

ricHarD waterHouse

Career Highlights


meeting regularly with the board of the American Association of Museums’ (now the American Alliance of Museums).

After seven years, Waterhouse began searching for an opportunity to direct an American art museum. He was also interested in experiencing the challenge of handling a major building campaign. As luck would have it, Waterhouse saw that the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Cotuit, Massachusetts, needed a director and he landed the position. The job provided Waterhouse everything he had been hoping for: a wonderful group of members and patrons; an exciting collection of American art; and, wonderful exhibition opportunities. He also relished the challenge of setting up a satellite museum while the original building was being expanded. Waterhouse achieved his goal of completely renovating and expanding the Cahoon and nearly doubling the size of the museum.

Richard Waterhouse’s enthusiasm for the things he treasures and the information he shares with others is contagious. He is completely captivated by the study of gravestone symbolism and art. His passion began in 1989 when he volunteered as a docent for Atlanta’s Historic Oakland Cemetery. He was so fascinated by the cemetery’s history, the stories connected with those buried at Oakland, and the exquisitely designed stones that he organized a tour called Victorian Symbolism at Oakland which is still offered today. He also wrote a book on the topic called Sacred Symbols of Oakland: A Guide to the Many Sacred Symbols of Atlanta’s Oldest Public Cemetery. He publishes Waterhouse

Symbolism, a monthly e-newsletter, and leads a monthly tour of Old Town Cemetery for the Sandwich Glass Museum on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Waterhouse travels regularly to expand his symbolism research and includes the Oconee Hills Cemetery in Athens, Georgia, as among his favorites for its fascinating gravestones.

Waterhouse reflected on his career and shared that there are three main accomplishments he is most proud of: fundraising $2.5 million for the Cahoon’s renovation and expansion; retrieving over 600 artworks from various state agencies and commissioning the High Museum of Art to do a conservation plan for each one of them; and, raising $500,000 (while working at the Southeastern Museums Conference) to coordinate a grants program for museum employees and organizations that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Richard has come to a point in his career where he can look forward to new experiences and adventures. He hopes to find a position in the Atlanta area where he can use his museum skills and experience to introduce the public to fresh perspectives in the visual arts. Somehow, tucked between his many activities, he would like to find time to return to his favorite art form—ceramics—an area in which he has worked and excelled for much of his life.

Waterhouse’s work was exhibited at the 2000 Cairo International Biennale for Ceramics in Cairo, Egypt.

Debra Lynn Wilbur came to Athens to jury the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show soon after moving to Atlanta, Georgia, from St. Louis, Missouri. She had just accepted the position as director of the City Gallery of Chastain in Atlanta. She partnered with Richard Waterhouse to narrow the choices from 536 artworks submitted by Athens area artists to the final 43. This was the third of three shows having two jurors invited to make selections. It was also the smallest of the 40 annual shows that have been exhibited.

In St. Louis, Debra Lynn was the co-founder of the independent curatorial team known as Cowboys and Indians. The team was devoted to supporting art and developing awareness of under-represented and emerging artists. Wilbur also co-hosted the Cowboys and Indians radio talk show on KWUR in St. Louis.

Wilbur was active with the Indiana Arts Commission and served as program specialist from 1988-1990. She organized a film series exploring the lives of female African-Americans (including the films by Julie Dash and the Not Channel Zero collective) in conjunction with the traveling Carrie Mae Weems exhibition organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and presented by the Forum Center for Contemporary Art in St. Louis.

1994 – Director, City Gallery of Chastain, Atlanta, Georgia

2015 - Unable to reach Ms. Wilbur or locate appropriate updated information“One of the funny things about human nature is the

compulsion to organize and group things – to make order out of chaos. The very nature of group shows, especially juried shows, is chaotic. A curator’s job is to order and make sense of the enormous amount of work that floats around out there. This too is the curator’s art.”

Career HighlightsDeBra l. wilBur


56

The Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC) Annual Juried Show has been fortunate to invite to Athens a number of

women who are highly successful arts professionals. Perhaps the juror that followed the most circuitous route before arriving in town was Eva Forgacs, an internationally acclaimed art critic, well-published author, and educator. While in Athens, Forgacs was gracious and generous with her time. She spent two and a half days carefully reviewing 450 submissions to the show, she answered artists’ questions with considerable thought and detailed responses, and gave an extremely informative lecture at the University of Georgia on contemporary art in Eastern Europe.

Forgacs grew up in Hungary, and later studied English, French, and art history at Budapest University where she graduated in 1972. Although she made it clear that being a woman in no way hindered educational opportunities in her country, she always made the effort to be apolitical in her choice of topics when researching and writing. Art history was a subject she loved, and she generally felt confident in the topics she chose to research.

She and her family moved to the United States from Hungary in 1993. She continued to travel between countries which created a number of paperwork challenges that when finally completed made her visit particularly gratifying. The determination to bring Eva to Athens in 1995 becomes clear when reviewing her accomplishments between 1972 (when she graduated from college) and 1993 (when she came to the United States).

In 1981 Forgacs published her first book on the writings of a German art critic she greatly admired. The book brought her recognition and motivated her to write a second book about the same critic. In 1982 she became curator in the department of modern design and contemporary art at the Hungary Museum of Decorative Arts in Budapest. Five years later, she began working at the Hungarian Academy of Craft and Design, where she was when she came to Athens to jury the LHAC’s Annual Juried Show. While at the academy, Forgacs became an associate professor at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest in 1986. During this time, she completed her doctorate. Forgacs resigned from her position as associate professor in 1993 to move to the United States. That she held two important positions simultaneously while completing her doctoral coursework is one of the amazing aspects of Eva’s career!

After returning to the United States, Forgacs began teaching at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, where she is presently an adjunct professor. She continues to travel as a lecturer, researcher, and writer. She has been the recipient of

“[M]ost artists who undertake this adventure of becoming artists feel more responsible than other people for the statements they make, because an artist is supposed to be different by having some special gift that most other people do not have.”

1995 – Art Historian, Critic

Professor, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest, Hungary

2015 – Historian, Critic, Curator

Professor, ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, California

22

eVa forGacs

Career Highlights


several research grants from the following institutions: the Center for European Studies at Rutgers (1997); the Central European University (CEU) Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest (2006); the Malevich Society (2009); Leipzig University (2011); and, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (2012-2013).

As I was completing this piece, I received an email from Eva and it seemed appropriate to include it here. I knew she had been in Europe and I assumed he was likely staying in Budapest. She wrote, “Indeed, I was in Budapest and very distracted by the

turmoil and drama unfolding there. It was not easy to travel back to Los Angeles as our flight was out of Vienna. And the border between Hungary and Austria was often, and unpredictably, closed, then reopened. It was a sadly historic experience.”

Eva continues to be a prolific writer. Her most recognized book is The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics.


58

Susan Lubowsky Talbott is an accomplished professional and is lauded by the arts community for her ability to calmly solve

the impossible, create innovative programs, and significantly improve existing programs and conditions. She’s able to do all these things while connecting easily with the community and its museum experiences.

Talking with Susan was both a treat and a privilege. She is approachable, honest, funny, and modest. We began our conversation by recalling her memories as juror at the Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC) Annual Juried Show. Although it was 20 years ago, she remembered arriving in Athens during a remarkably exciting time. The town was preparing for the 1996

Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, by playing host to a few selected events. To accommodate the Olympic activities that summer, the LHAC scheduled the Annual Juried Show from June 2 to August 9, a bit later than usual. Susan also recalled the high level of energy she sensed at the LHAC as members eagerly anticipated the first stage of the LHAC’s long-awaited building expansion. While in town, Susan had the opportunity to join her friend Bill Eiland, Director of the Georgia Museum of Art, in celebrating the opening of the museum’s stunning new building on East Campus.

Talbott grew up in New York City. Her parents appreciated the arts and filled their home with art books and conversation. She loved to draw and was quite confident that one day she’d become a studio artist. She noted that she and Lenny Bruce were cousins once removed and shared an aunt who was an amateur artist. The aunt introduced Talbott to the Brooklyn Museum and taught her how to paint with oils which sparked Talbott’s desire to become an artist. Her family, like many in New York City, lacked the funds to pay for children’s art classes. However, thanks to free programs taught by professional artists, Talbott became a student and budding young artist. She set a personal goal to one day work with organizations and, similarly, create art programs for all children. Today, much of what is written about Talbott’s career includes praise for the numerous art opportunities she’s provided for children and their families.

Following high school, Talbott entered Pratt Institute where

“Susan understands how children can thrive when they have the opportunity to integrate the arts into their learning, and she has made the Atheneum a welcoming place for all families. Under her innovative leadership, the broader community now has the opportunity to savor its treasures and thousands of students have had the chance to experience the arts in new and meaningful ways.” —Yvette Melendez, Chair, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, in response to Talbott’s retirement announcement.

23 1996 – Executive Director,

Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem, North Carolina

2015 – Director and CEO, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut

susan luBowsKy talBott

Career Highlights


she earned both a BFA and MFA. While enrolled at Pratt, she worked as an assistant coordinator of exhibits in the school’s art gallery, an experience that led to her studies in arts administration. She would later attend Harvard’s Program for Art Museum Directors.

Talbott’s career began as assistant director/director of programs at the Queens Museum of Art in 1980. In 1982 she served as director at New York’s Philip Morris branch of the Whitney Museum of American Art. A program she directed and particularly enjoyed was the Artist and Homeless Collaborative which centered on work with homeless children. In 1987 she became director of the Whitney Museum at the Equitable Center, their largest branch. In 1989 Talbott became director of the visual arts program for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., where she ran an $8 million program.

At the time of her visit to the LHAC in 1996, Talbott was working in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as the executive director of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art. She led the organization’s transition from a regional art center to a national venue for contemporary American art. Her Artist and Community exhibition series became a nationally recognized model for community-based programming. In 1998 she became director and CEO of the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa, where she administered the museum, the sculpture park, and the art school complex. Talbott acquired over 700 works of art for their permanent collection. In 2005 she returned to Washington, D.C., to serve as director of Smithsonian Arts at the Smithsonian Institute.

Talbott’s ability to successfully meet the challenges so often encountered by art institutions drew her to Hartford,

Connecticut, where the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art—the oldest public art museum in the United States—was struggling with funding issues and in desperate need for major renovation. From 2008 to 2015, Talbott accomplished what no one before her had been able to do. As Richard Armstrong, Director of the Guggenheim Museum, stated, “Susan Talbott’s deft leadership has propelled the venerable Wadsworth Atheneum back to its role as a national and international leader for museums. The renovations and re-organization accomplished under her direction, as well as distinguished additions to the collection, make her tenure especially praiseworthy.”

2015 has been a momentous year for Talbott. On November 15, the French Ministry of Culture awarded her the insignia Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres). Just four days later, Talbott, along with those who contributed to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum’s renovation and expansion, celebrated its completion. Susan shared with me that these accomplishments have been the most significant and rewarding of her career. As the year ended, she retired from the Wadsworth Atheneum leaving, as she said, on a high note.

In answer to my question about her future plans, Susan replied that one thing she’ll do is work with artists and students. However, life has a funny way of altering one’s plans. Sadly, in in Fall, 2015, Susan’s friend Marion “Kippy” Boulton Stroud, founder and director of Philadelphia’s renowned Fabric Workshop and Museum, tragically died, leaving the position of director vacant. The ending to this story is obvious—in February, 2016, Susan will become the museum’s interim executive director. There’s no doubt she will have the opportunity to work with artists and students while there and, hopefully, do a little work of her own.


60

Artist William Wiley visited Athens and the Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC) Annual Juried Show in 1998. It

was a very unusual time and a very unusual year for the show. The LHAC’s expansion was under construction and much was required for planning and installing the show. The lobby of the Morton Theatre was selected as the exhibition space. Because the lobby is quite small, size limitations were given for art submissions. As an example, two-dimensional works could be no larger than 18x18 inches and that included the frame. A Salon des Refuses was also planned at the Loef Gallery on Clayton Street. Tragedy struck on May 1 with the unexpected death of Ronnie Lukasiewicz. Everyone stepped in to carry on with requirements for opening the show just as Ronnie would have wished. The show was dedicated to Ronnie, his ideas, energy, and inspiration. A dedication piece was added to the catalog and the layout submitted to the printer who rushed to have it ready for

the show’s May 9 opening (the Refuses exhibition was installed and opened on May 19). I cannot omit making the point that this type of group effort and determination have always been the hallmark of the LHAC’s staff and volunteers, and thus has made it a star in the Athens art community.

William Wiley seems to be the type of man who is able to understand and adapt to unusual circumstances like those mentioned above. Although internationally recognized as a brilliant artist—and unparalleled in style—he is also extremely humble. Wiley approached the task of jurying the submitted art with compassion and empathy. In his Juror’s Statement, Wiley wrote that when reviewing the artists’ pieces, “It’s just that as an artist, one who truly loves the work—the doing of it—I think that’s the greatest gift we give ourselves—the doing, the practice, the giving, sharing your vision, idea, uniqueness. I thought it [the body of submitted works] was an interesting, creative, vital variety of views—hard work, wit, and humor, love, and skill are all present in all the works.”

Wiley was born in Bedford, Indiana, in 1937. He was raised in southeastern Washington State where he was highly influenced and encouraged by his high school art teacher. He earned both a BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and began teaching at the University of California Davis, where he continued until 1972. He collaborated regularly with his colleagues and enjoyed teaching and working with his students. Wiley began exhibiting in 1960 and was a part of the well-

“So please remember that regardless of ‘in’ or ‘out,’ it’s just one person’s opinion regardless of their qualifications. Art and artists will just go on … can’t help it … can’t be stopped … always full . . . always empty. Such great potential … what an idea—art! That’s why I love it so and feel grateful to know its magic voice and vision.”

—Wiley’s comment to artists submitting work to a juried show

1998 – Contemporary Artist, Multiple Media Artist, San Francisco Bay area, California

2015 – Artist, San Francisco Bay area , California

24

william wiley

Career Highlights


known exhibition Funk Art. He continued as a member of the Funk Art movement, an aesthetic influenced by elements of Surrealism and Dada that often parodied mainstream art and formalism.

The Hosfelt Gallery has represented Wiley for a number of years and describes his style as not being, “[R]eadily classifiable into any movement or stylistic trend. Combining humble materials, found objects, personal symbols, enigmatic texts, and references to art history, popular culture, and current events, Wiley has developed a distinctive style that allows for variety, invention, and subtlety.”

The greatest tribute to Wiley’s artistic genius was the retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2009. The exhibition celebrated fifty years of Wiley’s exceptional career of addressing the critical issues of our time through his art. “Art, politics, war, global warming, foolishness, ambition, hypocrisy, and irony are summoned by Wiley’s fertile imagination and recorded in the personal vocabulary of symbols, puns, and images that fill his objects. His wit and sense of the absurd make his art accessible to all with multiple layers of meaning revealed through careful examination.”

Wiley’s work can be found in every important international museum collection. His solo exhibitions are too numerous to count. The honor of having him jury an exhibit for the LHAC’s Annual Juried Show was exceptional. I have no doubt that this opportunity was a thrill for Ronnie as well.


62

25

Since childhood, Gary Sangster has always been interested in art. He notes that it was not an interest in being an artist as

much as it was an interest in developing the ideas that flowed around and about, emerging from the whole issue of art. He was especially responsive to cutting-edge contemporary art. In college he majored in art history and philosophy. Together, he explained, it became the study of knowledge and ideas.

Sangster began his career in 1973 as a secondary school art teacher and within a year became assistant professor of art education at Newcastle University in Australia. By 1978 he was professor of art history at Newcastle and at the University New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia. In 1980 he became chair of art history and theory. Sangster instituted an international lecturing program, as well as introduced an experimental film festival. He also offered new museum studies courses at UNSW.

During the first ten years of his career, Sangster focused on teaching art education. Becoming director of the Artspace Sydney Visual Arts Centre in Sydney in 1983 was the beginning of his work as a curator and was a perfect job for someone

who enjoys both education and contemporary art. Artspace is a leading international residency-based contemporary art center housed in the historic Gunnery Building fronting Sydney Harbor. Sangster worked at Artspace until 1986, while continuing his work at the UNSW where he became professor of museum studies in 1984. The responsibility of curating at Artspace directed Sangster to further develop his interest in museum education.

In 1987 Sangster moved to New Zealand and became deputy director and chief curator at the National Art Gallery of New Zealand in Wellington. This was the starting point for his international pursuits. Sangster moved from New Zealand to New York in 1989 to serve as curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. Three years later he became chief curator of the Jersey Museum of Contemporary Art in Jersey City, New Jersey. Sangster was the spark which new contemporary museums needed to increase the quality and numbers of their exhibitions, and to develop patronage through collaborative projects and community engagement. His ability to build growth and stability took Sangster to Cleveland, Ohio, where he became executive director of the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art (now the Museum of Contemporary Art or MOCA) in 1994.

After two years in Cleveland, Sangster became executive director of The Contemporary in Baltimore, Maryland. It was during his tenure in Baltimore that Sangster came to Athens to serve as

“I think the quality of a well-juried show is that all of the work demonstrates the capacity to communicate effectively to the given audience.”

2000 – Executive Director, The Contemporary, Baltimore, Maryland

2015 – Professor of Art and Design, University New South Wales, Australia

Gary sanGster

Career Highlights


juror for the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show. His selection of subject and media was diverse and his answers to the artists’ questions detailed and thought-provoking. He enjoyed his visit to Athens, and those he met during his stay enjoyed his warm personality, intellect, and sense of humor.

After six years in Baltimore, Sangster moved north and became dean/director of the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. Two years later, he became executive director at the Headlands Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California. After serving three years, he was enticed to return home and to the UNSW. Sangster continues his work at UNSW and is presently a lecturer

in the School of Art History and Art Education.

Sangster’s international career has been exceptional. His work has been progressive and his contributions have positively impacted the state of contemporary art throughout the world. His aim has always been to transform the understanding of the value of new cultural experiences in social, educational, historical, and economic terms. He has worked to link artists internationally, to explore multicultural issues, and to bring communities together through collaboration.


64

26James Dean was a tough man to find. My initial efforts to

locate him were continually thwarted by the fact that James Dean the actor was so prominent in every source I searched. There is also James Dean the dentist who has done an excellent job of promoting himself. Ironically, the first on-line site I found for James Dean our juror was titled, “The Other James Dean.” It was that light sense of humor I encountered when sitting in conversation with him.

We met at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia. This building of artists’ studios sits on the Potomac River across from Washington, D.C. Our conversation began with Dean’s warm greeting and an invitation to sit at his large worktable in his third flood studio. The picture window in his studio offers the perfect light for painting and an exquisite view of the Potomac— ideal elements for a watercolorist inspired by nature. However, idyllic setting aside, it was Jim’s art of storytelling that made the visit so special. As he shared his first-hand experiences as founding director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Art Program, I began to understand why his delivery was so energetic and enthusiastic. The story of his life’s work is incredible, filled with color and intrigue, and yet it’s less about his own accomplishments than it is about his achievements with others.

Dean was trained as an artist at the Swain School of Design (now a part of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth). He worked in the public affairs office at NASA where he was director of films, publications, and television. In 1962 he was approached by James Webb, second administrator of NASA, with a proposal to bring artists to NASA for the purpose of interpreting the adventures of the space program. Until that point, everything being learned and understood about the space program was done through scientific writings and photography. There was nothing being done to interpret the feelings and emotions that inspired the program and the people running it. Webb wrote in a March 16, 1962, memorandum, “We should consider in a deliberate way just what NASA should do in the field of fine arts to commemorate . . . historic events,” of the American space program. And so it began.

With assistance from Dr. H. Lester Cooke, Curator of Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Dean created a program to recruit and dispatch visual artists to NASA’s facilities where they were to interpret—through their own artistic media and styles—the final mission of the Mercury Program’s Faith 7 spacecraft. In 1963 eight artists began the program each with an honorarium of $800 to cover all their expenses (including travel)! Lamar Dodd (founder of the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art) was among the first to join this exciting adventure at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Other artists included Peter Hurd, Paul Calle, George Weymouth, John McCoy, Robert Shore, and Robert McCall. Artist Mitchell Jamieson, positioned on an

“At the core, both art and aerospace exploration search for the meaning of life.”

2001 – Retired Curator of Art, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC

2015 – Artist at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, Alexandria, Virginia

James D. Dean

Career Highlights


aircraft carrier in the mid-Atlantic, awaited his opportunity to illustrate the spacecraft’s return to earth.

Between 1964 and 1968, other illustrious artists joined the program such as Norman Rockwell, Crystal Jackson, Paul Sample, and Tom O’Hara, to name a few. By1969, the NASA Art Program had proven to be extremely successful, and new artists were recruited for the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Six of the original artists and seven new artists worked in Houston, Cape Canaveral, and the Pacific recovery area. Lamar Dodd was among the original artists, and new to the program were artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jamie Wyeth, Nicholas Solovioff, Dale Myers, and John Meigs.

As the NASA Art Program grew, Dean was single-handedly managing the receiving, cataloging, and installation of artworks submitted. Storage space had become scarce. It became clear that a location was required for the housing and exhibition of this stunning collection. In 1975 NASA’s art collection was moved to the Smithsonian’s new National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and Dean became curator of art for the museum where he remained until 1980. Over the years, the collection grew to well over 2,000 artworks. Although the NASA Art Program slowed down in 1996, artists have continued to use space exploration as a theme in their art.

Following his retirement from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Dean had the opportunity to see the space program from an artist’s point of view. He was invited by NASA to document in watercolor the launch and landing of a space shuttle flight.

Jim’s journey with the NASA Art Program is nothing short of amazing. He is still involved in various aspects of the NASA Art

Program. He regularly lectures and has co-written a number of books on related topics such as NASA/ART: 50 Years of Exploration, and Artistry of Space: The NASA Art Program. He also curated their 40th and 50th anniversary exhibitions.

I must take a moment to reference the lifelong friendship that developed between Jim Dean and Lamar Dodd as a result of their work with the NASA Art Program. During the last 20 years of Dodd’s life in Athens, they regularly took trips with their wives to Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine to paint, play, relax, and appreciate life. A mutual respect for one another’s art, adventures, and intellect created an extraordinary bond and trust between them.

In addition to organizing one of the Artrain USA tours (a traveling art museum on a train), one of Dean’s biggest accomplishments was his participation in the development of the Torpedo Factory Art Center. In 1974 a small group of artists tackled the work of cleaning up an old and deteriorated torpedo factory with the purpose of creating a space that would one day be filled with art studios and galleries. In the early 1980s, Jim became president of the Torpedo Factory Artists Association—the group originally responsible for operation of the center. The center not only brought new life to Alexandria’s riverfront and downtown district, it (and the concept behind it) became a role model for many cities. The center is a destination for art lovers around the world.

Today, in his third floor studio, you’ll find James Dean sitting quietly, working his artistic magic.


66

27James Rondeau presently serves as curator of contemporary

art at the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois. He has been at the Institute since 1998 and was only 28 years old when he began as associate curator of contemporary and modern art. Prior to coming to Chicago, Rondeau was associate curator of contemporary art and curator of the Sol LeWitt Collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1994 to 1998. He is one of the youngest curators to have achieved such a prestigious position at a world-class museum.

In preparation for his rocketing career as an art curator, Rondeau studied American civilization at Middleburg College in Vermont, where he earned a BA. He received an MA in art history from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He was a recipient of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Hilla Rebay International Fellowship and, in 1993, was an artist’s assistant for Peggy Diggs, an internationally recognized public art activist and artist in Massachusetts.

It has been said that Rondeau is a “curatorial machine.” He is incredibly well-organized and begins planning exhibitions four and five years ahead. His goal is always to present to patrons the finest examples of an artist’s work or art genre, as well as provide an accompanying catalog or book. Rondeau is continually bringing new contemporary acquisitions to the Art Institute’s Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing which opened in 2009. This year the Art Institute received the largest gift of art in its history—the $400 million Stefan T. Edlis and Gael Neeson Collection of modern art. The 42-work collection, primarily Pop Art pieces by Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Richter, and Twombly, will be placed under the curatorial care of Rondeau. Each artwork is considered to be a masterpiece.

“Art, contemporary art, in particular, operates like a language. It has an alphabet, a vocabulary, a grammar, a syntax, a cadence, etc. Some works of art can be ‘read’ or understood as one might apprehend a single word or sentence. Other function like paragraphs, or even, novels. No one could possibly absorb the meaning in a glance, no one could understand simply by looking. The meaning might emerge over time, or might be dependent upon a range of signs, symbols, associations, references that exist entirely outside the work of art itself. This information must be acquired (by asking, writing, talking, reading, etc.) and then applied to the work in question.”

2002 – Associate Curator of Contemporary Art in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois

2015 – Frances and Thomas Dittmer Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago

James ronDeau

Career Highlights


68

Rachael Blackburn Cozad has worked for nearly three decades to establish a successful and fascinating career in

art. The enthusiasm I heard in her voice and her willingness to share her experiences and passion for art led to a wonderfully memorable discussion. When visiting Athens as the 2003 Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show’s juror, she was working in Kansas City, Missouri, as director and CEO of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. She clearly recalled her experience, noting that it was an extremely large show with 685 submissions and the task of selecting the best entry seemed daunting. Rachael’s most memorable moment was while she was reviewing two paintings by Dixon. “They were so unusual—different than those in the rest of the show— and really terrific,” she explained, “but I wasn’t sure how they fit in with the other pieces, so I took my honorarium and purchased them! I still have the two displayed in my home.”

Cozad was immersed in art during her childhood in Texas. Her parents, Ed and Linda Blackburn, are successful artists and continue to work and exhibit regularly. Their paintings can be seen in national museums and private collections. Both earned degrees from the University of Texas and MAs from the University of California Berkeley. When it came time to enter college, Cozad’s interests leaned toward art history. She earned a BA from Texas Christian University, an MA in art history, and a second MA in arts administration from California State University in Los Angeles.

Cozad’s art career began in 1983 as registrar of the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1994 she accepted what was an extremely captivating job opportunity as chief curator of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation in Los Angeles. The Foundation holds and manages the world’s largest collection of sculpture by French master Auguste Rodin. In 1998 Cozad was promoted to and became the Foundation’s executive director. During this period, she traveled extensively with the Rodin exhibitions and published Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession and Rodin’s Monument to Victor Hugo. Cozad remained with the Foundation until 2001 when she became director and CEO of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Cozad directed the Kemper Museum until 2012. During her years as director she expanded the gallery space, opened Kemper at the Crossroads and Kemper East, established the museum’s Corporate Council and the Collector’s Forum, and

“With respect to painting, there are always current “trends” to avoid in favor of fresh expression and technique. Beyond drawing and the power of the artist’s simple mark, the blank canvas is a place to create boundless energy and meaning.”

—Cozad’s response to being asked what she looks for when judging the quality of a work of art.

28 2003 – Director & CEO, Kemper

Museum of Contemporary Art,Kansas City, Missouri

2015 – Owner, Rachael Cozad Fine Art, Kansas City

Owner, Madison Group Fine Art Appraisals, Kansas City

racHael BlacKBurn cozaD

Career Highlights


led the Kemper’s collaborative effort with DST Systems, Inc. by installing sculpture in downtown Kansas City. Cozad also trained to be a certified appraiser. Cozad found appraisal especially interesting and would appraise art whenever time would allow. After she left the Kemper in 2012, she remained in Kansas City and opened two businesses, Madison Group Fine Art Appraisals (where she is senior appraiser of fine art and rare wine) and Rachael Cozad Fine Art (which specializes in the sale of 19th and 20th century American paintings).

Cozad has curated exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, the White House, and Rockefeller Center. She has also organized exhibitions in Australia, France, Russia, and Singapore.

Presently what excites Cozad most is her extensive involvement with the work of painter George Caleb Bingham. Bingham is known as “The Missouri Artist” and is recognized as one of the most important painters among 19th century American artists. Cozad recently announced that Rachael Cozad Fine Art will sponsor the George Caleb Bingham Catalog Raisonné Supplement of Paintings and Drawings. Interestingly, Bingham (1811-1879) signed very few of his paintings—perhaps less than 5% of the more than 500 paintings he produced. The process of identifying them has been a difficult task. For example, it has taken specialists many years to uncover and authenticate

most of his work. It was not until 1986 that The Paintings of George Caleb Bingham: A Catalog Raisonné was published by E. Maurice Bloch. 13 additional paintings have been identified since 1986. In order to fund this project, Cozad created a private operating organization, The Riverbank Foundation, based in Kansas City.

Ironically, in 2010 Rachael and her husband purchased a beautiful home in the Union Hill area of Kansas City and discovered it was situated on a lot next to Union Cemetery where George Caleb Bingham is buried. The location, size, and beauty of their home motivated her to create an innovative model for her business by using the house as a residence and a place for her gallery, offices, and receptions. The large rooms, high ceilings, and expansive walls serve to enhance the art she displays, while accessibility and openness make it the perfect place to host (prospective) clients and friends for a variety of occasions. Rachael feels strongly that displaying art in a home environment—as opposed to a “white box” gallery space—helps clients imagine what artwork might look like in their own homes. Rachael could not be happier at this time in her life, but she made it clear that she has more to accomplish in her future. Having heard her story, I sincerely believe Rachael’s career will continue to forge ahead in positive ways and that hers is a career worth following.


70

When I began organizing my plan to research and write about the 43 Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC)

Annual Juried Show jurors, the first person I had the privilege to interview was David Levy, President of Sotheby’s education division at the Cambridge Information Group (CIG) in Washington, D.C. Levy’s expertise and enthusiasm for developing arts education-based programs has resulted in a growing number of innovative schools and courses of study.

Our interview began at David’s new office in Bethesda, Maryland. One of David’s many creative talents is photography. It was no surprise, then, to find his space lined with a number of beautifully-framed photos. Our conversation began with his memories of Athens, and him explaining why he so clearly recalled the visit. He was highly impressed with the Georgia Museum of Art and the accomplishments of its director, Bill Eiland. He complimented the school of art’s quality and

met with then-Director Carmen Colangelo. Sadly, he missed seeing his old friend Frank Ruzicka, former director at the University of Georgia’s School of Art (now the Lamar Dodd School of Art) who had passed away only two months earlier. Levy—an accomplished musician—regrets that he was unable to participate in the Athens’ music scene during his visit, but concluded that his experience in the Classic City was ultimately positive. He sensed that the arts were flourishing throughout the community.

I am confident in sharing that art influences surrounding David Levy’s childhood were the catalyst for his extraordinary career. His parents were artists Lucille Corcos, considered the “doyenne” (a woman who ranks as the senior member of a group or profession) of Modern Primitivist painters, and Edgar Levy, a Modernist still-life painter. In 1941 his family moved from Brooklyn Heights to South Mountain Road in Rockland County, New York. This area had developed into a creative community and included a surprisingly large number of successful artists, writers, musicians, and actors. Among the residents were John Houseman, Maxwell Anderson, Lotte Lenya, Morris Kantor, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, and James Marston Fitch. Levy’s godfather was the famous sculptor David Smith.

Levy attended Columbia University in New York City, New York, and majored in philosophy with an emphasis in aesthetics and art history. He pursued graduate studies in art history at Columbia University then transferred to New York University’s

“. . . It is important to try to understand what an artist is attempting to accomplish and then evaluate the degree to which the objective is achieved . . . a sophisticated observer should be able to intuit a direction or intent as one basis for assessing success.”—Levy’s response when being asked his principle criteria when jurying artwork

29 2004 – President and Director,

Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, DC

2015 – President, Sotheby’s Institute of Art; President of the education division of the Cambridge Information Group

DaViD c. leVy

Career Highlights


Institute of Fine Arts where he earned a PhD in organizational theory. In 1962 he became director of admissions at Parsons School of Design in New York City, and in 1968 became the school’s vice president. In just under a year, the president of Parson’s stepped down and the school’s trustees instructed Levy to close the struggling school. Instead, Levy chose a bold strategy—and one which would set the tone for the remainder of his career—that would merge Parson’s with the New School for Social Research (now known as The New School). During his 19-year tenure as CEO, Levy advanced Parsons from a small, non-degree school to one of the largest and most diversified visual arts college in the United States, offering a wide range of degrees and programs worldwide.

Levy was classically trained as a violinist and a professional jazz musician. During his presidency at Parson’s, he co-founded the Madeira Bach Festival in Portugal, co-founded the popular East Thirteenth Street Band, and created New York’s first professional jazz conservatory at The New School, an experiment that became one of the most important jazz conservatories in the world.

When Levy served as juror for the LHAC’s Annual Juried Show in 2004, he was president and director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and its College of Art and Design. During this period, he founded and developed the Delaware College of Art and Design. Levy left the Corcoran in 2004, and the following year began consulting with CIG. In 2006 Levy became president of CIG Education Group and its graduate school, the Sotheby’s Institute of Art. As a result of Levy’s efforts, Sotheby’s now has campuses in New York, Los Angeles, and London, and recently began collaboration with Tsinghua University Academy of Arts to create a fourth campus in Beijing, China.

During our conversation, David shared his thoughts concerning

the state of business in art, the problems associated with the purchase of art at high prices for the purpose of investment rather than for the love of the art, the need for innovative approaches to education, and issues related to the international art market. As we spoke, I discovered that Levy was developing a new option for arts-related education called the New York Times School. “The New York Times [NYT School] involves all the arts – writers, journalists, artists, photographers, critics, music, and performing artists,” he explained. “Creating a graduate-level school that prepares future employees to move fluidly into their career positions has become an educational necessity.” The NYT education program has since opened and launched a program for high school students.

David is a man with limitless energy and no plans to stop at this point. He acknowledged that he has an ever-developing stream of visions and goals but that he always reaches out to the most qualified people to assist him in making his visions a reality. David’s motivation is not recognition; he simply has an informed grasp of art and education, and of ideas and approaches that will improve situations; he also recognizes that collaboration with top people will bring about successful results. Thus, it is not surprising that his achievements have earned him an incredible number of honors. Probably the most prestigious is having been made a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France’s Ministry of Culture

I confess that although I was excited about this project, had it not been for David Levy’s welcoming and positive response to my visit, it is unlikely that I would have carried the project to its completion. David was the first among many jurors to receive me with kindness, openness, and incredible tales of achievement in the world of art. His welcoming demeanor and his time spent with me in conversation was a true gift.


72


74

Benny Andrews is of particular interest to those connected with the Lyndon House Arts Center (LHAC) in Athens,

Georgia, in part, because he grew up in the nearby town of Madison, Georgia, and because he and his brother—the well-known author Raymond Andrews—visited the LHAC several times. Benny was known by many in the area as a passionate artist who was able to communicate through art his Georgia history, beliefs, celebrations, and struggles.

Andrews was the third of ten children in a family that worked as sharecroppers. His parents emphasized the importance of education, kindness, hard work, creativity, and appreciation for the good in life. His father, George, was a folk artist, and although Andrews had never taken a formal art class until beginning his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, the ability to express life through visual art was at his core. This talent, and the fact that Andrews possessed strong values, was intelligent, curious, focused, and tenacious, gave him the inspiration to

accomplish what he believed were the important goals in his life.

One of the most beautifully written and heartfelt pieces about Benny Andrews, and one that captures his personality as well as the facts of his life, was written by Pamela Adkins-Ramey as an introduction to the 2005 LHAC’s Annual Juried Show. Pamela was for many years, and continues to be, a volunteer at the LHAC. While Andrews was visiting the LHAC, she came to know him and clearly made a strong connection with him. “Andrews began his own style of painting in the 1960s when the collage movement started to flourish. He led the way, using geometric forms to express intimate feelings and moods in his works. In each piece, there is a message, a drawing from his past life in Madison, Georgia, and his social life in New York and Chicago.”

Andrews attended the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 1958) after he was uninvited from attending the University of Georgia. The then southern segregationist school system prompted Andrews to leave Georgia and enroll in the Art Institute. State monies granted partial tuition fees for black students to attend schools out of state that would provide them educational opportunities not available to them in Georgia. Andrews was receptive to his teachers’ instructions, but seemed to butt heads with every school club and organization. “I mean, there were some things they were doing that I just couldn’t accept,” Andrews said of exclusionary groups and fraternities.

“If you don’t generate feeling, you’re just an illustrator, you’re just projecting a cardboard (image). Feeling is what it’s all about. If people don’t get a feeling from art, it doesn’t work for them.”

From an Oct. 30, 1994, article, by Owen McNally

30 2005 – Painter

2015 – Painter, Activist, Advocate, Writer, Critic, Teacher until his death in 2006

Benny anDrews 1930–2006

Career Highlights


During the 1960s and 1970s, as Andrews was leading a protest against museums and galleries for not showing works by blacks and women artists, there was an explosion of Abstract Expressionist art and artists throughout the country. However, Andrews wanted to follow his own path and demonstrate his individuality. “I tell my students not to emulate other artists because art is imagination and your most powerful weapon. It’s what defines the artist,” Andrews said. “If you give that up, you’ve given up your own creativity. I can teach you to draw in about five minutes and I can also give you the technical tools you’ll need to paint, but no one can teach imagination.”

Throughout his career, Andrews was an artist, activist, advocate, writer, critic, teacher, and family man. The subject matter of his art was, in most part, a narrative of everyday man and his conflicts and rewards. His style became delicate, sensitive, intimate, and often subtle. Andrews was influenced by southern folk art and by the artists Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence.

During Andrews’ career, he was awarded with a number of fellowships that included a Bellagio fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, a John Hay Whitney Fellowship, and a series of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Arts. He was recognized in a documentary film entitled Benny Andrews: The Visible Man. He was co-founder of the Black Emergency Culture Coalition, and was director of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Visual Arts Program from1982 to 1984.

Benny’s works are in the collections of over 30 major art museums across the United States.


76

It’s not a first impression—it’s an immediate understanding. Bill Fagaly loves his work and is devoted to New Orleans,

Louisiana, the city he adopted 49 years ago. His love affair with New Orleans began after he graduated with a BA and MA in art history from Indiana University where he worked for the Indiana University Art Museum. This experience introduced him to new experiences and new people and eventually led him to New Orleans where, in 1966, he landed a position at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA). Fagaly found a home in the French Quarter and never left. He’s been with NOMA his entire career and continues to curate exhibitions on a regular basis (although he officially “retired” in 2002). This year, Fagaly curated Kongo Across the Waters—an exhibition tying New Orleans to African tradition—and has been coordinating the exhibit Pierre Joseph Landry: Patriot, Planter, Artist.

Bill Fagaly began as curator of collections at NOMA and continued in that position until 1972 when he was promoted to acting director. In 1973 he was promoted to chief curator. During this time, Fagaly was also co-founder of the

Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans which supports multi-disciplinary arts. In 1984 Fagaly served as special museum consultant to both the Liberian and Vatican Pavilions for the Louisiana World Exposition. He was also instrumental in establishing the curatorial code of ethics for the American Association of Museums (now the American Alliance of Museums). Fagaly founded Prospect, a biennial exhibition of international contemporary art that he established as a result of a conversation with others at the museum about the role art and artists should play in rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. This year the Prospect Notes for Now exhibition was held at NOMA.

It seems ironic that I am writing about Fagaly and New Orleans at this point in time—the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It was August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans. Fagaly came to the Lyndon House Arts Center (LHAC) just four months later in January, 2006, to jury the LHAC’s Annual Juried Show. Naturally, he continued to feel overwhelmed by the destruction of the city and its residents’ lives. Fortunately, the high level of land on which the museum sits and their well-planned preparation for the storm kept NOMA and its art from being severely damaged, yet Katrina’s impact on NOMA’s staff was devastating—only 15 of the 87 employees were kept on due to budget cuts. However, Fagaly was pleased to announce that staff numbers were slowly increasing and that NOMA would be re-opening in late February, just in time for Mardi Gras. At the time, I doubt that the Athens

“Keep in mind that all art, at one point, was contemporary. Additionally, it is interesting to observe that, throughout history, art has made radical changes around the turn of the century.”

31 2006 – The Francoise Billion

Richardson Curator of African Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana

2015 – Curator, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana

william faGaly

Career Highlights


art community truly understood the devastation that Fagaly, NOMA, and the New Orleans community experienced. However, a review of the 2006 catalog reveals sensitivity to the situation based on the thoughtful questions posed to him by the artists and a section at the end of the catalog dedicated to the topic. It is comforting to know that ten years later, New Orleans is in the midst of a visual arts renaissance as artists are moving to the city and new galleries are opening.

There’s no end to the contributions Fagaly has made to New Orleans, NOMA, and the arts. He has curated well over 75 exhibitions and has published countless articles, essays, catalogs, and books. Fagaly has been the recipient of numerous honors, has been the catalyst for the start of several organizations, and has served his community in its time of need with diverse opportunities for healing and rebuilding through art. Fagaly recently completed his book of memoirs, and shared with me that although he has been fortunate to travel a fair amount, he hopes to do a lot more in the future.

Fagaly considers one of his greatest accomplishments to be a series of exhibitions he curated (each accompanied by a catalog he’s written himself ) in New York City: Aristides Logothetis at

the Cue Art Foundation (2003); a retrospective of self-taught artist Sister Gertrude Morgan at the American Folk Art Museum (2004); and, Resonance from the Past: African Sculpture from the New Orleans Museum of Art at the Museum for African Art (2005). Fagaly is perhaps the only curator to have curated three major exhibitions (each with an accompanying catalog which he has authored), on three different genres of art, at three major New York museums, within three consecutive years.

In a recent interview in Atlanta’s Burnaway magazine, Miranda Lash—Fagaly’s former colleague at NOMA— described Bill by saying, “He is one of a vanishing breed of career curators who built an incredible legacy at [a] single institution. Bill has been at NOMA for over 45 years. Suffice to say, he knows the biz.”


78

My conversation with a juror often begins with a prompt for a few memories of his or her visit to Athens. Leslie

answered with a memory that actually changed her life. Nancy Lukasiewicz showed her how to make coffee a little better by adding cinnamon. Leslie enjoyed it so much that she has had her coffee with cinnamon ever since. Another memory of her time in Athens was visiting the Tree That Owns Itself, a tree whose folk popularity stems from the unusual fact that it actually owns the property on which it sits (bequeathed to it by the now deceased former property owner). Although Leslie has achieved a high level of success in her career, she appreciates the small but special things in life, like the Tree That Owns Itself. It was that appreciation and her wonderful sense of humor that made our discussions a pleasure.

Jurying the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show was an important responsibility for Przybylek. She spent a great deal of time selecting each piece of art and answering each question posed to her by the show’s artists. She shared that while she may be a curator, being an artist is equally important as it gives her perspective when serving on both sides of the jurying process.

Przybylek studied art history and studio art at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where she earned a BA and was a presidential scholar. She earned an MA in art history at the University of Delaware in Newark, New Jersey. Throughout her career, Przybylek has succeeded in several areas of curatorial work. In 1994 she began as curator and site administrator at the Baldwin-Reynolds House Museum and Crawford County Historical Society in Meadville, Pennsylvania. The broad range of knowledge and experience she gained in Meadville (and her interest in art and historic monuments) led to an opportunity to become curator at the Fort Smith Museum of History in Fort Smith, Arkansas. As curator, she organized 20 exhibitions and managed a collection of more than 30,000 artifacts, photographs, and documents. She also researched, designed, and developed engaging interactive exhibitions, thematic tours, and programs. In 2000 and again in 2002, Przybylek served as the museum’s interim director. Although she left in 2004, she has many fond memories of working at the museum. One, in particular, was when she had the opportunity to serve on the

“It means that the search to find effective ways of conveying or exploring our personal beliefs and visions about the world around us are never ending. It means that we shouldn’t go through life on auto-pilot. It means that we should never stop looking, never stop trying to gain a deeper vision of the world we live in, or questioning our individual place in it.”

—In answer to the question, “What does art mean to you?”

32 2007 – Curator of Exhibitions,

ExhibitsUSA, Kansas City, Missouri

2015 – Curator of History, Senator John Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

leslie a. PrzyByleK

Career Highlights


Fort Smith Historic Site’s Exhibition Review Board with other community members. Together they assessed the impact of exhibition design plans developed by architect Miles Friedberg Molinari as part of the renovation and reinterpretation of the site’s visitor center. Molinari’s firm has been recognized for its work in designing museum and exhibition spaces.

From 2004 through 2006, Przybylek was curator of exhibitions for ExhibitsUSA/NEH on the Road, a division of Mid-America Arts Alliance (a National Endowment for the Arts regional organization based in Kansas City, Missouri). She researched, identified, initiated, and oversaw the development of new exhibitions for the national traveling exhibit program. In 2006 she became the organization’s curator of humanities exhibitions and project manager of NEH on the Road, a position she held until 2012. During this period, Przybylek also worked as an independent project illustrator doing character development, storyboarding, and illustration for a Missouri-based curriculum project.

After a little too much travel, a desire to stay in one place, and a yearning to move closer to family, Przybylek returned to Pittsburgh in 2013 and became curator of history at the Senator John Heinz History Center. Although her job entails considerable responsibility, it could not be a more perfect situation for a woman who loves the challenge of bringing fascinating stories from the past to museum visitors. As curator, Przybylek spearheads research and content development for

the museum’s exhibitions, identifies artifacts and collections appropriate for the permanent collection, and contributes to the development and presentation of public outreach efforts in multiple formats.

Education has always been an important component to Przybylek’s work and one she loves. She has taught adult classes in Arkansas, has been a humanities instructor in history at the University of Arkansas, and has assisted in developing curriculum for cultural, historical, and geographical heritage programs in Arkansas. Przybylek is always working to excite and educate children and adults. “What always means the most to me, regardless of whether I’ve been working with a major urban museum or a small private lender in western Arkansas, are those moments when I can see how my work helps people connect to their own stories, or to cultures they have never encountered before . . . and that’s the thing, it’s not so much my personal accomplishment as it is the chance to see my work making meaning for other people.”

What’s in store for Leslie’s future? She says it’s to travel, but travel is more than just site-seeing for her. She’d like to combine her travels with in-depth fieldwork and would like to visit places as diverse and rich in history as Alaska’s Inside Passage and the Alhambra Palace in Spain. Wherever her travels may lead her, Leslie is sure to find the history and hidden stories to share with the rest of us.


80

I was delighted when discovering that Charles Wylie, the Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas

Museum of Art (DMA) in Dallas, Texas, had been a founding member of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium Art Council and that he had been a force behind having installed 14 stunning artworks in the newly constructed stadium. This is not because I’m a Cowboys fan, but because for those of us who believe that art is a vital part of everyday life and community, there can be no better way to make this point than to place beautiful artwork in the buildings and environments that are frequented by a large portion of the public. The stadium is enormous and designed with large, sweeping, interior walls that exhibit the powerful art. If you’ve never seen the inside of this marvelous structure and the commissioned art installations that fill its space, do take the opportunity.

I mention this because although I was unable to contact Charles Wylie directly, I was able to find information that led me to

believe that he is not a man who is comfortable with self-promotion. Rather, he is humble, innovative, and persistent in pursuing his objective to bring outstanding art to the DMA for the benefit and pleasure of the community.

Wylie earned his BA in American studies from Notre Dame and his MA in art history from Williams College in Williamstown, Ohio. His earliest position was assistant to the director of art programs at the Lannan Foundation in Los Angeles. Lannan is a family-owned foundation dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity, and creativity through projects that support exceptional contemporary artists and writers, as well as Native activists who live in rural, indigenous communities. Wiley later accepted the position of assistant curator of contemporary art at the St. Louis Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri.

The DMA brought Wylie to Texas in 1996 to serve as the Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art. In this capacity, he brought notable acquisitions to the museum’s collection, was recognized for generating more than $29 million for the DMA’s contemporary art acquisition fund, and raised funds for the Foundation for AIDS Research.

Upon announcing his decision to retire in 2011, Wylie’s colleagues responded with generous praise for his contributions of 32 exhibitions, development of the Center for Contemporary Art, and tireless work in the community. Reflecting on his 15 years at the DMA, Wylie remarked that it was, “An astonishing

“If anything can be said of the art of the past few decades, it is that, truly, there is no one aesthetic or influence or movement that has dominated as in the past. I think this is an excellent (and unwieldy!) thing. Artists are free to use whatever medium, style, scale, and colors they feel fits their needs.”

33 2008 – Curator of Contemporary

Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas

2015 – Retired from the Dallas Museum of Art in 2011

Independent Curator

cHarles wylie

Career Highlights


privilege” to have worked with such great patrons, artists, and colleagues.


82

Reaching some jurors was a bit more difficult than others, but when I finally connected with Karen Shaw and had the

opportunity to speak with her at length, the Wonderful World of Karen Shaw the Artist unfolded. Karen has been creating unique, clever, and intriguing art for over 40 years. She is an incredibly accomplished artist, and her resume boasts numerous solo and group exhibitions, public collections that contain her artwork, honors and awards, and interviews and articles about her work.

Karen was born and raised in New York City and has loved art ever since she could remember. “I have been an artist my whole life. It is all I wanted to be since a very young age.” She earned both a BFA and MA at Hunter College on Long Island, New York, and did some additional graduate study at Long Island College. She married at a young age and gave birth to two sons while attending college. Karen and her husband decided that life outside the city was a better environment in which to raise their children. However, she managed to satisfy her cravings for the Big Apple with weekly visits to the city’s museums and galleries.

Shaw is best known as a collage artist, but her work is more than just an assemblage of materials—it’s sculptural and reflects a fascinating development of ideas. Karen’s special talent is giving everyday topics new meaning by placing them in different contexts. Her re-interpretations are visually pleasing, contain a hint of irony, and offer perspectives that are fresh, intelligent, humorous, and deeply complex.

A turning point in Shaw’s career began when she and several women in the community were hired to assist the vice president for NBC television in calculating survey numbers for a research project. While working on the project, the numbers became overwhelming and meaningless. Shaw observed society’s growing trend of identifying individuals by number—phone, social security, ID, accounts—rather than by name and soon an idea developed. She started compiling lists of numbers that were common and easy to collect such as grocery receipts, train schedules, sports statistics, and bank statements. Shaw devised a method to turn these numbers into words and from it created Summantics, a captivating collage series that became a huge success and whose techniques influenced her art throughout her career.

Shaw’s technique of converting numbers into words is evident in several artworks such as Drawing Borders, String of Words, and Body Language. Drawing Borders was influenced by Shaw’s interest in the shapes found on maps—their similarities, differences, groupings, and patterns—which she used to create

“It is good to talk with other artists but not to ask too many to critique your work—maybe only one or two trusted people; otherwise, the different opinions will make you confused. Your own opinion is the most important.”

34 2009 – Collage Artist;

Chief Curator, Islip Museum of Art, Islip, New York

2015 – Collage Artist; Independent Curator, New York City, New York

Karen sHaw

Career Highlights


crazy quilt collages that depicted culture and politics. String of Words was developed as a response to technology, particularly cell phones. Shaw found it fascinating to stand amongst a crowd and listen to the many one-sided conversations of people on their cell phones, conversations she visually translated into strings of disconnected words. Body Language used the numbers printed on athletic jerseys for its message and the series inspired Shaw’s project Unraveling, a fascinating exhibit of macho, athletic mannequins wearing physically de-constructed jerseys whose unraveled fabric resembled dresses made from delicate cloth.

Shaw is presently living and working in New York City, but her most recent exhibitions have been in Paris where she is represented by the Galerie Lina Davidov. Shaw believes that her success in Europe, particularly with the Drawing Borders series,

is due to the Europeans’ knowledge of and interest in geography, as well as their fondness for puzzles. Shaw’s desire at this point in her career is to develop a stronger presence of her work in the United States.

Karen told me she really enjoyed her visit to Athens, and that it was her dear friend and colleague Benny Andrews who encouraged her to be a juror. She was impressed by the beauty of the Lyndon House Arts Center and was amazed at the caliber of art submitted. She recalled that one of her favorite moments during her visit was when she perused a couple of the local consignment shops with Nancy Lukasiewicz. It was at the ‘pink mall’ that Karen found a stunning polka-dotted designer coat that fit her perfectly. She’s been wearing it ever since!


84

Nancy Lukasiewicz was impressed that after jurying the artists’ submissions for the 35th Lyndon House Arts

Center’s (LHAC) Annual Juried Show, Ron Platt returned to participate in the show’s opening celebration. The returning of a juror for this event is generally difficult. Travel time and distance, and having a career that requires more than a 40-hour work week are typically the biggest obstacles. There is also the chance that upon return a juror could be confronted by an artist wanting to express dissatisfaction with their work not having been selected. However, it was clear from my conversation with Ron Platt that he truly enjoys talking with artists, sharing perspectives and ideas, and helping whenever possible. He was also curious to see the final installation of the work he selected. Platt’s experience as a juror was very positive. The LHAC’s Annual Juried show was the first he had juried in 20 years with the art actually in front of him as opposed to only digital images. “Allowing the juror to see the actual objects levels the playing field for all entrants,” Ron said.

Platt grew up in Pennsylvania. He earned a BA in American studies from the University of Maryland and an MBA in arts administration from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While in Cambridge, Platt began work as curatorial assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) List Visual Arts Center and later became assistant curator. In 1996 he was curator for SECCA, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. From 1999 to 2004, Platt was curator of exhibitions for the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro.

In 2004 Platt became curator of modern and contemporary art at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama. He found this experience to be extremely fulfilling as it offered him the opportunity to work with African-American artists and to broaden the range of exhibitions he curated at the museum. He added significantly to the permanent art collection and implemented long-term goals and objectives for the museum’s curatorial department. One of his favorite assignments was curating the exhibition The Birmingham Project in which Dawoud Bey, acclaimed photographer, symbolically commemorated the six children whose lives were lost in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. The project served as a memorial, a message of hope, and a promise for the future.

In 2014 Platt was offered the position of chief curator for

“I consider art a language, a form of communication. It’s analogous to music in that way. We can talk about it, teach and learn it, buy and sell it, but ultimately it is what we get out of our individual, unmediated experiences with art that makes it so remarkable and so vital to our lives.”

35 2010 – The Hugh Kaul Curator of

Modern and Contemporary Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama

2015 – Chief Curator, Grand Rapids Museum of Art, Grand Rapids, Michigan

ronn Platt

Career Highlights


the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) in Michigan. He was particularly pleased with the opportunity to work once again with Dana Friis-Norton, his former mentor at MIT, who is now director and CEO of GRAM. Mitchell Watt, President of GRAM’s board of trustees, said of Platt, “He has a well-developed philosophy for managing staff, and extensive experience with trustees, donors, members, and the public. He began developing his curatorial ideas and strategies long before his selection was official, and we’re excited about the direction that he will lead us in.”

During his first year as GRAM’s chief curator, Platt organized a number of impressive exhibits: Reynold Weidenaar: A Retrospective; Global Cities (a collection of hand-blown glass sculptures, each representing an international city); The Whitney Museum’s T.J. Wilcox: In the Air; and, Edward Burtynsky: Water at the New Orleans Museum of Art. With each exhibit, Platt personally gave frequent tours and lectures as a means of connecting with museum visitors and members.

One of the most exciting aspects of Platt’s work is GRAM’s participation in the city-wide event ArtPrize, an international art competition for which Grand Rapids has become well known. For 19 days, the work of over 1,500 artists from around the world are on display in dozens of venues and outdoor spaces that cover a 3 sq. mile area of downtown Grand Rapids. The competition draws an average of 23,000 visitors each day. Visitors have the opportunity to vote for their favorite piece of art with the winning artist receivimg a $200,000 prize. There are also votes for favorites from the artists’ peers and from selected

jurors. GRAM participates by presenting an exhibition of works by artists chosen from among the 1,500.

This year for ArtPrize Seven, Platt curated Nature/Nurture, an exhibition featuring the works of 15 masterful artists. Ben Davis of Artnet.com wrote of ArtPrize Seven, “This year at the GRAM curator Ron Platt has put together a crackerjack ArtPrize showcase, dubbed ‘Nature/Nurture,’ which seems almost custom-engineered to thwart accusations of conservatism, aesthetic or otherwise.”

It was wonderful to learn that Ron is extremely happy living in Grand Rapids and working at GRAM. “I want to expand the museum’s experience for everyone, which actually ties into the reason I came to the Lyndon House,” he says. As written in the March 8, 2015, issue of Art Hack, “Platt said, ‘Curiosity drives me.’ He shared that his personal style is to make every attempt to give artists the opportunity to do things they haven’t been able to do before and ‘give viewers what they don’t know they want,’ while respecting the mission of the institution he is curating for.”

Platt is impressed by GRAM’s strong education program and hopes to participate in it fully. The museum just received a National Endowment for the Arts financial award for its arts and literacy education program Language Arts: Creature Connections.

Platt concluded our conversation by sharing that he hopes to stay in Grand Rapids. “It’s a great city and I want to experience everything here.”


86

Carla Hanzal began her career with a job that is undeniably the dream of many—traveling the world to coordinate

major art exhibitions. This does not happen, however, without a great deal of educational preparation and professional ability.

Hanzal earned an MA from American University in Washington, D.C., was a Truman scholar, and the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She began her art career in1990 as director of exhibitions at the International Sculpture Center in Washington, D.C. She traveled to Japan where she coordinated major exhibitions in Japanese museums, including the retrospective exhibitions of Mark Rothko, David Smith, and Peter Voulkos. In addition to other major cities and organizations throughout the world, Hanzal worked with Prado Milano Arte in Milan, Italy, to coordinate exhibitions.

In 1997 Hanzal left the International Sculpture Center, moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia, and became curator at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia (now the Museum of Contemporary Art or MOCA). During her five years at MOCA, Hanzal coordinated over 30 exhibitions. In 2002 she joined the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she was appointed curator of modern and contemporary art. As curator Hanzal worked successfully with artists, coordinated exhibitions, and produced scholarly publications. She also implemented interpretive programming and audience initiatives, was actively involved in fundraising, and organized a contemporary collectors’ society. It was during her time with the Mint that Hanzal served as juror for the 2011 Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show. Soon after she served as juror she left her position at the Mint and began working as an independent curator in Charlotte.

Hanzal works with contemporary artists, arts organizations, and museums to commission works of art and produce exhibitions. She writes and publishes articles on modern and contemporary art and public policy. Independent curating allows Hanzal to partner with arts organizations, museums, and contemporary artists and artist estates to produce and present exhibitions. She also collaborates with others to give lectures on modern and contemporary art. Hanzal has also published a number of books on artists such as Romare Bearden, Robert Lazzarini, Elizabeth Turk, and Janet Biggs.

“Contemporary artists are at liberty to make art in any manner they choose. In turn, the viewer is conferred great freedom in discerning each work’s content, completing the meaning, and experiencing his or her own revelation based on individual preferences, perceptions, and experiences.”

From the article “Revelation: A Fresh Look at Contemporary Collections” by Carla Hanzal

36 2011 – Curator of Contemporary

Art, Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina

2015 – Independent Curator, Charlotte, North Carolina

carla Hanzal

Career Highlights


Most recently, Hanzal re-joined the International Sculpture Center (ISC) as a member of its board of trustees, as well as a consulting curator. She is also active on ISC’s executive, nominating, and communications committees.


88

Heather Pesanti visited the Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC) Annual Juried Show in 2012, a year which

happened to be an extraordinary one in her career. She traveled from New York City to Athens in early January and, as the 40th juror of the 37th LHAC’s Annual Juried Show, assumed the daunting task of selecting a show from the 566 works submitted by area artists. After careful deliberation, she chose 175 pieces for what has been described as a spectacular exhibit.

Pesanti’s educational training was in art history with a focus on contemporary art. She earned a BA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977 and an MA in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Pesanti earned a second masters degree in ethnology and museum ethnology from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. After

returning to the United States, she received a Majorie Susman Curatorial Fellowship from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

In 2005 Pesanti became assistant curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art (CMA) in Pittsburgh. She dove head first into the job with much enthusiasm and curiosity, and brought with her a fresh perspective. While at CMA, Pesanti served as adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Pesanti was at CMA for three years before becoming curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, a museum dedicated to the appreciation of modern and contemporary art. As curator, Pesanti developed a reputation for the expert quality of her work, and for her thoroughness when researching the topic of each exhibit. While at the Albright, she also served as adjunct professor at the University of Buffalo. Pesanti says she has always enjoyed working in a university town.

In 2012, the same year she served as juror in Athens, Pesanti curated a show at the Albright that many would say was the greatest achievement of her career. The Wish You Were Here: The Buffalo Avant-Garde in the 1970s exhibition—accompanied by a full-color catalog—was lauded by critics throughout the national art community for its thorough evaluation of the artistic talent that developed in Buffalo, New York, throughout the city’s history. On the heels of this huge success, Pesanti became senior curator at the Austin Museum of Art-Arthouse (now The Contemporary Austin) in Austin, Texas.

“Art is also essential because it has the potential to be the purest form of individual expression. To encourage children, for example, to make art is to encourage the expression of their ideas and imagination. Although many programs suffer with budget cuts in bad economies, one of our education system’s great tragedies is that art programs are among the first to be eliminated, despite the fact that art extends to all aspects of life’s innovations, and successes.”

37 2012 – Curator, Albright-Knox

Gallery, Buffalo, New York

2015 – Senior Curator, The Contemporary Austin, Austin, Texas

HeatHer Pesanti

Career Highlights


Pesanti moved to Austin in early 2013 to become curator at The Contemporary Austin and to assist with the museum’s major renovation. Pesanti considers her work as curator—the process of delving into the history of a topic and creating from it an

exciting exhibition that connects the viewer to the story—very fulfilling. Her work certainly bears that out.


90

Mark Sloan drove from Charleston to Athens, Georgia, for a weekend visit to complete the demanding task of jurying

the 552 artworks submitted for the 2013 Lyndon House Arts Center’s (LHAC) Annual Juried Show. Although his passion is contemporary art, Sloan has a keen interest in the work of young and emerging artists. His final selection of 185 pieces at the LHAC’s Annual Juried Show represented a range of media and styles, and his response after seeing all the submissions was very positive. “I did see several works that quickened my heart and inspired me. I was especially pleased to see such a wide variety of mediums and approaches. Athens, Georgia, enjoys a rich arts community. My hat is off. I will be back!”

Mark Sloan is director of and senior curator at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina, a position he has held for 20 years. He also serves as an associate professor in arts management at the college. Sloan, like so many who have juried the LHAC’s Annual

Juried Show, grew up loving art. A childhood friend in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, recalled in an interview that, “Even then, Mark was very outgoing, and he has used his incredible energy to put his own imprint on important projects. He’s a wonderful ambassador for the arts.”

Sloan earned a BA in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and an MA in fine arts from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1984. Sloan’s personal art form is photography, and he became executive director of The Light Factory in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Light Factory is a cultural center where photographers and filmmakers gather to learn, collaborate, and exhibit their work. Sloan moved to California in 1986 to become associate director of SF (San Francisco) Camerawork. In 1992 he moved back to the east coast and was director of the Roland Gibson Gallery at the State University of New York Potsdam until 1994, when he began his extensive and accomplished career at the Halsey Institute.

There is no doubt that Sloan has achieved remarkable honors during his career. One of the most impressive occurred recently when was notified that he was one of four recipients of a public art grant (for which he co-applied with the City of Spartanburg, South Carolina) awarded by the Bloomberg Philanthropies and worth up to $1 million.

Sloan has also authored 14 books, one of which—Wild, Weird and Wonderful—was the inspiration for the New York Times

“The arts can be a plan for life, inspiring individuals and cities with the knowledge that the future will require significant reservoirs of creativity and innovation to ensure our continued success.”

—From an interview with Whitney Powers, Feb 13, 2015

38 2013 – Director and Chief

Curator, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, South Carolina

2015 – Director, Halsey Institute, Charleston, South Carolina

marK sloan

Career Highlights


bestseller Water for Elephants. Sloan has produced well over 100 exhibitions, published an extraordinary number of articles, and continues to create his own art, often collaborating with his wife,

photographer Michelle Van Parys.


92

One of the great privileges of communicating with past jurors of the Lyndon House Arts Center’s Annual Juried Show

is that they often share an exciting experience or an anticipated opportunity. Gilbert Vicario did just that, but we’ll get to that later.

Gilbert Vicario earned a BA in visual arts from the University of California San Diego in 1989, and an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies from Bard College in Annandale-On-Hudson, New York. Following his graduation from Bard, Vicario began work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where he further developed his passion for organizing exhibitions.

In 2000 Vicario began work as assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Massachusetts, and then soon became exhibition curator. He left Boston in 2004 to become a curator in the department of Latin American art at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in Texas. Vicario hadn’t planned to specialize in Latin American art, but his Hispanic heritage and fluency in Spanish made it possible. Vicario explained that there is some incredible art being done in Latin America but that the language barrier has hindered bringing important art and

essential materials from coming into the United States. “A lot of what contemporary Latin American artists and Latino artists are doing is really no different than artists in Europe and other parts of the world are doing.” While curator in Houston, Vicario was appointed U.S. commissioner for the 2006 International Biennale of Cairo, Egypt, where he organized an exhibition of work by Daniel Joseph Martinez.

In 2009 Vicario became senior curator and division head for curatorial affairs at the Des Moines Art Center in Des Moines, Iowa. As senior curator, he has been instrumental in bringing a variety of new works that have helped expand the center’s European and American collection of artworks. He has also organized several exciting exhibitions that include performance art, video installation, and internationally-themed shows.

Although Vicario will remain at the Des Moines Art Center until October, 2015, he’ll begin a new position as The Selig Family Chief Curator at the Phoenix Art Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. This exciting experience (to which I alluded earlier) marks the first time in over a decade that the position has been filled at the museum. Vicario’s international experience was of particular importance to the Phoenix Art Museum as they expand their collection. Vicario’s exhibition Made in Mexico included the work of artists from Mexico, Japan, Germany, and Palestine; Field, Road, Cloud: Art and Africa paired contemporary art with African artifacts which were housed at the Des Moines Art Center.

“The significance of the visual arts in the US keeps growing exponentially and thankfully continues to reflect the growing diversity of our country in the best way possible.”

39 2014 – Senior Curator and

Division Head for Curatorial Affairs, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa

2015 – Senior Curator and Division Head for Curatorial Affairs, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa

GilBert Vicario

Career Highlights


94

Carter is right—it was a special treat to have him return to Athens as juror for the 40th Lyndon House Arts Center’s

(LHAC) Annual Juried Show. That he was a graduate of the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia (UGA) and went on to become the Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawing at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, New York, is both extraordinary and impressive. Needless to say, his visit as a juror was enthusiastically celebrated.

There are many details of the 40th LHAC’s Annual Juried Show that made it exceptional. For the first time, the show’s catalog was printed in full color. Attendance at the reception was larger than it had been in the past and there was a record-breaking number of submissions—862 artworks from which Carter chose 195! When I asked Carter if serving as a juror had been an

overwhelming task, he casually answered that he narrowed his choices fairly quickly before making his final decisions. Carter shared the specifics of what he looks for in selecting artwork. “When judging a work of art, I always think about how well the artist has handled, or is in command of, the medium in which he or she is working. I very much appreciate virtuosity with materials, but great art can lack that and still be great art. I like to be surprised, startled, and moved, and I like it when something is visually arresting.”

Carter Foster is a native of Georgia, raised in Atlanta. Immediately following graduation from high school he studied in Paris at the Institut d’Etudes Europeennes. “I wanted to study French, as well as study the art in great museums, and I wanted to travel!” Upon his return to the United States, Carter entered UGA where he studied art history and graduated with a BA in 1989. In 1991 he graduated with an MA from Brown University.

Foster began his curatorial experience as an intern, first at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and then at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was a National Endowment for the Arts curatorial intern for prints, drawings, and photographs. From 1993 to 1996, Foster was print specialist in the division of art, prints, and photographs at the New York City Public Library. He received the incredible opportunity to become assistant curator of drawings for the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1996, where he was soon promoted to associate

“I’m proud to be a UGA graduate and Athens is a fantastic place, so it’s wonderful to return. I really came to understand my own abilities as an art historian, as an undergraduate at UGA, and that’s something for which I’ll always be grateful. I think community art centers are so important and play such an invaluable role in building appreciation of art and helping people have great experiences around art, which is what museums also do. I’m thrilled to be a part of such things.”

40 2015 – Steven and Ann Ames

Curator of Drawing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, New York

carter foster

Career Highlights


director. Because of his exceptional skills and contributions to the department, Foster was eventually promoted to curator of drawing. Among his many achievements at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Foster served as a liaison in an exchange program between French and American museums and developed and implemented new procedures for cataloging the museum’s artworks.

In 2004 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art invited Foster to serve as curator of prints and drawing, as well as co-chair. However, he left Los Angeles when offered the esteemed position of Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawing at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. As he stated in his 2005 Whitney press release announcing his new appointment, “I’ve been coming to the Whitney since my first visit to New York in my late teens . . . The variety and daring of its exhibitions, combined with its seminal collection of American modernism, have shaped my ideas about what a museum should be. I am absolutely thrilled to be joining the staff of an institution I have so long admired—in the city I love most in the world.”

Foster has made significant contributions to the Whitney. As well as curating a number of exhibitions and gallery installations, Foster has developed extensive education and multimedia programs on collections and exhibitions. He has

increased fundraising for drawing acquisitions and has followed modern and contemporary art through acquisitions, exhibition development, and a professional network of galleries, art fairs, and museums.

Carter shared during our conversation that his involvement in the planning and opening of the new Whitney Museum of Art building in New York was unbelievably exciting. He collaborated with architects, planners, and the curatorial team to develop storage design, programming, and display for the new space. He is pleased that the new site is at the base of the city’s High Line, and that its architectural design is dramatic. The new building now offers resources for the public, artists, and researchers which were not available in the original building. The new Whitney building opened this spring.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that Carter is a leading expert on Edward Hopper? He hopes to introduce Hopper to the public in new ways. “He was a towering figure,” he says. Carter is also interested in introducing new artists to the Whitney, especially female artists.

Carter Foster’s achievements as an influential art professional certainly make us proud to call him one of Athens’ own!


96

APPENDIX


98


100


102

As this project neared the point of completion, Nancy Lukasiewicz had already announced her retirement from the Lyndon House Arts Center (LHAC). She had been considering retirement for a while, but it came as a surprise to most when quite recently she made that difficult and final announcement.

Nancy’s retirement brings to a close her incredible four-decade career at the LHAC. It also means that Jock Reynolds, Director of the Yale University Art Gallery and juror for the 41st LHAC’s Annual Juried Show to be held in 2016, will be the last of the nationally recognized art professionals she has invited to Athens as juror of the show. Nancy’s continued efforts have impacted the growth of the show, its size, its importance to area artists, and its value to the regional arts community.

Nancy and her husband, Ronnie, founded the first annual show in 1974 at the Lyndon House, now an historic house museum and decorative arts component of the LHAC. At the time, it was a fairly shabby property of the city and was being used as a secondary recreation facility and storage center. With the goal of organizing a local art exhibition—and permission from the city—Ronnie, Nancy, and a group of highly energetic friends spent two intense weeks cleaning up the space and making it suitable for a juried show. Dr. Glen Kaufman, an art professor at UGA, was the first juror. The show was an extraordinary success that literally turned the Ware-Lyndon House into an art center. The LHAC’s Annual Juried Show became a tradition that has grown to prominence throughout Northeast Georgia.

Nancy became the LHAC’s director after Ronnie held the position for two years. Ronnie continued his tireless involvement with the LHAC for 24 more years until his passing in 1998. During that time, he spearheaded the proposal for the renovation and expansion project which was approved in 1994. When the LHAC’s expansion opened in 1999, Nancy chose to take the role as visual arts coordinator. She has filled that position with great skill, diligence, dedication, attention to detail, and a consistent level of enthusiasm. Her ability to curate and hang a show is exceptional.

One comment often shared about Nancy refers to her genuine kindness. She has built strong relationships with the LHAC’s staff, volunteers, the many artists with whom she has worked, as well as community members that regularly participate in the LHAC’s events and activities. She has given 100% of her energy to the LHAC throughout the years, working consistently to make real the vision she and Ronnie shared and to make the LHAC a star of the Athens art community. Her accomplishments are countless, and you will never find an individual who is more highly respected and adored!

From the entire community, thank you, Nancy, for your vision, passion, unending enthusiasm, and dedicated work to see the LHAC become a genuine community treasure. You have given us a great gift and have paved the way for a new era of growth and progress that will benefit everyone!

Nancy Lukasiewicz Announces Her Retirement from the Lyndon House Arts Center

lyndon house art center's annual juried show's jurors program

Documents