Resources
ABOUT US / SERVICES / OUR CLIENTS / STORE / CONTACT
Sarah Bednarek (1980-2019): announcing new website!
Artist Estate Studio, LLC is pleased to announce the launch of a new website for Sarah Bednarek (1980-2019) created in collaboration with the artist's estate. The new site builds upon the friendship between Artist Estate Studio co-founder Jason Andrew and the artist.
Jason Andrew writes:
"I first met Sarah in Bushwick sometime after her life threatening diagnosis in 2009. At the time, her work took a dramatic shift. Near death following emergency surgery, Sarah felt herself hurtling toward a light in a tunnel of kaleidoscopic, every-changing geometric forms. Under the influence of death and morphine, as she described it, she embraced the hallucinogenic experiences transforming these mystical visions into geometry and form. This convergence forced Bednarek to question her mind and space, her imagination versus reality. The result was sculptures that externalize the internal idea while showing the value of real objects created by human hand. It's an honor to volunteer my experience in promoting and preserving Sarah's legacy.”
Installation view: “Sarah Bednarek: ChiChi DooDad,” Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY, October 19-November 18, 2018. Courtesy TSA, Brooklyn
Installation view: “On Human Limits: Sarah Bednarek, James Bounché, Deric Carner, Peter Rostovsky,” Present Co., Brooklyn, NY, May 18-June 17, 2018. Courtesy Present Co.
"I think I am funny sometimes. I mean, I did make a cactus sculpture that waves at you. Sometimes I make things that look like genitalia. I am kind of abashed that I make stuff like that, but I am trying not to judge. I also make things that have deceptive insides – you can look in, but what’s there isn’t what’s on the outside. Maybe that’s a prank."
— Sarah Bednarek interviewed by Etty Yaniv, 2018
Artist Estate Studio found Sarah's original website which she coded and designed to be the single best tool by which to uphold the very idea by which Sarah wanted us to experience her work. Sarah’s original website is now archived here — embedded within a new website which will continue to advocate for her life and work. We have also provided a statement outlining our intent and purpose here. Additionally the new site includes up to date biographical information, exhibition history, and bibliography.
Self-Portrait by Sarah Bednarek Sculpture Fund
Before her untimely death, Sarah completed a self-portrait in clay. Jason Matuskiewicz, Sarah's partner, has established a gofundme to support the effort to realize this final work in a limited bronze edition.
Call For Works by Sarah Bednarek
Artist Estate Studio in collaboration with the Estate of Sarah Bednarek is currently creating a systematic and comprehensive scholarly reference catalogue for all known works by the artist. This research will include drawings, paintings, and sculpture in an effort establish a reliable corpus of completed works.
Email images, title, alternative titles, date, medium, size, inscriptions, provenance (location), exhibition history, and publication history here.
Historic Survey Opens at UB Art Galleries
Elizabeth Murray: Back in Town
June 12-October 3, 2021
UB Anderson Gallery
1 Martha Jackson Place
Buffalo, NY
This summer the University at Buffalo Art Galleries presents the first major posthumous exhibition of work by pioneering painter Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007). This survey presents a fresh look at important themes and motifs of Murray’s five-decade career.
Elizabeth Murray: Back in Town plots the artist’s career chronologically through paintings, drawings, and prints, which reveal how the early, never-before-exhibited works she made while based in the San Francisco Bay area and later in Buffalo relate to the mature painting style that earned her critical acclaim.
The impact of the two years Murray spent in Buffalo working and teaching at Rosary Hill College (now Daemen) has previously been a footnote in her legendary career and was treated as a two-year stopover during her move from San Francisco to New York City. In Buffalo, as Murray acknowledged herself, her work “changed radically,” setting her on a path to become the bold painter known for her wildly shaped canvases—a mix of abstraction and cartoonish figuration. This survey marks 55 years since Murray’s solo exhibition at the Tomac Gallery, an artist-run gallery in Buffalo, which was in operation from 1965 to 1969.
AES Collaborates with Robert Moskowitz Studio to Design and Launch a New Website
Building on the friendship and the near 20 year relationship between co-founder Jason Andrew and the artist Robert Moskowitz, Artist Estate Studio, LLC, is pleased to announce the launch of a website for the artist’s studio. The website features signature works from the artist's now six decade career as well as extensive biographical information, exhibition history and bibliography.
Robert Moskowitz (b. 1935) has been described as a significant link between the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School and New Image painters of the 1970s.
“Bob’s style is consistent in conversations as it is in the work; a variety of reflective statements on his personal life; an internal balancing, the method of a sensitive man whose gift is to adapt statements specifically about himself in terms that relate to a larger means.” —Michael Hurson
Moskowitz first gained recognition exhibiting at the Leo Castelli Gallery in the early 1960s. His inclusion in the historic exhibition Art of The Assemblage at The Museum of Modern Art in 1961, signaled his arrival into the contemporary discourse of the time. His work was featured in New Image Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978, where together with works by Jennifer Bartlett, Michael Hurson, Neil Jenney, and Susan Rothenberg, Moskowitz’s pared-down often silhouetted images marked a resurgence of figurative painting in the late 1970s.
Awards include John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (‘67), New York State Council on the Arts Grant (‘73), National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist’s Fellowship (‘75). Teaching positions include Maryland Insitute College of Art, Baltimore (‘64-’73), School of Visual Arts, New York (‘69-71), Yale Norfolk Summer School (‘67,’69). Visiting Artist appointments include Art Institute of Chicago (‘74), Ohio State University (‘75). In 2001, Moskowitz was Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome.
In 1989, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden mounted a major retrospective of the artist’s work, which traveled to the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Over the course of his six-decade career, Moskowitz has focused on a variety of images, from well-known art historical sources to more commonplace things like birds, icebergs, and buildings, all executed against stark, monochromatic backgrounds. Using symbolism, metaphor, and repetition, the artist’s images offer arresting images of timelessness—a teetering balance between recognition and abstraction.
Pat Passlof: At the apex of a leap
Pat Passlof, Hawthorne, 1999, oil on linen, 87 x 75 inches
Partially republished In congratulations to the Estate of Pat Passlof being newly represented by Eric Firestone Gallery
Contributed by Jason Andrew to Two Coasts of Paint originally on November 4, 2019
Before the painter Pat Passlof, who died in 2011, would allow me to visit her in her Forsyth Street studio, she insisted that I join her and her Tai chi class held in the park across the street. “Sounds just like my sister!” exclaimed Aileen Passloff (Pat dropped the second “f” early in her career after discovering when signing a painting that she didn’t leave enough room for two), the noted dancer, choreographer and Bard College professor. “She was fiercely demanding about art and about everything else, really.”
It was exciting that the first painting I encountered at her current survey at the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation was the very same one that Pat had set aside for a show I curated. Titled Hawthorne and made in 1999, it is a stunning example of her distinctive talent. It’s well-chronicled that she studied with Willem de Kooning and was married to Resnick, and parallels are certainly decipherable in this exhibition. But it was Pat who straddled the canvas and directed the brush. While she was deeply connected to those figures, she was also a frimly independent artist. At last it’s exciting to see a major survey all within an institution that Pat built.
Curated by the venerable Karen Wilkin, the show fills three floors of Foundation. On each floor there is a non-chronological hang mixing the decades and revealing the diverse directions of Passlof’s nearly eighty-year career. For instance, on the first floor, fifty years separate one of the earliest works on view, Gulf (1949) from Hawthorne (1999). For those unfamiliar with Passlof’s work, this discontinuous approach to a survey could prove disorienting, even jarring. I found it liberating. The strategy does require patience. But, as Passlof said, “Painting is inconvenient. It is slow and may require a whole life.”
On the second floor, an untitled painting from 1995 greets us at the top of the stairs. It’s colorful, depicting a period when Passlof recorded dreams and explored myths. The painting features two horses with riders and one lone horse within a gestural landscape built up from bottom to top with painterly yellows, greens, and blues. A bright orange cloud reflects a setting sun. Aileen recently told me that before their father married, he was an officer in the mounted police. “My father rode six horses at once. He could pickup a handkerchief with his teeth – the horses all along galloping.” Aileen didn’t take to riding as Pat did. Perhaps Pat was teasing out an autobiographical lament: she rides with their father and Aileen’s horse waits for her to climb on.
Elizabeth Murray Estate Moves to Gladstone Gallery
The switch from Pace Gallery comes almost 13 years after Murray’s death at 66. “I’ve been thinking about this and dreaming about this for a long time,” Barbara Gladstone said.
Elizabeth Murray’s painting “Bean,” from 1982, exemplifies the artist’s tendency to imbue abstractions with a cartoon-based, expressive style. It also demonstrates her facility with irregularly shaped and multipanel canvases.Credit...The Murray-Holman Family Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Gladstone Gallery
Elizabeth Murray was represented by Pace Gallery for more than two decades. But now, almost 13 years after her death, her estate has chosen Gladstone Gallery to show and sell the pioneering Neo-Expressionist painter’s work. For Barbara Gladstone, the gallery’s owner, including Murray’s work in group shows with more contemporary artists to expand her audience is one of her top priorities. Bolstering Murrays’ international profile is another.
“I’ve been thinking about this and dreaming about this for a long time,” Ms. Gladstone said in an interview on Monday. “I have always admired Elizabeth’s work and thought it was time for it to be seen in a new context.”
The decision was announced on Tuesday.
Murray was among the most important artists to arise in New York during the 1970s, but she is less well-known than some of her counterparts. This is because of, in part, her preference for painting, which was relatively unpopular at the time, and her particular style, which imbued abstractions with a cartoon-based, expressive spirit. Sexism, too, likely played a role: When Neo-Expressionist painting became popular in the 1980s, it was often slightly younger male artists like Julian Schnabel and David Salle who were credited with its emergence.
Despite these challenges, Murray forged a successful and influential career that culminated with a celebrated retrospectiveat the Museum of Modern Art in 2005. Ms. Gladstone cited the effect that Murray has had on painters like Carroll Dunham and Amy Sillman, both of whom are represented by her gallery, as a part of the reason she was keen to add her to the roster. But it’s Murray’s resonance with artists from the most recent generations that Ms. Gladstone is particularly keen on highlighting and exploring further. “I think there’s a lot of what Elizabeth did that’s extremely relevant to lots of things being done today.”
Tworkov Now Represented by Van Doren Waxter
Portrait of Jack Tworkov in front of his painting P73 #3 (in progress), Provincetown, 1973.
Photo: Arnold Newman / © 2020 Arnold Newman Properties / Getty Images
New York, NY — Van Doren Waxter is pleased to announce exclusive representation of the Estate of Jack Tworkov. An artist at the forefront of American painting for seven decades, Jack Tworkov (1900-1982) forged a disciplined aesthetic through techniques, transitions, and variations on compositions that score an artistic career which continues today to be avidly discussed and celebrated—the one constant being Tworkov’s gestural “mark.”
Van Doren Waxter will debut the gallery’s new online viewing space with a signature painting in Tworkov’s oeuvre, Ending (1967-72). This painting has not been exhibited or offered publicly since 1991. The gallery aims to cultivate broader national and international audiences for Tworkov’s art and ideas, while advancing scholarship focused on the artist’s life and work. The announcement follows the artist’s inclusion in Epic Abstraction (2019-2020) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Artistic License (2019) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Pollock e la Scuola di New York (2018) at the Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome, Italy.
An émigré to America from Russian occupied Poland in 1913, Jack Tworkov found refuge in Greenwich Village. His intellect and commitment to abstraction established him as a member of the post-war avant-garde and charter member of the intellectual Eighth Street Club. His was a long search for an abstract, painterly “mark’’ motived by his own conflict with self-portrayal in painting. This reflection fueled a full vigorous embrace and thrust that began in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and grew into a more reductive, meditative, analytic mark by the 1970s and 1980s.
As a painter, Tworkov not only respected traditions of the art historical past, but he knew and was influenced by contemporary music, dance, and poetry. He made lasting friendships with composers John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Stefan Wolpe. Tworkov was close to choreographer Merce Cunningham, poets Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Stanley Kunitz. Painters Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline were well known to him among others from the Eighth Street Club. As a respected teacher, he accepted invitations at institutions across America including American University (1948-51), the legendary Black Mountain College (1952), and most notably the position of Chair at the Yale School of Art and Architecture (1963-69) where his students included painters Jennifer Bartlett, Chuck Close, Rackstraw Downes, Brice Marden, William T. Williams, and the sculptor Richard Serra.
Jason Andrew Curates: Woodstock Artists Association & Museum
Fern Apfel, Herb Silander, and Jenny Nelson
Originally published by Art Valley NY
Woodstock Artists Association & Museum | March 7 – TBA, 2020
The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum opened a new exhibition on March 7 titled FOCUS: Fish and Dish—A Fresh Take on Still Life, juried by Jason Andrew. I was fortunate to see this show at WAAM the week after it opened. Unfortunately the opening reception scheduled for Saturday, March 14 was cancelled due to the closure of the museum to prevent the spread of COVID-19. I was particularly interested in this exhibition because the juror Jason Andrew, an independent scholar, curator, and producer, is a legend of the Brooklyn art scene. He’s the co-founder and director of Norte Maar, a non-profit dedicated to encouraging, promoting, and presenting collaborative projects in the arts. Andrew is also a Founding Partner at Artist Estate Studio, LLC, an entity that advocates for the legacy of artists like Jack Tworkov and Elizabeth Murray.
Andrew has a great eye and I was curious to see what he selected for the show. I was happy to see work by Beacon artists Sascha Mallon and Rob Penner, as well as other familiar names. The show includes Fern Apfel, Joan Barker, Sascha Mallon, Jenny Nelson, Rob Penner, Herb Silander, Jeff Starr, Linda Stillman, Wendy Williams, and Mimi Young.
Jason Andrew Interviewed: Many Ask Artists To Supply Creative Work For Exposure. So Did The Asheville Art Museum
The Asheville Art Museum reopened this past November with "Appalachia Now!" as its marquee exhibition.
Originally published by Blue Ridge Public Radio
Ask any of the 50 artists invited into Asheville Art Museum’s “Appalachia Now!” exhibition and, to a person, they’ll tell you they were honored and elated. Many were motivated to stretch themselves artistically to create what they regard as their most ambitious works.
For good reason. “Appalachia Now!” is the flagship exhibition that reopened the Asheville Art Museum last November and few of the artists had ever experienced exposure on this level. The exhibition closes Feb. 3.
The Asheville Art Museum reopened this past November with "Appalachia Now!" as its marquee exhibition.
But here’s another truth: Even the museum director acknowledges the artists were largely paid with exposure. The museum raised $24 million for its renovation and only distributed stipends of $100 each to the “Appalachia Now!” artists, regardless of whether they simply loaned pieces out of their studios or created major new works at the request of the exhibition’s curator.
The stipend was a thank-you for participating with us on this project. It wasn’t a compensation,” said Pam Myers, who is in her 24th year as the museum’s director. “The intention from the beginning was to open with an exhibition of contemporary artists from the region to support the artists and bring national attention to their work, and I think that’s what we’ve done.”
Artists looking to establish themselves often get requests to perform or otherwise lend their creative skills to conferences, private parties, businesses and assorted projects for the promised payment of exposure. But what does it say about the value of an artist’s work when a city’s leading arts institution does the same?
AES in the Wall Street Journal: You Inherited a Bunch of Papers. Now What?
Archives may hold historical and other value even if the deceased wasn’t famous
Archives may hold historical and other value even if the deceased wasn’t famous
At the end of our lives, we leave behind memories—and lots of paper.
Not just diaries, letters and photographs, but rough drafts, notes, sketchbooks, date books, check books and receipts.
Clearly, the doodles, random jottings and other ephemera that most people leave behind are of no interest to anybody. But that isn’t always the case.
The archives of singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, for one, were purchased in 2011 for $6 million by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. The archive features rare recordings, journals and handwritten lyrics, but also includes contracts, royalty statements, employment and military records, and rent receipts.
That was an exceptional case, of course. But more common are archives of people who, though relatively unknown, made important contributions in a particular field, were important to an institution, or had connections with famous people.
Jason Andrew, founding partner of Artist Estate Studio in New York City, a service offering archive management to artists and estates of artists, poses the example of a painter who never sold any works but who was friends with well-known artists. In such a case, Mr. Andrew says, an archivist or collector focused on those other artists may wish to acquire that person’s papers.
So for people who inherit those kinds of archives, it is worth doing a little investigation to see if they have any commercial value.
DIY art spaces pop up in unexpected spots across the country
Cutting edge art isn’t limited to big cities and large cultural institutions. Creative work can be found across the country in small towns and artist-run spaces, says Jason Andrew, who curated an exhibit on contemporary Appalachian art that just opened at the new Asheville Art Museum in North Carolina, ashevilleart.org. “These are really DIY, do-it-yourself type spaces. You’re right there where all the creative juices are working and flowing.” He shares some favorite spots with Larry Bleiberg for USA Today
Cutting edge art isn’t limited to big cities and large cultural institutions. Creative work can be found across the country in small towns and artist-run spaces, says Jason Andrew, who curated an exhibit on contemporary Appalachian art that just opened at the new Asheville Art Museum in North Carolina, ashevilleart.org. “These are really DIY, do-it-yourself type spaces. You’re right there where all the creative juices are working and flowing.” He shares some favorite spots with Larry Bleiberg for USA TODAY.
Granary Arts, Ephraim, Utah
Art flourishes in remote central Utah thanks to artists based in a historic granary building on the high plains. “It’s in a very exciting space. It’s really in the desert. There’s nothing there,” says Andrew, a Utah native. Founded by two friends, it enriches the community with workshops, musical performances and art installations.
Popps Packing, Hamtramck, Michigan
This group founded by a husband and wife, has brought international artists and quirky shows and events to a neighborhood just north of Detroit. Housed in a former meat-packing plant, it serves a community with immigrants from places like Yemen, Armenia, Turkey and Ukraine, offering a tool-lending library and meeting spaces, along with gallery openings and shows.
Fiendish Plots, Lincoln, Nebraska
From Buddhist paintings made from rose petals to art inspired by workplace immigration raids, this gallery and exhibition space embraces the ephemeral and the contemporary. Run by an artist couple, it also offers workshops, performances, screenings, readings and artist talks.
Collar Works, Troy, New York
Artists have brought new life to a former industrial building in upstate New York. The collective, named for the city’s once-prominent shirt collar factories, got its start mounting pop-ups and shows in empty industrial spaces. It has helped lead the revival of the area, Andrew says, hosting often edgy art installations and theater productions.
Marmot Art Space, Spokane, Washington
Located in the hip Kendall Yards neighborhood, this “white cube” gallery focuses on emerging local artists, but has a polished vibe, Andrew says. It attracts crowds on the first Friday of every month when it opens new exhibits. “The walls are well painted, the lighting will be perfect. It’s a little more sophisticated.”
Shop Talk with Artists’ Legacy Foundation
Artist Estate Studio and Artists’ Legacy Foundation partnered for an evening of discussion focused on presenting strategies for artist studio managers and their archivists. The conversation was among some of the most experienced peers in legacy planning and art management and involved key talking points about institutional representation, archive organization methods, and a walkthrough from Jason Andrew and Julia Schwartz on the most important steps to take to ensure the long term stability of an artist’s legacy. Artist Estate Studio’s design director, Peter Freeby also spoke on the top ten most important parts of digital strategy for an artist, which has been preserved below:
Photo credit: Julia Schwartz, courtesy Artists’ Legacy Foundation
1. How to design
If you design anything, you are making a physical thing, not an idea. Think through the reality of what problem you’re trying to solve, who it’s for, and why it should exist. Map out how all these relationships connect. Build the absolute simplest solution to the problem. Finally, fine tune it and ask for feedback until it does everything you want it to do and people understand the core concept in the first 5 seconds of seeing it.
2. Use existing systems
Developing a website from scratch is costly, and expensive long term, not just for the time it takes to hire a freelancer. Building digital products in the ecosystem of other digital products allows you to quickly adapt and be compatible with new trends.
3. Pay attention to pixels
Images should be Jpegs that are 1500 pixels across at their smallest dimension (1500 px wide for portrait photos and 1500 px tall for landscape photos) and should ideally be between 200 and 700 kb. Tip: don’t size up images. It just makes them blurry.
Here are 2 ways to make sure your pixels are perfect:
In Photoshop: use the "Export As" tool in the file menu and tweak the Image Size and Quality Settings to export a Jpeg that fits the dimensions you need.
In Preview: "Export..." tool and tweak the Quality slider until it fits the file size you need.
4. Make sure you’re ADA compliant
There is a current trend of lawsuits against arts organizations across the country for not being ADA compliant on their websites. Here is a quick checklist to make sure you’re safe:
all images should have captions that literally describe the image (these captions are also called Alt Text, or more broadly referred to as metadata)
make sure that any video/audio content has text alternatives with equivalent information
clearly label all text alternatives for video and audio as an alternative for said video and audio
5. Use Alt Text for Social Engine Optimization
Use alt text to describe images on your website involving artwork, events and news items. This is good for above ADA reasons, but also will assist your Google search ranking. In Squarespace you can write the Alt text for an image by writing it as the title of the image file before you drop it in your site. Describe the image, the location, and any other related keywords.
6. Data matters (but not all data)
Pay attention to the analytics on your site, but specifically watch out for Geography, Visitor Count, Time on Site, Device Usage, and Traffic Sources. These numbers can tell you where your fans are, how they’re looking at your site, and where they found you.
Photo Credit, Peter Freeby
7. Understand your fans
After combing through the data, use it to come up with a profile of what kind of person they are. At big tech companies like Airbnb these "profiles" even have a name and personality. The more you can personify the data, the more personal you’ll seem to the people who find you.
8. Design for them
If you know who likes you and how they find you and what they use, you can figure out what changes you might want to put into the site. If everyone finds you on instagram and uses an iPhone, make sure that you put the most effort into making your website mobile friendly and has interesting images that people will want to share.
Some recent data about our sites that informs us about the kind of work we put in:
Jack Tworkov visitors use desktop computers 43% of the time
Elizabeth Murray visitors use desktop computers 66% of the time
9. How to Instagram
Because of the number of profiles that have spam followers now, success on instagram isn’t as much about the followers anymore. It’s much more about the engagement with comments and likes. (followers are still important, but not the #1 priority)
According to the data, here’s how to post the best photos on instagram:
Close up shots
Portrait photos/photos with faces
Multi-photo posts
Video posts
10. Marketing
Spending a small amount on social media marketing can get you a long way, and using apps like Adobe Spark Post, it’s way easier to make a successful ad than ever.
But, email marketing is still statistically far and away the most successful way to advertise. Make sure that you are consistent, sending out an email once a month, every other week, every day, it doesn’t matter. If you can get your newsletter into someone’s routine, they will keep up with you. Also, be intentional. Emails should have very short paragraphs and images, not be long essays. They should also be sent to multiple narrow audiences, (not 10,000 people who are in a sending mailbox called "art").
#AppalachiaNow curated by Jason Andrew opens the newly renovated Asheville Art Museum
Jason Andrew organizes Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art in Southern Appalachia the inaugural exhibition of the newly renovated Asheville Art Museum.
Installation View: Andrew Scott Ross, Gallery of the Thieves, 2019, Acrylic paint, charcoal, mud, paper, and wood. Photo: Andrew Scott Ross
Curated by guest curator Jason Andrew, Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art in Southern Appalachia is the inaugural exhibition of the newly renovated Asheville Art Museum. The exhibition provides a regional snapshot of the art of our time—a collective survey of contemporary Southern Appalachian culture.
This exhibition explores the amalgamation of tradition and present-day perspectives extant in contemporary artistic representations of life in this region. Appalachia Now! situates artists within a regional and national dialogue that spans time and socio-economic status. Whether works are bio-bibliographical, or address larger, universal themes, this cross-disciplinary exhibition invites visitors to participate in the individual experiences that make this part of the world so unique. It will celebrate contemporary artists living and working in Southern Appalachia, focusing on Asheville as a nucleus of creativity within the broader area of its adjacent states of Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Formerly isolated by geography, and sometimes intentionally so, Appalachia remains culturally rich and yet is more globally connected than ever before. Whereas past community and cultural exchanges took place through face-to-face, physical interaction, it is now possible to connect and access the world digitally. What was once a day’s journey from one town to the next has been replaced by the swipe and tap of a mobile phone. The diversity and magnitude of art-making in the region expands our understanding of the world today from the perspective of Southern Appalachia. Appalachia, while its roots are deep, has outlived its regionalism and is deserving of a new nuance of narrative. — Jason Andrew, curator
Appalachia Now! builds upon the Museum’s mission of collecting and interpreting 20th- and 21st-century American art in all media relevant to/produced in the Southeast and WNC. Inclusive and ambitious in scope, the exhibition will present a survey of works by emerging and established artists selected by Jason Andrew, a curator and juror of national renown. Andrew and Curatorial Assistant Lola Clairmont drove over 40 hours around the Southeast and made 54 studio visits with artists. In order to promote underrecognized and emerging artists, Appalachia Now! will feature artists whose work is not yet represented in the Museum’s Collection.
I am excited to share the many stylistic approaches and concerns of artists in this exhibition—their ages varied, their origins diverse. — Jason Andrew, curator
The following 50 artists have been selected through recommendations from regional museums, curators, and art organizations and through an open submission process. The overwhelming regional interest in this exhibition was demonstrated in the participation of artists in the free, public open call; over 400 artists applied through the call. Overall, the Museum and Andrew researched over 700 artists for consideration in the exhibition. The selected artists represent all media, including painting, sculpture, new media, dance, and film.
RELATED PRESS:
ARTSY.
Amy Beth Wright. “Artists of Appalachia Push Back on Regional Stereotypes.” Nov 22, 2019
Metropolis.
Joanne O’Sullivan. “Appalachia Makers Tell Their Own Story in New Exhibition.” Nov 22, 2019
HiFructose.
Andy Smith. “Asheville Art Museum Opens New Building in North Carolina.” Nov 18, 2019
Citizen Times.
Paul Moon. “Asheville Art Museum reopening highlights Madison County’s past, present and future.” Nov 12, 2019
Mountain Xpress.
Arnold Wengrow. “Asheville Art Museum readies for its grand reopening.” Oct 11, 2019
American Craft (Dec-Jan 2020)
”Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art in Southern Appalachia.”
And these spotlights:
WMYA TV40.
John Le. “Man who one guarded Asheville Art Museum now has a piece on display there.” Nov 18, 2019
The Museum would like to thank the donors that make this exhibition possible: the John & Robyn Horn Foundation, The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, Parsec Financial, The Chaddick Foundation, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Hollis Taggart, the Maurer Family Foundation, and the Judy Appleton Memorial Fund. This project is also supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Museum would like to extend a special thanks to local partners Blue Ridge Printing, Asheville Color & Imaging, Mountain Paint & Decorating, and The Old Wood Co.
The Museum also thanks the following individuals for their support of this project: Jason Andrew, Chris Brooks, Lola Clairmont, Jenine Culligan, Emma-Leigh Evors, Beccy Hamm, Chesnee Klein, Nandini Makrandi, Jolene Mechanic, Amy G. Moorefield, Susan Rhew, and Stephen C. Wicks.
Your support helps the Asheville Art Museum develop community-driven programming and exhibitions. To contribute to Appalachia Now!, please visit our Donations page, select Upcoming Exhibitions, and type “Appalachia Now” in the Notes.
AES in Forbes: Why Designers Should Collect Art
In the design work I do, I get stuck in a cycle of inspiration. It’s not unlike going to the fridge, opening it, staring for a minute, closing the fridge and going back to my room. I do this with Dribbble and Behance and Twitter TWTR +0% and sometimes Reddit. This cycle of getting inspiration from all the same places is a big problem for the design community. It’s easy to get lost, or make the same things over and over again. It's easy to be cynical about the things you make when the ideas you believe in are written in a note on your phone.
Designers are limited by the constraints of their projects with brand standards, style guides, practicality, and every other factor in a project. With these constraints, designers aren’t able to explore full freedom of creativity. In a number of ways, this is good. The best design is design that is working within practical constraints. But this restriction also limits designers so they might not come across solutions to design problems because they aren’t able to explore far outside the limits of their current projects.
This is why companies like Google have 20 percent rules, allowing people to explore outside the constraints of their own assignments and find solutions in side projects that can influence the company in serendipitous ways. While this approach is immeasurably helpful in creating opportunities for spontaneous innovation and developing a community that genuinely cares about the work they do, it doesn’t directly solve the problem to which it is directed.
If designers are making things within design constraints and don’t have significant contact with unconstrained aesthetic ideas, they don’t come in contact with new ideas that might better solve their design problems.
Ursula Davila-Villa joins AES as "Legacy Specialist"
Photo: Elfie Semotan
New York, NY – Artist Estate Studio, LLC, the organization that manages the Estates of Jack Tworkov and Elizabeth Murray as well as the studios of living artists Joan Witek and Robert Zakanitch among others, is excited to announce that Ursula Davila-Villa has joined its team as Legacy Specialist.
In the growing field of artist estate management, Ursula has quickly become a leader in legacy planning. Her varied background, elite curatorial and research skills, as well has her worldwide wealth of contacts in the gallery and museum sector, positions her as an effective force and advocate for artists and their estates. Ursula will be a valuable member of our team. - Jason Andrew, Founding Partner, Artist Estate Studio, LLC
Expanding into legacy planning and stewardship comes as a natural evolution to the organization which strongly believes in empowering living artists and those involved with caring for artists’ estates by advocating for their interests and their legacies with integrity, empathy, and imagination.
About Ursula Davila-Villa.
Ursula Davila-Villa co-manages the Kurt Kocherscheidt Estate and has worked on an advisory role with artists such as Luis Camnitzer, Lorraine O’Grady, Carolee Schneemann, Elfie Semotan, and the Estate of Serge Spitzer. From 2012 to 2017 she was a Partner at Alexander Gray Associates where she managed the artistic and operational areas of the gallery including: artists liaison and career development, exhibitions, publications, institutional acquisitions, curatorial and research projects, and supervision of gallery staff.
From 2005-2012, she was Associate Curator of Latin American Art at The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin where she directed and supervised exhibitions, permanent collection, acquisitions, publications, ongoing research, and established the first international artist-in-residence program. She curated several exhibitions at the Blanton, among them The New York Graphic Workshop 1964–1970: Luis Camnitzer, Liliana Porter y José Guillermo Castillo (2008), Eclipses for Austin a project by Pablo Vargas Lugo (2009), Recovering Beauty: The 1990s in Buenos Aires (2011), The Nearest Air: A Survey of Works by Waltercio Caldas (2013), among others. In 2012, she was co-curator of El Panal/The Hive: Third Poli/Gráfica Triennal of San Juan de Puerto Rico. In 2008 she curated a mid-career survey of Mexican artist Yoshua Okon at the Städtische Kunsthalle Munich, Germany. Previously, she worked as project and archival researcher for artist Cai Guo-Qiang at Cai Studio, as public programs assistant at the Guggenheim Museum, as curatorial assistant at Art in General (all in New York), and Manager of International Art Fairs at Galería OMR (in Mexico City).
She completed her M.A. in Museum Studies at New York University in 2005, and holds a BA in architecture and urbanism from the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada, and the Technische Universiteit Delft, Netherlands. She has lectured and published internationally on contemporary art and museum studies. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
About Artist Estate Studio, LLC.
Founded in 2017 by Jason Andrew and Julia K. Gleich, Artist Estate Studio, LLC, services artists and the estates of artists in the management and cataloguing of their art and the promotion of their legacy. With the artist and their studio as our core focus, we specialize in promotion and preservation. Whether our client is emerging, established, or an estate of an artist, we aim to provide full management associated with all aspects of the life and work of the artist. This includes strategic planning, promotion and marketing, overseeing agreements and contracts, licensing, inventory management, assistance with appraisals, legacy and estate planning, overseeing and development of catalogue raisonné projects, and the collection, preservation, and placement of the artist’s archives.
Our team brings together first-hand knowledge and more than eight decades of accumulated experience in the curatorial, archival, academic, performance arts, publishing, and market fields. We believe in empowering artists by representing their interests and stewarding their legacies with integrity, empathy and imagination.
Founding Partner Jason Andrew Interviewed by Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association (via CRSA)
Jack Tworkov in his Provincetown studio, 1960. Photo: Arnold Newman, © Arnold Newman / Getty Images. Courtesy Tworkov Family Archives, New York.
New York - Founding Partner at Artist Estate Studio, Jason Andrew, talks to the Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association about his work on the launch of the first online catalogue raisonné project for painter Jack Tworkov. Launched over ten years ago, Andrew discusses the ever-changing-landscape of catalogue raisonné research and it’s growing presence online.
(Via Press Release) Hauser & Wirth Announces Independent Non-Profit Institute
Franz Kline, Wanamaker Block, 1955.Y ale University Art Gallery, Gift of Richard Brown Baker, B.A. 1935. © 2018 The Franz Kline Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
New York - Iwan Wirth, President and Manuela Wirth, Co-Founders of Hauser & Wirth, and Marc Payot, Partner and Vice President, today announced the establishment of Hauser & Wirth Institute, an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) private operating foundation dedicated to supporting art historical scholarship and to preserving and advancing the legacies of modern and contemporary artists through enabling greater public access to their archives for research.
To pursue its mission, the Institute will create a study center for the preservation, expedient cataloguing, and digitization of primary research materials for direct study and free online public access to these resources. It will seek to nurture innovation and substance in art historical research through the funding of fellowships in partnership with artists’ estates, foundations, and educational institutions. Another core activity of the Institute will be the production of online catalogues raisonnés and print publications that advance the highest academic standards in order to strengthen the field of modern and contemporary art history. The organization will also present public programs, including exhibitions of archival material and symposia that engage scholars, archivists, artists, collectors, curators, estate managers, gallerists, and the general public in dialogues about the obligations and opportunities inherent in archive stewardship.
The activities of Hauser & Wirth Institute will include both projects connected with artists represented by Hauser & Wirth and artists who are unaffiliated with the gallery.
The Institute is under the leadership of Executive Director Jennifer Gross, formerly Chief Curator and Deputy Director of deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Previous to her work at deCordova, Gross served as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut; Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts; and Founding Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine.
Hauser & Wirth Institute is governed by a Board of Directors with guidance provided by an independent Advisory Board of artists, advisors to artists’ estates, scholars, and archivists.
“The work of Hauser & Wirth Institute is a natural extension of our gallery’s support of living artists and the noteworthy estates and foundations we have represented for over 25 years,” Iwan Wirth said. “The art world has accelerated and globalized its exhibition and publishing activities so dramatically. In creating the Institute, we hope to make resources available to support similar growth in the areas of art historical research and the sharing of essential knowledge that fuel a richer understanding of art, artists, and the creative processes central to the history of culture for future generations. We are honored to have the opportunity to create an organization to do this work, and so grateful to our Advisors for joining in the effort.”
Jennifer Gross commented, “We are thrilled to launch this unique and ambitious initiative at a time when there are fewer and fewer resources available to afford scholars the time and access needed for primary document research. It is a great privilege to care for and process archival materials. Even as the art world has become interested in these resources, it is critical to support public conversation about best stewardship and most effective and appropriate practices and partnerships. Technology should be enabling the sharing of intellectual and visual resources, but the speed at which the art world is operating now can preclude adequate attention to this work. We aim to broaden the art historical conversation to reflect the diversity of aesthetic and cultural values at hand today.”
Case Study (via NYTimes): Whaam! Pow! Lichtenstein Foundation Starts to Wind Down With Big Gifts
Roy Lichtenstein’s “Sweet Dreams, Baby!” from 1965. The screenprint is one of the works going to the Whitney Museum of American Art from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. Credit Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
At a time when some single-artist foundations are exploring new ways to stay relevant by hosting artist residencies, or giving prizes, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation is making a dramatic impact by beginning the process of winding itself down.
AES in Observer: The Bad Planning That Leaves So Many Artists’ Estates Tangled in Lawsuits
Robert Indiana with his 'Love' sculpture in Central Park, New York City in 1971. Photo: Jack Mitchell / Getting Images
Daniel Grant quotes Founding Partner, Jason Andrew, in his article The Bad Planning That Leaves So Many Artists’ Estates Tangled in Lawsuits on the occasion of the deputed legacy of Robert Indiana.
Review (via NYTimes): Edith Schloss at Meredith Ward
Edith Schloss "Rignalla," 1967, Oil on canvas, 13 3/4 x 21 1/2 in.
We are very pleased that the exhibition, Edith Schloss, organized by Artist Estate Studio at Meredith Ward Fine Art has been reviewed in The New York Times by Robert Smith.