Rolling
The new museum opened on October 20 and barely I am beginning to get some sleep. The weeks prior to opening I was at the site from 7am til about 10pm and on about 4 or 5 days I was actually on call to be able to receive all the paintings for the main show. I remember one day I was receiving calls all throughout the night and morning (1am, 3:30am, and 5am) because I was overseeing the arrival of 2 paintings valued at 200,000 USD.
We have Ray Smith showing right now. He is a surrealist painter that does humongous works of oil and wax on canvas and wood. His works are on average 8 feet high by 12 feet wide. Pretty impressive stuff. I can’t show you images here right now (I need to ask permission from my curator) because of copyrights and all that legal stuff (yeah yeah, I used to not care about such things before, but since I was the one making and signing all those loan agreements with the private collectors, museums, and galleries I need to look after my butt). But for some examples of his work here’s this site that displays some of them that are for sale: http://www.artnet.com/artist/15760/ray-smith.html
We have the Founders’ exhibit (portraits for the 8 ladies that began the museum back in 1932 and paintings made by them) as well as a display of 14 works from our permanent collection. We have on display a Chagall, a Calder (I love this guy! He invented the mobile), NC Wyeth, Whistler, Burt, and Oris Robertson among others. We have over 300 and I’ve only seen about 87 from the entire collection. There is also a children’s exhibit, which is really neat, they paint much better than I, that’s for sure.
Anyway, I am working tomorrow. We open 6 days a week and the day we are closed to the public we have office day. Ha! And then I go and volunteer to go help give an art workshop at 7 am? Please shoot me.
