Style Weekly’s Amanda Dalla Villa Adams highlighted an upcoming contemporary art fair that’s sure to be a hit with our students and faculty. Here is a quick excerpt from “A New Richmond Art Fair Takes Aim at the Next Generation,” read the full article on Style Weekly.
How do you interest new and younger people in contemporary art?
A project in the works for nearly a year, Current began as a solution to a problem. From Oct. 20-23, seven Richmond galleries will come together to hold an inaugural art fair in Scott’s Addition.
The event is being organized by a group of directors and owners from 1708 Gallery, ADA Gallery, Candela gallery, Glave Kocen Gallery, Page Bond Gallery, Quirk Gallery, and Reynolds Gallery. They’re working with Caroline Wright, former curator of the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, who is acting as Current’s fair coordinator and gallery liaison.
“We banded together because the stronger and healthier the art community is, the better it is for all of us,” says Alice Livingston, co-director of Reynolds Gallery. “Different galleries bring different perspectives and different artists.”
They recruited an advisory board composed of contemporary art collectors Bill and Pam Royall and Ted Elmore, the retired dean of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Joe Seipel, VCU design professor Sara Reed, and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ curator of modern and contemporary art, Sarah Eckhardt.
“We want to get the under-50 crowd more involved, especially with the momentum of the ICA opening next year,” Wright says of the university’s Institute for Contemporary Art. “And it’s not only about buying contemporary art but paying attention to it. We hope coming to the fair is less intimidating than walking into a white-wall gallery with people you don’t know. That’s one reason it’s free and open to the public.”
Image: Left; Steve Walker, ”The Only Way” at Glave Kocen Gallery. Right; Peri Schwartz, ”Studio XXIX’ at Page Bond Gallery
The post Contemporary Art Fair Comes to RVA appeared first on VCUarts.