Biltmore
Area Partnership
TUESDAY, March 25, 2008
SPEAKER: Mark Patel, Director of Marketing and Public Relations
SUBJECT: What Is Happening At The Phoenix Art Museum
I have been at the Museum for a total of 6 months, so I see the Museum from a very new perspective; and Larry Bleich is with me today and he is the Major Donor Officer of the Phoenix Art Museum.
Shows that are coming up and are at the Museum now.
Richard Avedon-Photographer This show represents a very close cooperation between the Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson. Center for Creative Photography is the largest researched based photographic institutes in the world. They have over 18 million archival objects. In addition to collecting prints, they collect everything to do with that person’s life. This show, is in collaboration with the Avedon Foundation in New York. Avedon is one of our most famous portrait fashion photographers, and died within the past 5 to 10 years. He was one of the first fashion photographers to use very exotic backgrounds to give the photographs that extra flavor. This show is on through April 14. We have been written up in The New Yorker, New York Times, and Washington Post. And that helps to bring in a different audience.
One of my goals at the Museum is to take our offerings to a broader number of people.
Masterpiece Replayed is a very huge unique exhibition now showing. Two years in the making. Collaboration between Phoenix Art Museum and the Walters Museum of Baltimore. Purpose of this show is to present the artists, Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Matisse and other 19th century French Painters. Crux of this show is to present these painters in quite a different light. There are a lot of masterpieces out there in which there are more than one version painted by the artist during his life. Museums around the world leant these paintings for this show. For more information about this exhibit go to www.masterpiecereplayed.org First time many of these paintings, by the same artist, have been displayed together. This is a very big event. Thanks to the Biltmore Fashion Park, we had actual life size haystacks for marketing of the exhibit there as well as other Westcor Malls. Westcor is a big supporter of the Phoenix Art Museum.
Chado Ralph Rucci is a high end couture fashion designer. His work has been written up in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune. He flew directly from showing his fashions in Paris to the Museum. Last Wednesday (March 19) we had a full Broadway Fashion Show. For detailed info on this exhibit go to www.phxart.org/exhibition/exhibitionchado:aspx
Upcoming Shows
Passport To Europe This show comes from Puerto Rico, Ponce, which is the Capital of Puerto Rico. This exhibition of European paintings spans six centuries and nine nationalities. There are 59 works covering a wide range of styles. In 1959 Puerto Rican native, industrialist and future governor, Luis A. Ferre founded Museo de Arte de Ponce. He wanted to give the citizens of Puerto Rico firsthand access to the world’s finest expressions of international culture and make the city of Ponce one of the great North American epicenters of European Art. It has been said the collection rivals those of The Frick in New York, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and The Getty in Los Angeles. First showing of this exhibit outside of Museo de Arte de Ponce. For further information on this exhibit go to www.passporteurope.org
Current Collections & Galleries: American, Asian, European, Fashion Design, Latin American, Modern & Contemporary, Western American, Norton Photography Gallery, PhxArtKids, Thorne Miniature Rooms, Ullman Center for the Art of Philip C Curtis
Involvement with the Community: We have at many events the Museum. We just had the West of Western Culinary event with 60 top Chefs invited to participate. It was a great way for the Museum to reach out to the community. I have learned that culture and good restaurants go hand in hand. We have a wonderful film series going on. We go out to the community such as participating with the Barrett Jackson event. We even had the recent exhibit on automobiles that was quite successful. We will be having Murals Under the Stars featuring Diego Rivera’s work. It will be outside where you can sit and have wine and be surrounded by the art work.
FOR INFORMATION REGARDING THE PHOENIX ART MUSEUM AND ITS EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS PLEASE LOG ONTO: WWW.PHXART.ORG
Questions:
Cut in State Budget for the Arts? There are planned serious cutbacks and we need your help. If you would go to http://capwiz.com/artsusa/az/issues/alert/?alertid=11032516 and write you your State legislators and ask them not to cut funding for the Arts it would help. The entire annual budget for the State Arts Commission is $2.1 million. That’s just 0.0191% of the State’s total $11.1 billion budget. The amounts involved are too small to solve the State’s budget challenge, but the grants they enable and services they supply are VERY significant to the arts organizations that serve you - and people like you statewide -with all kinds of theater, music, dance, art, festivals and arts education for youth activities.
What about the wonderful program you had where docents would go out to the public and talk about the exhibitions being shown at the Museum? A lot depends on our budget and where we can spend the money. It is something to look into again.
How does our Museum rank among others? We are getting a lot of notice in the press all over the country and that is important. Our exhibits are well known, but where we are not as strong as the Museums in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles for example is in the amounts of endowments we have. Endowments a Museum receives is important in ranking Museums.