CULTURAL ALLIANCE OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY
AND SILVERMINE ARTS CENTER
PRESENT CULTIVATING COLLECTORS SERIES
Second Panel Discussion: The Landscape of Collecting
Thursday April 27, 6pm
NORWALK, CT, April 24, 2017 — The Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County continues its partnership with Silvermine Arts Center in producing a series of events on the theme of better cultivating art collectors in Fairfield County to help support the regional arts economy.

The second panel discussion in the Cultivating Collectors series, “The Landscape of Collecting,” will be held on Thursday April 27, 2017 from 6pm to 8pm at the Silvermine Arts Center, 1037 Silvermine Rd., New Canaan.

The discussion will focus on the education of collectors: what are the best sources of information about trends and rising artists, what should collectors look for in artists’ resumes, how can they develop and trust their own eye in evaluating the work of artists, how can they best gauge an investment in an artist, and more. The panel of curators, writers, artists, an investment expert, and a collector, will also explore the best ways of building relationships between curators, museums, galleries, writers, artists and collectors. Registration for this free event is required and can be madehere.

Panelists are: Marty Baron, Sharon Butler, Robin Jaffe Frank, Terri Smith andDmitri Wright. The panel moderator is Evan Beard:

Evan Beard is National Art Services Executive with U.S.Trust, leading Bank of America’s outreach to private and institutional art collectors, investors and artists. He works with a team of specialists who provide a suite of tailored offerings to families, auction houses, museums, endowments and foundations. An authority on art-related investing and financing, Evan directs the end-to-end provision of services to clients in the art world, including trust structuring and estate planning services, art-secured lending, financing and philanthropic services. He speaks regularly on art and exotic asset classes at art fairs and investment conferences and is a frequent media contributor regarding the intersection of art and finance.

Marty Baron has been collecting and engaging with the arts for most of his adult life. He is a longtime board member and Treasurer of Artists in Real Time, a Hartford based non-profit facilitating the annual Hartford Open Studios event. He is a board member of the Hartford Art School Endowment, currently serving as its treasurer and chairman of the finance and investment committee. For the past 39 years Marty has spent his days in the world of investment and personal finance. Baron Financial Planning Services is a fee-only investment advisory and financial planning firm. Marty and his wife Nancy reside
in West Hartford.They have three children, two dogs, and a serious lack of wall space.

A painter and arts writer, Sharon Butler is widely known as the founder of Two Coats of Paint, which includes an influential art blog, an artists’ residency, and curatorial initiatives. In 2015, she was named the Patricia Highsmith-Plangman Fellow at Yaddo and was inaugural artist-in-residence at Counterproof Press. She has shown work at Pulse Miami (2016), NADA New York (2014), and her 2016 painting exhibition at Theodore:Art in Bushwick was selected as a Critic’s Pick in Time Out New York. She currently has a solo show at SEASON in Seattle, where she has launched a book of the digital drawings she posts on Instagram each morning. She is affilliated with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Parsons The New School.

Robin Jaffe Frank has organized exhibitions, lectured, and published widely on American visual culture, from the colonial to contemporary periods. She is currently curatingWorld War I Through the Trenches at the New-York Historical Society. From 2011 to 2016, as Chief Curator of the Wadsworth Atheneum, she led the curatorial team through the museum’s renovation and reinstallation, and organized the acclaimed exhibition Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861–2008, also authoring the award-winning book. As a curator at the Yale University Art Gallery, Robin co-organized Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery. She holds a Ph.D in the History of Art from Yale.

Terri C. Smith has curated more than 100 contemporary art exhibitions for museums and arts nonprofits. Recipient of numerous awards, including three grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, her exhibitions have been well-reviewed in Art Papers, ArtForum online, Bomb blog, and artcritical.com. Curator at Nashville’s Cheekwood Museum, Terri earned her MA from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies in 2008, working for the Westport Arts Center and the Housatonic Museum of Art, before becoming founding Creative Director at Stamford’s Franklin Street Works, in 2011. Working with 20 guest curators from across the U.S., she has shown more than 350 artists. Terri also teaches Feminisms and the Arts at UConn-Stamford.

Dmitri Wright is an internationally-known Greenwich-based painter, master art instructor, inspirational speaker, and poet. Following a Max Beckmann International Scholarship at the Brooklyn Museum, Dmitri studied at The Cooper Union. Today, he is Master Artist/Instructor for Weir Farm National Historic Site in Wilton, former home of J. Alden Weir, and a National Park dedicated to American Impressionism. Artist-in-residence, teaching at the Greenwich Historical Society, birthplace of American Impressionism, Dmitri also teaches privately and at Silvermine Art School. His work is housed in museum, corporate and private collections worldwide. A member of the Silvermine Artists Guild, Dmitri is represented by Sorelle Gallery.

Recognizing the need to develop and cultivate art collectors in Fairfield County, and to help further establish the credibility of Fairfield County as a strong arts and cultural community, where art is created, discussed, enjoyed, bought and sold, the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County and Silvermine Arts Center are co-producing this series of panel discussions, culminating in an art fair in the Spring.

The goal of the series is to discover and reach out to collectors, to discuss how, what and why to collect, with a special emphasis on the dialog between New York City and Fairfield County. The projected audience will be collectors, would-be collectors, curators, artists, gallerists, designers and real estate developers. As Jeff Mueller, Gallery Director at Silvermine, said:

“In every art community there are several factors that are needed for the community not only to be successful, but to thrive: artists, a gallery/museum system, press and patrons. In its partnership with the Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County on this upcoming three part series “Cultivating Collectors,” Silvermine is excited to help create a platform for discussion of these important topics as they exist here in the state. This spirit of exchange and education is central to our mission and an extremely valuable component of the Connecticut art community.”
This series is free and open to the public, although registration is required. The series is made possible by a generous contribution from U.S. Trust Bank of America Private Wealth Management.

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