In the Studio
Oil on canvas, 24 x 16 inches, 1963.
I’m pretty lucky. I open exhibitions at museums around the country almost as much as most people open their refrigerator. Just last week I was in Huntsville, Alabama to open a new exhibition. This Studio show is my third of the year, and I will organize or re-organize two more shows before the year’s out.
Some may think that would make me jaded, but truth be told, I’m still am very excited when a show opens. Taking an idea and making it a reality is wonderful. Sharing it with an interested audience is even better. Literally, you are the reason I spend the time on exhibitions.
This year, I am even more excited than usual about our new show on still lifes. Not only is it a wonderful show (biased as I am), but the catalogue will let us all see it long after the works come down off the wall. I often joke I am in the mirage business because I work for a long time, often years, on an exhibition and it comes together and looks terrific and then within 12 weeks usually, there is no sign it ever happened. Publications are the way curators and visitors can hold onto an element of the show, and of course add to the scholarship of the subject.Â
While it may not be nearly as interesting, I am glad we are finally providing an easy place to park no matter what the weather. We have struggled with this issue for years, as we decided early on that we did not want to “institutionalize” the Studio and rob it of its intimate charm. That is why we have no traditional gift shop or tea room, or velvet ropes or glass cases, for that matter. When you come to the Studio of Ben Solowey, you get exactly what is advertised: the Solowey Studio more or less as Ben had it. Not as a mausoleum, but as an ever changing atmosphere just as it was when Ben Was working. The parking area, now allows us to do more at the Studio all year round, instead of simply in June and October. Now you can bring your motorcycle, Mercedes or moped any time during the year, rain or shine, and know that it will be as easy to get out as it was to get in.
