A Taste for Contemporary

For some people, the passion for contemporary art burns too deeply to be satisfied with just reading about it or visiting it in galleries and museums. They need to collect it, get together with other art lovers to discuss it, and they need to learn more about it from experts in the field.

Fortunately for Gulfshore residents, the opportunity to collect exists through local galleries and dealers, as well as through trips to New York and abroad. And the opportunity to discuss and learn has just widened with the formation of the new Contemporary Art Study Group, which boasts a strong group of founders and speakers, both locally and nationally known.

Heading the steering committee for this new foray into the arts is Joan Salke, a former board member at the von Liebig Art Center and a collector who's always thirsting for the chance to discover more about the art scene and those working in it today. Salke, whose own collection frequently favors cutting-edge art, says the impetus for the group came from former Florida Gulf Coast University consultant Mechlin Moore and from Jack Crocker, who heads FGCU's Renaissance Academy, the university's lifelong learning program for adults. The academy presents a wide variety of lectures, short courses, day trips, workshops, travel abroad and more.

"They'd already had a very successful Chinese art study group there," explains Salke. "They were talking and said, 'Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing to have a contemporary art study group?' So they called me, and I started putting together a committee," including Moore, Renaissance Academy's director of planning and marketing John Guerra, FGCU art professor Megan McShane, and fellow collectors E.T. Williams, Barbara Heimann, Ginny Small and Stephanie Sherman.

"FGCU is a very interesting place to me," says Salke. "They have a little gallery there, they're growing and expanding, and they want to do more. Plus they're interested in quality, not just quantity. And there's no other place in Naples that discusses contemporary art in an intelligent way."

The structure of the group, which meets for the first time this month, is simple enough. Six lectures by art experts on different topics are scheduled, typically beginning at 11 a.m. and followed by a question-and-answer session. These sessions, held at the Naples Center at 1010 Fifth Ave. S., are open to the general public. Then, an hour or so later, the public is dismissed and the art study group's core-perhaps 30 members, perhaps more-gets down to the serious business of lunch and informal discussions, with each other and with the speaker, that spring from the syllabus and reading material they've received before the lecture.

Of course, the competition for those slots may be fierce, says Salke. "We had Bonnie Clearwater from the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art here in April, speaking on how to choose works by emerging artists, and I couldn't believe it; we had almost 60 people just from sending out a bulk-mail postcard," she says. That demonstrates to her that the region has more than enough serious contemporary art aficionados to make the fledgling series a success.

The inaugural season for the Contemporary Art Study Group consists of the following speakers and topics:

Oct. 24: Florida Gulf Coast University art professor Dr. Megan McShane offers a general overview of contemporary art.

Nov. 7: Scott Snyder, the new gallery director at FGCU, prepares listeners for the next four guest speakers with an introduction to their topics and backgrounds.

Nov. 13: Former Naples Museum of Art director John Neff speaks on Second Acts: Hindsight and Insight.

Feb. 13: Jeff Rosenheim, associate curator in the department of photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gives a brief history of photography as art, then concentrates on the work of Diane Arbus, whose Family Albums are the focus of an exhibition at the Naples Museum of Art, Jan. 7 to April 15.

March 3: Jerry Gorovoy, assistant to renowned sculptor Louise Bourgeois, will discuss Bourgeois' recent work.

April 7: Jan Schall, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., will expand on the subject of sculptor Kiki Smith: Back to Nature.

Cost of the first two survey lectures for the public is $15 each, for the four guest lectures $25 each, or $130 for all six; study group members will pay $250 for the privilege of extra time and insights. For more information, call (239) 434-4737.

Barbara Heimann, photographed with David Hockney's 1215 and Roy Lichtenstein's Brushstrokes Figures-Blue Face, says, "We collect American original prints and have been doing it for almost 20 years. The first dealer I worked with up in Boston happened to be very interested in Hockney, and the first couple of pieces I bought were Hockney.

"We like colorful things that don't bore us-pieces we can see new things in all the time. We have very little representational art."

Heimann is interested in the process of making prints. "People don't realize that prints are not posters. They're not copies; they're originals," she says. "We [she and husband David] love to go on art trips where you can meet other collectors, and we frequently open our home to entertain for arts causes."

Joan Salke says of Star 1997, an oil on canvas by Francesco Clemente, "It's a self-portrait from his Animorphic series. The look is as if you painted a rubber band and then stretched it."

Also shown: six untitled sculptures by Willem de Kooning (numbered 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13). "They're all bronzes, 10 to 12 inches tall, from a 1969 series," she says. "The story goes that [sculptor] Henry Moore was in de Kooning's studio and saw them, and said, 'Bill, you ought to make them larger.' So he did, and four of these became maquettes for the larger sculptures. We were very lucky because his estate sold these to us as a set; very few collectors have more than two."

Also shown is an untitled wall piece by de Kooning, 16 inches tall, numbered 13, also from 1969.

"People sometimes hesitate to bring different styles together, and when they do it's called eclectic," says Stephanie Sherman, photographed with an 18th-century tea set, a Georgian desk and the Ed Ruscha print Jockey. "It's really not; it's just bringing together a variety of genres that in many ways reflect on each other. I think it's nonsense when people dismiss a style because it doesn't fit into the style they've been working with. Our collection has no real theme, but it's a mix of well-known and emerging young artists."

Sherman's background is art history, and she and her husband had a gallery in Naples for three years. They're now working as art consultants.

"I'm thinking about having a gallery again, but in the salon style," Sherman says. "People could come in and see a whole environment, and not necessarily even buy. Because a lot of people find the usual contemporary art gallery style-white walls, concrete floors-intimidating."