The Berkshires continue to be a great location to produce, develop and export exhibitions to art fairs where collectors and professionals from throughout the country congregate. Recently SOFA Chicago, the international Sculpture, Object and Functional Art exposition now in its sixteenth year, drew over 30,000 visitors. Ferrin, Sienna and Schantz/Holsten, three Berkshire based galleries, are regular exhibitors at the shows produced by The Art Fair Company that take place in New York, Chicago and Santa Fe, and use these and other fairs to present, sell and promote art from the Berkshires to national markets. With these fairs taking place during the fall, winter and spring, fair sales are important to the galleries located in this seasonally dependent region.
Growth and success was evident, as the galleries’ Berkshire produced, curated summer’s shows, traveled to Chicago and drawing media, museum and buyer attention and resulting in strong sales. Sienna Gallery’s “Stimulus Project” and Ferrin Gallery’s “The Illusculptors” were presented as “shows within a show.” SOFA’s newly offered juried single artist spaces, SOLO, provided the opportunity to present artists in depth. Ferrin Gallery presented“Vulnerable”, Anne Lemanski’s conceptual work in a” house of curiosities” installation, and Sienna Gallery presented three solos featuring artists Barbara Siedenath, Lauren Kalman and Arthur Hash. Schantz/ Holsten Galleries reported strong sales from a large scale traditional installation of works by noted Venetian glass artist Lino Tagliapetra.
Leslie Ferrin noted, “while not unexpected, with the economy being so unpredictable, the strong sales at this show continue the pattern of artwork selling outside the Berkshires and producing income that returns to circulate and recirculate throughout the Berkshires. These sales provide proof of the solid relationship between funds invested in the marketing and business development of the art sector of the creative economy in the Berkshire region and the jobs that are supported by these businesses. Leadership and direct financial investment by Berkshire Creative, Berkshire Visitors Bureau and the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center in educational and marketing programs stimulates growth of the contemporary visual arts business and provides support to individual artists and independent for-profit galleries. When our three galleries return home after each fair having made top level sales, these same funds are immediately used to pay artists and bills to local vendors. Indirectly the galleries support numerous arts related jobs throughout the region through the ancillary businesses of exhibition production, arts administration, graphic design, writing, printing, crating, shipping and marketing – not to mention some rents and mortgages that are getting paid along the way. While museums have long been known to produce and export their exhibitions nationally as “not for profits”, these institutions are different from the galleries that “export” in that they do not exhibit art to sell and thus do not provide the type of “for profit” results that smaller independent galleries do for their artists and the production teams that produce their exhibits outside the region.”
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