00:00:12
BS: Okay, it's November 27th and this is an interview with Cathy Bert by Beth Stelson. So what we're just going to do is kind of... We like to start, just kind of, chronologically to just get a sense of where everybody's coming from. Just little stories just give insight into, like, how people end up and stuff like that. So if you could just tell me about your childhood, where you're born, your parents, your family. 00:00:39
CB: Okay, boy we're really going back. 00:00:41
BS: Yeah. 00:00:42
CB: Okay. Actually, I was born in Salzburg, Austria, and my father was in the military. And so he was a career military man. So my childhood was pretty much spent bouncing all around the world where ever he was stationed. 00:00:57
BS: Where was he? 00:00:58
CB: I was.... Well, first I was born in Europe, and then I spent some time stateside. And then I lived... He was actually recruited when I was about six into the Green Berets, and so we ended up in Okinawa. And he was in Vietnam. And so we spent some time in the Far East, and we spent some time... We came back to Germany, the Midwest, all over the place. I mean, I literally moved twenty-one times before I was about thirteen. So it's hard to keep track, especially in the pre-five year old, where I was and what was happening. But we've been able to reconstruct that through my parent's memories and stuff. So my childhood was incredibly important in terms of shaping my sense of the world because I lived in a lot of different cultures. But clearly by being a military child, I had a very singular strong American identity that we had to travel with. But by living in other parts of the world, not only was it, kind of, a cultural awakening, but it was certainly a visual awakening. And my parents were tremendously devoted to dragging us, whether we were interested or not, into ever kind of museum and historical center that there was. So that kind of had a very strong influence on me. I came back to Rhode Island when I was about thirteen and started school. 00:02:25
BS: Were your parents originally from Rhode Island? 00:02:27
CB: Both my parents were originally from Rhode Island. Both were born and raised in Rhode Island, and so, when I cam back at thirteen, I started high school here. And my father was off again to Vietnam so he was away during that time. And that was a real culture shock, coming to Rhode Island, in the sense that in the same way you have an identity with as your traveling around with, as much as we did, with your country. I always viewed myself as a Rhode Islander yet I never had spent more than maybe three or four weeks in Rhode Island before I was thirteen. So coming back here and going to school here was, especially in the teenage years, was very shocking and actually interesting. 00:03:13
BS: How was it shocking and interesting? 00:03:15
CB: It was shocking because it was.... Rhode Island, now that I've a chance to look back on it, Rhode Island had the lowest migration rate in the country through the 1980s. So for me to be in classrooms with individuals who had been together with other friends since they were, like, in kindergarten was very strange concept to me. That they never left Rhode Island. You know, many people just didn't even know the geography of where I had lived or where I had been. So I realized that there was, kind of, a little microcosm world around Rhode Island. 00:03:54
BS: Kind of like a bubble. 00:03:55
CB: Very small, very intimate, very ethnic which was really very nice. It was fun to see, you know, that people had a lot of pride in terms of if they're Irish or they were Italian or they were Portuguese. And I was very interested because it was a very eclectic mix of students that I was with. So that was, kind of, my early experiences in terms of my high school. I ended up going, staying in state in Rhode Island, and going to Providence College. And Providence College had a very strong liberal arts so it kind of fit in with my background. And that was my exposure to, I guess, the world in general. I was not an art major in college. In fact, my background is in psychology. And I went from Providence College to the University of Connecticut and worked in... I got a masters in developmental psychology, and that was the field that I worked in early on before I got involved in the arts. 00:04:54
BS: Did you ever take the, kind of, art classes while you were there? I mean, you kind of had to have some kind of exposure. 00:04:58
CB: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, the beauty of the curriculum at Providence College was that we took Western Civilization for the first two years every day. And it was very heavy in terms of philosophy, religion, and art courses that I had to take. And it was the foundation which actually made it very easy for me to reenter the art world. 00:05:21
BS: Okay. You went to college probably in the sixties, right? 00:05:25
CB: Actually, seventies. Seventies, yeah? 00:05:30
BS: Can you just kind of explain... I mean, that's a pretty dynamic time. 00:05:34
CB: Yeah, it was. 00:05:36
BS: Especially with your connection. I mean, it's all sparked up because of Vietnam. Your connection with your father being in Vietnam. Was there ever any kind of...? 00:5:41
CB: Yeah, it was very, very interesting because the Vietnam era was a very difficult time for us and the country. And when you have your father's career being one thing which is to go and to fight and to believe in a concept which his country presents to him. And then you have this questioned in the environment that you're in, it makes you start to think about things. But I had found from my education through military schools that you just learn to look at things from different perspectives. And you separate out the emotional, and you look more in terms of the identity of issues and the theory and the logic. So they were really exciting times. They were very exciting times. I thought it was very good to debate. And so I found it, more so in my high school years, that Vietnam was really very big. And so we were very active in trying to discuss those matters. By the time... I was very more wrapped up in college in terms of feminist issues. Title Nine had just been enacted. I was an athlete. I played collegiate sports. It was a very interesting time. I went to a college which had been all male. I was only, like, the third class that had integrated females on to the campus. So it was very exciting because some incredible women were on campus teaching. And there was also the whole women's athletics kind of movement that was going on with parody with scholarships and issues there. So it was... 00:07:28
BS: Did you ever get involved, kind of, in this activism? Did you... 00:07:31
CB: Well, actually mostly in terms as a representative in terms of more, again, because I was an athlete, more from the athletic point of view. I would say that it was... We had a lot of, like, women studies kind of programs that we would try to get into the curriculum. But I had some wonderful female, I would say, modals, both academically as well as in the athletic field and watching that grow and stuff. Then also to go from a primarily a small Catholic school to then going on to the University of Connecticut and going into a larger university setting was that... 00:08:09
BS: How big was it? 00:08:11
CB: That was, I would say, probably about fifteen thousand. It was very large 'cause it was a school, you know, a state school. So that was a different thing, even though I was in a graduate program which was very small. In my developmental psychology graduate course, there was maybe only ten students. But we were teaching as TAs in the larger university setting. So it was a stark contrast to my undergraduate days were you would have twenty to fifty people in a class as oppose to one hundred to two hundred people in a class at the University of Connecticut. So those were some issues. The early... I think the two early influences for me in terms of the visual arts were that I was exposed, in terms of my childhood, to various locations and aspects of the world, but then also, through the liberal arts training, I was able to study different approaches and stuff. And then the kind of feminist issues that came out in my college years were really important for when I went into visual arts. I tend to represent a lot of female artists at the gallery because of that-- because I'm very interested in terms of what were the opportunities that were available to them and then the restrictions and how did they perform under those conditions. 00:09:39
BS: Okay, so after college you got your degree... 00:09:44
CB: I got my degree in psychology and I came back to Providence. And it turns out that my mother-in-law, who was the women's athletics director at Providence College, I married her son. And so I had a feminist, kind of, leader, in many ways, always involved in my life. And my father-in-law was an art dealer, and he was very instrumental in getting my husband and I to start at a very young age collecting. That the importance in supporting the visual arts and the importance of supporting a visual arts community. So we started collecting. And because my background was so involved in psychology and also research and documentation, I started to do a lot of research and writing on historic Rhode Island artists that I started to collect. And it, out of that body of work, that my father-in-law said to me, "You know, why don't we open up a second gallery, and why don't you run a second gallery for us?" And I left psychology and started the business in 1985, and so that was kind of the kickoff. And the orientation of the gallery came from the perspective, for me, as a collector. Like, what the issues and things that I was interested in as a collector. Not only what attracted to me visually and stuff, but what also was the history behind the piece. And so I started off dealing, again, mostly with nineteenth, twentieth century American artists. And that was a very, very interesting period of time and it is out of that that I became very aware of the contemporary visual arts community and started to work with a few visual artists who are presently living and been working with for a while. 00:11:39
BS: So, if we could go back to the research. 00:11:41
CB: Sure. 00:11:41
BS: What exactly do you do for research. Is it just kind of, like, you know, writing about the artists, discovering their history and stuff like that? I know nothing about art. 00:11:52
CB: Really. Well, it's very.... it's very different. You're really going back and trying to, like any kind of historical research, reconstruct a period of time and an individual in terms of understanding what was their individual life. The same way you're doing this oral history. What did you do when you were younger? What influenced you? What decisions did you make? And then, looking at not only the journey of the individual, but then looking at it within the context of the conditions, the restrictions of the time. Because of my psychology backgrounds, I was very fascinated with the concept of creativity and why that someone felt they needed to express themselves in a visual manner. And in a society which was totally utilitarian-- I mean, was not a supportive society compared American culture versus European culture which was very patronage drive and which its educational system, even its public education system, is very strong in terms of all the arts. That's totally lacking in the United States and has been, especially in early American art, I mean, American history. So it fascinated me to find out why somebody in 1880 would decide to be a painter. What was the personal kind of drive to do that? Then what were the conditions to support a colony of artists? And how did they actually emerge? I was very, very fascinated with that, from that point of view. The other point that, in terms of research, was you have this history of all these institutions in our community in Providence. You have the Providence Art Club which was founded in the 1880s; the RISD museum in 1878 and stuff. And to have an institution founded at that time, just like if you think of a university or what ever, and have it continue forth and be part of your community today. 00:13:53
I mean, what were the conditions that did that? What were the driving forces? Because those weren't always artist-organized institutions. They were organized for other reasons. So the research is actually going back to primary research, and that's actually how I got involved with the Rhode Island Historical Society. Just going through and looking at individuals who I would come across information on who were activists at the time and seeing if they left papers and then going through their personal papers. I was very fortunate 'cause I started off at the Biltmore Hotel and next to me was the city hall archives. And the archivist at the time was a woman named L.J. Macaroy who was an art history major out of Brown. And she came to me because she was researching at the time mayoral portraits. Who were... 00:14:43
BS: I'm sorry, what portraits? 00:14:44
CB: Mayoral portraits, for the city hall. Who were the different portraits of mayors, and who were the different artists that did them? And she was trying to document that. And so we, kind of, went into a partnership of being very enthused and researching all of these artists and at the time. So the technique was, if you looked, if you went to RISD and said, "Give me a bio on somebody like Charles Walter Stetson," they had nothing. And you would find a lot of secondary write-ups without any primary source. And so what we did was we went back, and we went through basically from 1850 to 1920 every daily newspaper for the Providence Journal; reviewing articles of the day; what were the times that were going on? Trying to reconstruct the period and pulling the materials of some of the artists we thought we were interested in. 00:15:41
BS: So how did you trace the artists life so? 00:15:45
CB: Well... 00:15:45
BS: 'Cause that seems like it would just, kind of, evaporate. 00:15:47
CB: Well, it does evaporate... Actually, the coverage in the paper was pretty interesting. Not only was it interesting in the sense that they had a lot of material on artists, but then, also, there would be... There were three competing newspapers so you could get different perspectives. What you would get from a newspaper is often times they would tell you where an artists was going to be. Charles Walter Stetson went to Canada with George Whitaker in the fall of 1878. Then you would go back, and you would go to all your little collections like the Rhode Island Historical Society, and you would start to research anything that would be there. And you would find... There's a really lovely collection called the Anna Eliza Club in the historical society collection, and those are lectures that those individual artists wrote on various topics. So you could read their writings, their thoughts. And then sometimes they would write papers, and they would write about other artists, describing other artists who were here at the time. So it is, and still is, this complex, kind of, jigsaw puzzle that your trying to put together. You have a theory, and then you follow it through, and then you see that. And of course another primary evidence that I have is the paintings, you know. I have people bringing in paintings, and I'm able to, kind of, try to think, well, what is this scene of? What time was this done? What does that tell me about what writings I should be researching? So you go back and forth. Plus Providence in the 1880's was a major center for the United States. I mean, by the early nineteen hundreds, Providence had the highest per-capita income in the United States. 00:17:28
BS: So primarily because of the sea and stuff like shipping and... 00:17:31
CB: At first it started off with the China trade, and then it went into manufacturing. So there was incredible wealth amassed in Providence. And so issues that we'd think would only be local were national issues. For instance, I go back to the artist Charles Walter Stetson. He was married to the feminist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. And Charlotte left him, and she had written a lot of, you know, yellow-walled paper, women in economics. She left him and went out to California. Well, that was like a national scandal. So all across every paper's about this woman who leaves her husband. So you're finding out about Charles Walter Stetson who's this painter in Providence. What's going on? What's the conflict? 00:18:14
BS: This would really be national news? 00:18:15
CB: Oh yeah, that was national news at the time. So what we forget about is is that some of the art activity, not only some from the personal activity, but some of the art activity is being covered by other papers in other cities. Boston, for instance-- there's a lot of times that Boston, New York Times... I was just working on this Eliza Gardner, print maker that I have up right now, and we were just starting to reconstruct some more research on her. And, you know, her obituary is in the New York Times. So we have to go back and look at her obituary in '55 and find out what they were saying. Her obituary was in the Boston Transcript, and then it was in the Providence Journal. So you start to do comparatives of perspectives of information. Every time you pick up a little bit of something. You know, she showed in the Uffizi. She studied with this person. So you start to reconstruct this. What is interesting is sometimes artists are really good at documenting their own lives, and they leave you a lot of good notes and information. Sometimes they're not. So you have to, kind of, take this as kind of a big pool of variables and try to put it together and maintain objectivity and say... And not fashion something into something you'd like to fashion them into. Kind of put out a theory and say, well, does this... 00:19:35
BS: And trying to prove that theory. 00:19:36
CB: Especially with the women. You know, I mean, I also became because of the research I had done very early on in the eighties. 00:19:45
BS: Research...? 00:19:46
CB: Research on historic Rhode Island women and other artists. 00:19:48
BS: Oh, okay. 00:19:49
CB: Actually, Linda Macaroy or L.J, we put in a grant for the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities. Wrote a couple of publications called Sketches in which we started to document the early history of art in Rhode Island. And because of the research, there was a museum founded in Washington D.C. called the National Museum for Women and the Arts, and one of its focus was to look at historical research. And so I became very involved with them in terms of the documentations of the women artists I had and sending it down to the archives so that it could be centralized so other researchers could know about that. One of the things that you find out about the visual arts is that so much of an artist being known, whether it's in the market place or in the museums world, is based on documentation. And if nobody has taken the time to research and write about an artists then, oftentimes, they remain, you know, obscure with time. And particularly with women artists. So because there's such a history that they were not given exhibitions and under represented, you really need to go back historically and try to document what they did and compare it so you can say... So this National Museum for Women in the Arts has been a really great place to encourage research and archives and just send things down there. So, but, within that context, what's nice is that I've had access to other researchers' work who look at other women artists of the period. So you can look at an artist that I look at somebody like Eliza Gardner or Edna Martin. And you have to, again, maintain your objectivity and look at the conditions of the time and try not to overstate their importance. 00:21:44
BS: Okay. 00:21:44
CB: But to put them within, in the sense of that. And who are really the exceptional women of the time. And their educational process was so different than men. I mean, many of them were dependent on having fathers as artists. And what schools like RISD helped them with in terms of being more egalitarian. 00:22:06
BS: And RISD was co-ed? 00:22:06
CB: RISD was co-ed, yeah. 00:22:08
BS: Oh, okay. 00:22:09
CB: And it was founded by a woman. 00:22:10
BS: Oh, I did not know that. 00:22:11
CB: Yeah. So there're some very interesting dynamics that happened in Rhode Island. The other things that I found tremendously exciting about the visual arts in Rhode Island historically are two fold. One is that it was very much a microcosm of what was going on nationally. So it's not like, I don't know, like some western cities where you only get a very regional slice of American life. I think Providence, because of its geographical location between New York and Boston, being East Coast, being in a university... 00:22:48
BS: And probably just the connection with all the industry. 00:22:50
CB: Right and the industry, the universities. Many of the industrialists were traveling abroad and stuff. I think it does, Providence in the nineteenth century, give you a really good insight into American thinking and art in general. So I think that's very exciting. The second part that's so exciting about Providence, is that it's that period of time that creates the cornerstones for the visual arts that are here today. There's just a level of quality and excellence that was achieved in the those early years that had been carried on and celebrated and reinforced in institutions like RISD and, like, its collector base and things. 00:23:37
BS: So you're saying that there was, kind of, a standard that they had to uphold or that they just didn't have to build up the foundation? 00:23:41
CB: Well, if you think about it, yeah, there's a standard. I mean, today RISD's the most applied to art school in the country. Most people don't know that here. And it's really based upon the fact that it has this legacy which started many years ago, and that it had built the quality level that had competed nationally-- and it always competed nationally and internationally. So that, you know, that environment has continued for generations and generations. Which was an insight I didn't get until I started doing a lot of research. And, as a business, was very nice because I recognized that paintings of the 1880s that were hard to get a hold of or collections that were hard to get a hold of, I would only read about artists in papers and wouldn't be able to see them. Or I would see artists and then have to do the research on them. Is that I could go to the twenties, the thirties, the forties, and there were really very good artists. And that the advantage of researching and looking at the period of time was it evolved the research in a different way. There were people alive who knew that artist. It was easier to access records-- it was important to document. And, furthermore, I became actively known, in terms of the community, wanting to take whole collections of artists and preserve them before they got really separated the way the early nineteenth century artists had done. You probably have a lot more questions. I'm going a lot more in terms... 00:25:20
BS: Oh, we can talk for ages. 00:25:21
CB: I know, but you have your list. So... 00:25:23
BS: Okay, but pretty much any tangent that you want to go off on, feel free to go off on that tangent. 00:25:29
CB: That's a dangerous thing to say with me, but okay. 00:25:34
BS: I'll take the risk. 00:25:35
CB: Okay. 00:25:36
BS: But going back to your research with Sketches and just, kind of, with the art journals and stuff like that. What exactly, you probably can't pinpoint this, but, just kind of, the role of Rhode Island women artists. Like, would they pretty much just paint personally, like, just for them selves or would they try to paint just to sell it? I mean, what was the relationship with that? 00:25:58
CB: Actually, there were many, many professional women artists very early on in Providence, and that was very exciting. And there were many women who were key to the cultural institutions. As we mentioned Mrs. Jesse Metcalf was the founder of RISD the school. 00:26:18
BS: Okay, that's why there're so many Metcalf buildings. 00:26:20
CB: And, actually, there's more importantly, what I what I think is, kind of, an irony is that in the 1850s that there was a group of very successful entrepreneurs in Providence who had the idea of starting a Rhode Island School of Design-- an idea of a school, and they could not pull it off financially. And they had this goal of fifty thousand dollars to start this institution that was going to do all these things. And she comes along, and she was, like, head of the Women's Centennial Committee, and in 1876 they had like thirteen hundred dollars left over. And she goes, "Okay, lets take this thirteen hundred dollars and lets start a school." And she made it work with a community of other women and also her husband and the connection to the entrepreneurial community. Knowing what the idea was, but, actually, she making it a reality. And bring in educational modals that were very important. So you have woman being out there. So at that point in time you're talking about RISD in 1878 opening its doors in which women are being trained as artisans. 00:27:41
BS: Was it primarily women that went to RISD? 00:27:44
CB: No, it was open to both male and female, but it was clear that there was no differentiation, lets say, in terms of curriculum and things like that. Then at the same time, you have the Providence Art Club which is a movement of actually artists organizing and feeling that they need a market place. And, you know, their executive board includes a woman. The percentage of women who are part of the original charter is very, very high-- I think it's, like, forty percent. 00:28:19
BS: The original...? 00:28:20
CB: Charter for the Providence Art Club. Forty percent I believe-- I would have to look that up, but-- signed were women. So women were very much a part of that community and painting. And if you look at the number of women that exhibited and showed and sold their works, especially if you go back to the local newspapers, local journals. And you see, you know, Clara Maxfield Arnold is one women artist I think of her. Rosa Peckham is another one I think of. They were women who were showing regularly, selling their works, and existing as professional women artists there. So there was a very nice, strong presence of women who were professionally trained and continued on to have a career and be part of their own individual career, but also a part of a community of other artists and associations here. 00:29:14
BS: From my interview with Ruth Frisch Dealy, she was, this kind of surprised me, but she was saying how sexist the field of painting is and continues to be. And just, kind of, it's very covert, but it's... At the same time, she mentioned Jackson Pollock as somebody celebrated as a hero, very macho, and all this other stuff. But it sounds like, from what you're saying, I mean, while it obviously wasn't quite equal in the 1870s, it was very possible for a woman artist to succeed. 00:29:46
CB: Right. 00:29:47
BS: What's your take on... 00:29:47
CB: I think your talk about... You know, we're talking about something a hundred years ago. And I think that Ruth would know because she's first hand a painter and knows that. The National Museum of Women in the Arts was founded fifteen years ago because of the idea that women weren't represented. You know, that you had fifty percent of the population, and then, if you were to go through, you know, the number of exhibits that were including artists in the sixties and seventies and eighties, women are totally poorly represented. With the founding of the museum... I mean, the critical art history book, Jansons, only identified three women in the history of all visual arts. I mean, that's ridiculous. What are the odds? You get to the point where you have to say they may be underrepresented but what are the odds that only three women in the course of all art history are the only women who could paint or do that? So I think Ruth is very accurate in identifying that there are definitely some obstacles for women and women painters. It's interesting 'cause I sometimes do get stuck in the nineteenth century when all these opportunities were being opened for women. Actually, they were happening educationally, but certainly weren't happening politically; they still couldn't vote. But what you see is, like anything, you see cycles of conservativeness and openness. And, I think, even when I look at women painters of the twenties and thirties up in Rhode Island, I don't see as many go on to a national front as I did in the early nineteenth century. And so then it seems to break through later on again. 00:31:39
BS: So why would it be that kind of oscillation? 00:31:40
CB: I don't... I think it becomes, like, pretty much the culture, the atmosphere of the time. A different generation, a different thing. I mean, I'm a woman who went obviously to school in the era of Title Nine. I mean, I'm very disappointed with feminism today in young women. And, you know, maybe it's because you were in the process of seeing it. And, certainly, Ruth is part of that. I mean, we were a generation that was having many obstacles, to overcome and we celebrated in jumping those obstacles. And maybe what happens is the next generations that doesn't have to fight for those accomplishments, that just assumes that they were there, kind of lull in a little bit. And I think those are the kinds of cycles that you may even see in the art world, and that Ruth is probably very much on top of because she went to RISD at different times. You look at a lot of the feminist artists, the visual artists, which I'm not as current with, but the seventies I think of a lot of, you know, Judy Chicago. I mean, that was all about the fact that women weren't represented. 00:32:47
BS: I'm sorry. What was...? 00:32:48
CB: Judy Chicago and The Dinner Party. I mean, that piece that she created was a whole statement about discrimination against women visual artists. And that period of time, you see, is another strong activist period of time for women artists. Ruth would know today whether she feels it's continuing to be that. Clearly, there are more women in terms of educational institutions, in terms of faculty, in terms of students. Whether or not in the commercial market there's any success... I think it's better, but I don't think it's still totally an equal. 00:32:39
BS: So going back to that, kind of, oscillation of... When exactly would it... You said about the turn of the 1880s turn of the century, maybe it was at a high point it was at a... 00:33:41
CB: Well, I think it was very strong, yeah. I think that when I look at women that historically made it on a national level, it seems that there's this great body of women artists who were able to compete nationally who were educated, up to about the twenties. Now, it may reflect the conservative agenda in the local community. But in, like, the twenties and thirties when you think of, like, the Armory Show and all the exciting Modernism that's going on nationally, Providence really falls behind in that arena. And what's ironic is that if you go back to an early period, and you look at things like the Arts and Crafts movement, which I think was a very progressive movement, one of the leaders in that is in Providence, Rhode Island. Some art movements we are really progressive. You know, where Rhode Islander artists are very apart of it or early advocates of it. And then you see periods of time, like Modernism, where Providence really didn't produce any great modernist painters or artists that I know of. And does that reflect the group of people who were teaching and is there a conservatism that creeps in because maybe somebody's teaching for twenty years or there's a body of like-minded thinkers who are teaching painting or teaching still life, I don't know? I'm not that smart. But I do get a sense that there are these changes and patterns, which are natural. You know, they're natural. There's not always this incredible forward dynamic. Now that might be... Again, I'm dealing mostly in the painting arena. I mean, RISD has several departments. You know, it has design departments, it has furniture, it has sculpture, and in some... You know, book illustration. 00:35:42
And in some of those other arenas, it may have been, you know, very advanced. But in terms of, like, the fine-art painting and print making at that time, I just find that there's not as much going on, at least from what I've been able to uncover. Gears up again in the fifties. The 1950s you start seeing a lot of exciting things happening again. 00:36:04
BS: Okay, that's kind of surprising. I would have thought maybe more in the forties with all the women going to work. I was just trying to parallel it, kind of, with some historical.... 00:36:12
CB: Yeah, right. 00:36:14
BS: But I guess it doesn't have to match up either. 00:36:16
CB: No it doesn't. Also, you have to understand where institutions are. Like in the forties there are a lot of male artists who came back to RISD who were older. I mean, they had gone to war, they came back. 00:36:32
BS: So the GI bill. 00:36:32
CB: And at the time you actually see there're not only male artist but female artists. There are a lot of exciting painters that are at that time. I think of, like, Gordon Peers and Florence Leif. And there's just this really interesting dynamic. And maybe, again, it was a relief of coming off of war and a progressiveness that was going on. And there were other communities, again, that are around us that were really important. Like Provincetown was a great resource for... 00:37:03
BS: That was...? 00:36:04
CB: Provincetown, Massachusetts-- great resource for Rhode Island artists. All historically which is just a very interesting connection because I think they were drawn physically to the landscape there, but also to the art colony that was there. You go back into to the early 1890s and 1990s and early 1910s, you see some incredible American impressionists who were painting there. Hawthorne and you see Mabel Woodward, who's a Rhode Island artist, being involved with that colony. And then you see John Frazier, who was the president of RISD, teaching in Provincetown. And you see a group of artists going there. Then, later on, you see other great painters going in the shift, in terms of Provincetown. So there's this nice, kind of, feedback in those two different communities. And then there's, of course, New York and Boston. Boston was very instrumental to Providence in the early nineteen hundreds as a reference point. But New York has always been... 00:38:04
BS: How has it been instrumental? 00:38:06
CB: Well, many of the artists, like if you look at the exhibit schedules, many of the American painters would be kind of on a circuit in the sense they would exhibit in a group show that would travel through Boston, Springfield, Worcester-- those were all very good places to show your art, and there were buyers who would buy and support your work. And a lot of Rhode Island artists also had studios in Boston as well as in Providence. And then there were another group of artists from Providence who would have studios in Providence as well as in New York. So they're looking for marketplaces for their artworks and centers where they can sell them. But over the history, Boston, also, I think, became very, very conservative in terms of its artistic output. 00:38:52
BS: Yeah I know like the "banned in Boston." 00:38:53
CB: Yeah, but New York always continued. And what's interesting is that there's much more of a gravity between Providence painters and New York. And that trend continued on, more so than Boston. There's a few contemporary artists show in Boston, but most of them they're New York oriented. 00:39:17
BS: And I'm just curious about your definition of contemporary. When does...? 00:39:19
CB: A contemporary person is any living artist. 00:39:22
BS: Okay, yeah, I don't... 00:39:23
CB: Yeah, a living artist. 00:39:27
BS: Okay. 00:39:27
CB: That's a live and breathing since I deal with so many artists that are not. 00:39:32
BS: I'm just kind of curious 'cause you do focus primarily on nineteenth century art. Is there really a reason? Why do you focus on nineteenth century as oppose to twentieth century. Especially when you do all this research, and you have more access to twentieth century sources. 00:39:51
CB: Well, I find that there's a couple of reasons. One is it's really a period of time which competes strong nationally. it's very exciting, as a dealer, to handle works that people are interested in from other museums across the country and collectors across the country. it's not only exciting, it creates a financial stability. Rhode Island's a small state; it's a million population. If you look at trying to be in a commercial setting, you have to have artwork the appeals beyond the boarders. And because of my own personal interest in collecting nineteenth century and then discovering this incredibly rich national appeal by these artists, it became, you know, kind of a search engine. And then there were just so many artists at that time. So it makes sense, not only for my interest level, but also from a point of view in terms of being in a commercial gallery and selling. And it's really the nineteenth and twentieth century stuff, 'cause I do go into the early twentieth century, that has given me the stability and reputation to introduce contemporary artists. 00:41:14
BS: Okay. I'm trying... Lets see... Do you have, like, a lot of links in to the art community here in Providence today. I mean, you're on, I was looking at your website... You're pretty much on every single board that could possibly exist in Rhode Island. 00:41:31
CB: I don't know. 00:41:34
BS: But, I don't know, can you describe, like, the art community today. As a student I hear so much about, just... how alive it is here in Providence as opposed to other cities. 00:41:50
CB: Well, actually, I, again, represent the historical perspective oftentimes on a lot of these committees. Providence has always had a very rich community, and when I opened up my gallery in the eighties, I think what was very disappointing is that it was very many isolated pods that were out there. And that one pod is doing its thing and is very progressive, but, yet, is not in communication to another one, even though we're in very close proximity. And the quality is excellent. I started working more on community boards because I recognized what was created in the nineteenth century which made Providence a very successful art center, which was the Providence Art Club, Brown... And how there was this incredible dynamic of interaction between institutions and individuals. And that truly is what creates better individual artists being exposed to other artists, but also institutions supporting and moving that forward. In the late 1980s, early 1990s, I would say, under, you know, the mayor, Cianci, came up with the concept and brought in a lot of outside consultants who talked a lot about the importance of tying the cultural institutions together. That there was a quote cultural economy. And so people began to think about it in that way. 00:43:27
BS: But did Buddy Cianci do any thing with it, to like... 00:43:29
CB: Oh yeah. Actually, I think he was a major catalyst. He created the Arts and Entertainment District. Well, he didn't; his lawyer did and administrator, Patricia McLaughlin. And Patricia created an incredible modal, legal modal, and environment for a city in which they would designate a geographical are to be... 00:43:53
BS: Is this the AS220? 00:43:54
CB: Actually, there's a whole down city arts and entertainment district... 00:43:57
BS: Oh, okay. 00:43:58
CB: And within that district, there were certain tax credits and things if you were in the visual arts, and it was to encourage all these elements to come together. 00:44:08
BS: And is this just part of the urban renewal that was...? 00:44:10
CB: That's right. But it came in with a tie with the importance of the arts. And so that was very progressive because, actually, that modal has been copied by many other cities after that. So he fostered an awareness, politically, and I think on a wider scale about that. That created an environment with which, we, I think other people in the arts community started to say, we should work together in some way. And out of that we actually started with an idea of something called Gallery Night Providence, where we would create art exhibits. 00:44:52
BS: Is this just contemporary artists or is this like just stuff in your gallery? 00:44:57
CB: Well, what it is is Gallery Night Providence has been around for nine years now. And what it is is that's it's collaboration between art institutions and private galleries and non profit spaces. And the idea was that it was connecting the dots. Everybody talked about Providence's art community, but when you came here, how did you...? It seemed like it was always all over the place. Like, where is it? It's not like we have one central area. And Cianci's concept and Patricia's concept was that if we can create an area where we can go to that would be good. But the economic reality of rents and how much they were costing, there was already an existing arts community and it was kind of spread out. So Gallery Night Providence started with the idea that just a very simple concept-- one night a month we would all be open; we would all run our exhibits at that night. And it was free; it was community oriented; and you would have access to the arts, one night. And that we would create a publication that would correct the dots, and list people, where their addresses were, what their hours were. Very, very simple. 00:46:05
BS: So would private artists or artists exhibiting their own work? 00:46:08
CB: No, it has nothing to do with individual artists. It has to do with actually places you can go to see art, either nonprofit spaces, galleries, museums-- places that regularly show and rotate visual arts is really, kind of, the premise of it. it's now, we have twenty five venues. And we have an elaborate network of transportation system. And, again, it really connects the dots of what creates a community of the arts. And, I think, that's a board that I've sat on from the very beginning and been involved in. To me, the preservation of the arts is going to be in the continual access, education, and promotion of the arts. And it seems that we have to do that across all institutions, and that's what gallery night accomplishes. And that's really recreating an atmosphere that existed a hundred years ago. So, and out of that, there are many exciting projects that can happen with that. There's, under the new mayor, he created an arts and cultural, visual arts and cultural, no, it's not visual, just arts visual arts and culture, cabinet level position in which he was saying this a really important for our community, and we have include it in our planning and stuff. And out of that office they're doing things like putting out regular news letters. Their going to probably launch... They put out this fabulous publication called Destination Providence which is circulated throughout, you know, the North East where... Why you want to come to Providence? You come to Providence 'cause what's there. It lists all the galleries; it lists all the events. So when you come here to visit, that everything's easy to coordinated. 00:48:08
You don't have to know that this gallery is by were the gas station use to be on Atwells avenue to the left. That we kind of bring ourselves into the perspective that outsiders, making it user-friendly, and people from the outside... Or if you're a student coming to the city, that you can be part of this. One of the interesting developments of Gallery Night Providence is that we've been having... it's become a requirement for Stone Hill College, in which they bring their freshmen in as a cultural orientation. As, you're going to be in the city for four years for school, these are the institutions that are available that you can come to and see, and these are part of your experience, your college experience. And for the art history majors, it's a little more in-depth than that. They have, these are the resources you're going to be using over the next four years to study, you know, to complete your education. That's very exciting. I mean, there's the educational component; there's the public, community component. 00:49:09
BS: Did they get involved in the public schools? 'Cause I know everywhere that's the programs that are being cut. 00:49:14
CB: Yeah, yeah. No, we haven't done anything with the public schools system at all. We're basically a membership driven organization. It's very grass roots. We just all come together, and we put out a publication, and we work really hard to do this. And we primarily higher students to help us to run the events, and that's kind of a community service. That's one of the boards that I sit on and that I get involved with. I'm very interested in making sure that we create an environment in which the visual arts are accessible and easy to see. I have always found, from the minute I opened up the gallery, that people are very intimidated by the visual arts. They feel very uncomfortable with it. 00:50:03
BS: Because it's kind a cultured type... 00:50:05
CB: Right. 00:50:06
BS: Would you say it's like an elitism, like? 00:50:08
CB: I think there's the... I think that we are to blame in many ways because I think there's a part of the art world where there is this kind of feeling of... There is an elitist concept. But that's the death now, I think, of the visual arts community, and I think that we have to work... That many people in the community don't feel that way. Also, there's just an insecurity because we don't have a good educational system. People are not exposed to the visual arts. What I have found is that people come in to the gallery who are incredibly bright, very successful at what they do, but they just haven't got the tools for the visual arts. So that's my job. I mean, if I want to celebrate it and support it... That's what community events are about is providing access and providing information and empowering people to be able to enjoy the visual arts and stuff. From an educational point of view I have no idea, it's my pet peeve, especially from being a psychologist, is that, you know, the visual part of learning and processing is so critical to living and surviving in any society. And the fact that we down play it so much is.. 00:51:31
BS: Down play it...? 00:51:31
CB: Down play it educationally, that... You know, you take a couple... That the visual arts you're kind of stymied in terms of in terms of once you learn to read everything goes towards, you know, that which is ultimate visual conquer, right, in terms of learning symbols and translating information. But that we don't take advantage of the visual, color, and information. How information is processed. We don't have a sophisticated, a general sophisticated audience for analyzing, you know, when you're getting commercials thrown at your how visual manipulation is taking place because we're not sensitive; because we haven't been trained enough to look, to discriminate; because our education kind of gets cut off. So I think that the visual processing of information is really important, and obviously the visual arts for me are critical. A Ruth Dealy, I mean this a person who has spent her life time knowing about how to visually take and create space and translate ideas in a way that's very fascinated and accesses different parts of your brain and brings perceptive on the world we live in. And I just don't understand why it's always been a missing component in terms of American culture supporting it. And I think as a gallery, as a commercial gallery, and as art institutions that we have to pick up and make sure that the community gets involved. Opportunities aren't being giving in the educational systems and they've got to be given in the community. 00:53:18
BS: If we can... I'm kind of curious about the National Museum for Women in the Arts. And I didn't realize it's actually as a result of your research. If you could just kind of... 00:53:28
CB: Oh, no, no, no. Not a result of my research at all. Actually... 00:53:32
BS: But if you could just talk about... 00:53:34
CB: Yeah I'll tell you about that. Yeah, yeah. No, no. I'm just a... Well, let me explain to you their structure and why it's fascinating, actually. The National Museum for Women in the Arts was founded by a woman named Mrs. Wilhelmina Holladay. And she was a woman who started collecting artists, women arts, many years ago, Renaissance women artists. And she was the one who discovered, "Gosh, there's all these fabulous women painters, and how come I can't find them and research them and what ever." So she put together her whole collection, and then she started to think about, as she got on in years, "What's going to happen to my collection? And if I give it to another museum, it's going to end up in a basement 'cause if I look at the percentage of women that are shown." So she started with the idea perhaps it's time for a museum of women in the arts. And that if she could found this museum and there would be, it would be a state wide initiative that would be nationally oriented. And for each state there would be a committee, and they would contribute and tell about who are the women that are in their location and tie it into a national network that would be very important. So that it was a structural idea. When it came to Rhode Island, what happened is they wanted people who knew the local history. They wanted to know who were the women visual artists and what ever. And so I became involved from providing the local Rhode Island history into this massive archive which California has their representative and sends them in and stuff. And each one of us has a little state communities that we belong to and go in, and go down into Washington and meet once a year and kind of share. 00:55:28
BS: So you're continually reviving, bringing in new stuff to the... 00:55:32
CB: And working and coordinating and servicing in that. So there're state committees, and then I was asked to sit on what's called the National Advisory Board. And the National Advisory Board's, again, is kind of a concept of a congressional representation of the country. 00:55:52
BS: Okay. 00:55:52
CB: Where you bring in your own, kind of, issues that are happening to you regionally. What happens, the needs in Rhode Island are very, very different than the needs in Kansas. And it's good for Rhode Island to sit down and find out what's going on in Kansas and why they're different, you know. And it's good for them to hear about how Rhode Island is different. So I've been involved with the National Advisory Board, and that's been a very interesting thing. And it creates opportunity for instance. I'm excited about it 'cause it opportunities for women artists here to be, again, represented in a whole different venue and in a national venue or collections to do that. In the 1990s, for instance, there was a fabulous print maker named Grace Albee. And somebody brought be the collection, and because of the work I did with the National Museum of Women in the Arts, we were able to facilitate that that whole collection went to them. And they did a major exhibition on her, and it was fabulous. So that collection was preserved unlike what we were talking about in the past where pieces get sold off. 00:57:01
BS: It's hard to locate them. 00:57:02
CB: Hard to locate them. Now her legacy is preserved as an important woman print maker, and the museum has a substantial collection of her works; they have all her papers; they have all those into the archives. So it's a coordination of, actually, exhibitions, archives, and also just general promotion. They have educational series, lecture series, too, about bringing people involved in terms of that. But I'm very exciting because Providence was very rich in the nineteenth century. So, I think... 00:57:32
BS: You have more to offer. 00:57:33
CB: We have a lot to offer in terms of our people and stuff. So it's very nice when you can, again, thinking about the nineteenth century, it's important to be good locally and it's good to do community stuff, but it's also good to have a perceptive on where you stand nationally and internationally. How do we operate and stuff? And I'm fascinated with that. Again, it's back to my early psychology days of looking at things from different perspectives. It's good for me to visit Texas and see what the Texas state committee is doing and what they're showing. And what their artists are think about. It's good to go to Santa Fe. It's good to go to Portland. And it's fun to see where we compare in terms of quality and range and stuff. 00:58:23
BS: Can you really tell the regional... I mean, historically, I'm sure you can tell the difference between somebody on the East Coast and somebody on the West Coast in their art. Can you tell today? 00:58:32
CB: Oh I think so, yeah. 00:58:33
BS: How do you? 00:58:34
CB: I think you can just tell... Well, it's just like voting patterns. You can kind tell certain philosophies and approaches to painting or ideas that different artists are exploring in different parts of the country and stuff. That's very interesting to me. 00:58:50
BS: Can you see any of the trends that are...? 00:58:52
CB: No, I can't say that I can. But I just know I can see what's similar and what's different. What impresses me so much about Rhode Island, and, again, because I spent so much time in the nineteenth, twentieth century I'm not going to say that I know the contemporary scene as well as somebody like Judith Tanenbaum from RISD or even Sara Agniel, people who deal, Virginia Lynch, who really deal with only contemporary artists. I am so impressed though with the diversity and range of media and styles and stuff. Sometimes I find that there are, if I go to another state or if I go to another exhibit, that there's, kind of, a representation, not only view of art, but style of art. Or they might be strong, really strong, in print making but the painting isn't as strong. Or they might be strong in crafts. 00:59:48
BS: 'Cause the communities just feed off of each other. 00:59:50
CB: What surprises me is the depth in all the different areas here. In all the... Like photography is so strong here because of the history of Callahan and Siskind. There are many wonderful women photographers here. The print making here is really phenomenal. There's just great print makers. Books, works on paper. That impresses me that you can wander in to a RISD, you know, show or gallery and see a lot of diversity and ability in many different areas. And that impresses me. It also aligns with the demographics that we have such a highly saturated concentration of artists that live in Rhode Island, even if they're not totally represented here because they're probably more artists than can be represented here. But there is a really... I think of it is a major, kind of, think-tank where there's, even if there're not opportunities to see all what's going on in those studios and stuff, in public venues it's still happening. And there's a lot of communication, and it's very exciting to see that. So that's one thing, I'm very proud to see, I was going to say, the depth and the diversity of what's here. And that's exciting to see compared... And there are some areas you could compare a little better and say maybe we aren't as strong in this area as others. But in general, it's a pretty fun, diverse community. And I think that it's a combination of the fact that we're not only a small geographical area; we have a location between New York and Boston; we have a history. But the fact that we have so many great educational university systems so that you have Brown, you have RISD, you have Providence College, you have Rhode Island College. 01:01:58
And I've gotten more of an appreciation of those gallery spaces that are run by the universities because of Gallery Night. You get to see what Joanne Conklin is bringing in at List Art Center, and you get to see what Dennis O'Mally is doing at Rhode Island College. That creates a natural dynamic and vibrancy, which, on top of the individual basis, I think, is very hard to get in many other communities. Like in Arkansas, for instance, I remember going to Arkansas. I mean, the state's so big. They have to divide the state into four areas of art. They can't really get it all together. The reality is when Nancy Grinnell is doing a great exhibit at the Newport Art Museum, you just get in the car, and you're there in forty-five minutes. Can't do that in Arkansas. 00:1:02:53
BS: I know that being from Minnesota. 01:02:55
CB: See. See you really don't get.... Things happen quicker here. Ideas travel faster, and then the faculty are working and thinking also nationally and internationally. And they're bring ideas here, and they're filtering with students. It's an incredible dynamic which, I think, makes it very strong. Really, very, very strong. Very strong community not... And I don't know if we, again, we don't have enough outlets to tap into that, to be able to see it all. So that is probably why we're a little under discovered in many ways. 01:03:37
BS: Do you see an censorship at all? I remember one person interviewed somebody that was dealing with the, I forgot the name of it though, by RISD students that was torn down. 00:03:48
CB: Yeah, I haven't... You know, Sara has had to deal with that more. I think she's got involved with a really wonderful, I think it was a Cambodian artist, that was shown at was shown at the Rhode Island Foundation. It was very controversial. They didn't want a painting. They had to create stuff like that. I think that happens... I think it happens a little more in the contemporary centers. But I don't think it's... I don't think it's.... I mean, I've seen a couple of examples of it, but the presence of something like AS220 has really cut that right out, I think, in many ways. Because AS220 came in conceptually with the idea that it would be non-juried, non-censored artwork. So that was support-- It's been supported, and it's achieved national funding so that this community of politicians, of, you know, regular community individuals, understand that that's important for the visual arts community here. And I think that they've set a very good precedence so that there're maybe isolated incidents. But I haven't seen it that much. And it's really not as much of an issue for me, in terms of what I show. 01:05:08
BS: Okay. Well, is there anything else you would like to add? 01:05:12
CB: No. No, I don't. I think that's pretty much it. 01:05:16
BS: All right. Well, thank you very much, and it was nice meeting you. 01:05:17
CB: Okay, good. 01:05:18
BS: Lets see if I can stop this.