Gallerist Spotlight
Written by Drew Hammond Monday, July 19 2010 17:52
Meg Maggio of Pékin Fine Arts, Beijing
As a twenty-year resident of China, Meg Maggio is among the rare foreigners intimately acquainted with the Chinese art scene practically from its inception. Originally trained and active as a lawyer, she has since emerged as an acknowledged authority in Chinese art, and her gallery has proven an indispensable cultural landmark, both for the quality of its exhibits, and for the internationalization of Chinese contemporary art.
A.I.R. Gallery
A.I.R. (Artists In Residence) Gallery was established as early as 1972, giving women a place to exhibit their work when few other venues handled art made by women. As a non-profit cooperative for 22 women artists from the New York area and 20 from around the United States, its goal has been to show quality and diverse work.
ACA Galleries
“Getting recognized (by Art and Living) was a milestone, since I have never gotten an award,” says Dorian Bergen, co-proprietor (with husband Jeff) of ACA Galleries. “The gallery has been in the trenches, showing women’s art since its founding in 1932,” she continues, emphasizing that ACA has always been “a people’s gallery” and is still committed to make art accessible to the broadest possible audience.
P.P.O.W Gallery
Wendy Olsoff and Penny Pilkington co-founded the P.P.O.W Gallery in 1983 without any discernible agenda, says Olsoff. While they received the award for fostering women’s art, she says that they simply set out to find the best art, and much of it happened to have been done by women. “We were not looking for specific artists but chose according to what we felt in our hearts,” she says.
Still, she acknowledges that often they felt as if they were working in a vacuum. Citing the current “Hollywoodization” of art, she says that making money usually precedes recognition. P.P.O.W’s artists include Julie Heffernan, Judy Fox, Sarah Oppenheimer, Melanie Bonajo, Bill Smith, Thomas Woodruff and Sandow Birk, to name a few.
