LAWRENCE’S DIRECTOR SEARCH; HIRST’S NEW SHOP; INDIAN ART CRITIC’S CITATION
The Lawrence Arts Center in Kansas has reopened its search for an executive director, notes the Lawrence Journal-World. Dan Sabatini, the architect chairing the search committee, said this week that negotiations had ended with the lone finalist for the position and that the committee again was accepting applications. “I think most of the artists in Lawrence are looking for us to get this thing done,” Sabatini said. “We’re looking for the best way to expedite it, but we don’t want to settle. We want the best person for the job.” When the search committee convened in January—shortly after longtime director Ann Evans retired—the goal was to have a director hired by August 1, when the Arts Center’s fiscal year began. By mid-June, the committee had narrowed the approximately thirty applicants to one—Talena Mara, a former education director at New York City Opera who also has taught at the Juilliard School in New York. But Sabatini said that when negotiations began, “between all of us, we just couldn’t work out a good deal.” Sabatini said the new goal is to have an executive director in place in sixty to ninety days. June Jones, an arts-center board member who had been an interim executive director, has left the position to pursue graduate school, leaving other staff members to share responsibilities until a leader is named. Sabatini said he’s hoping the search committee can do more direct recruiting of potential candidates. Those who already have applied also may be reconsidered.
In other news, according to Scott Reyburn of Bloomberg, Damien Hirst is to open a shop next to Sotheby’s in London’s New Bond Street, the artist’s publishing company, Other Criteria, said yesterday. The artist signed a ten-year lease on retail space at the southern end of Marylebone High Street, the Evening Standard reported in February. It said that the shop will sell a variety of merchandise ranging from books and T-shirts to an eighteen-carat charm bracelet. The shop “will be ready by the end of the year and will stock products which are available from the Other Criteria website,” writes Hirst’s company.
Art critic of the Times of India and visiting professor of art at CN Vidyalaya, Suresh Sheth was recently awarded the Gaurav Puraskar, an honorary citation, by the state government in Gujarat, reports the Times of India. He received a tamra patra (copper-plate inscription) and shawl, along with the citation, from the state minister for sports, youth, and cultural activities, Fakirbhai Vaghela. Sheth has been contributing to the Times of India_ for more than a decade now. He has a master’s in fine arts from MS University of Baroda and has done several projects on embroidery and crafts of different communities in Gujarat. Sheth is a painter himself and has done several solo shows.
