Where to begin? Fifty years ago, after receiving his Master of Fine Arts degree from California State University in 1972, I became the Curator for the regional museum, Fresno Art Center. Following my post graduate work with Charles Gaines and Richard Artschwager, I curated and organized the first traveling retrospective for Alex Katz, as well as Masterworks of Modern Sculpture in coordination with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and finally 200 Years of American Painting before relocating to New York in a new position with Marlborough Gallery.
Following his seven years at Marlborough working closely with Francis Bacon, R.B. Kitaj, Alex Katz, Larry Rivers, Red Grooms and the Estates of Jacques Lipchitz and Barbara Hepworth, I left and founded Kent Fine Art in 1985. Originally located at Madison & 57th Street, the gallery later relocated to Soho and then Chelsea to related more closely with the artist community. The new entity would publish over 60 scholarly books, and organize over 250 exhibitions worldwide. Representing the surrealists Dorothea Tanning and Meret Oppenheim, The Estate of Herbert Bayer (Bauhaus), to the larger group of major contemporary artists, Dennis Adams, Chris Burden, Llyn Foulkes, Antoni Muntadas, the gallery would provide exhibition support, and a research archive.
Over these decades, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a vast number of highly gifted artists who I will always respect and support. Those collaborations constitute the joy of a long life in this profession.
Kent Fine Art now is narrowing its focus to those artists of record whose conceptual thoughtfulness I find the most substantial and merit my full attention and efforts. Both as a means to monetize their practices as well as to provide basis for their institutional support, it is my hope that I can further the aspirations of the artists who I always regarded as colleagues.