  | Tolnick brings contemporary artists to Kingston. | ||||||
 By John Pantalone '71 hen Judith Tolnick arrived at URI 10 years ago to direct the Fine Arts Center Galleries, she saw her mission as broadening the understanding of art by exposing the University community to contemporary artists far outside the immediate campus neighborhood. She has balanced that mission with a generous helping of faculty exhibits, year-end student shows, and exhibits coordinated with other activities on campus, such as the 1999 exhibit, "The War in Vietnam: Aftermaths and Afterimages," which was mounted in conjunction with the University's Honors Colloquium on the war. "Finding money is always a challenge," says Tolnick, who was curator at Brown University's Bell Gallery before coming to URI. "This year we were fortunate to have major support from Fidelity Investments. This generous support is what I and others sincerely hope will continue." Space has been another consideration, and Tolnick has been innovative in finding solutions to this problem. "We've expanded our space by commandeering sites; the Photography Gallery, for instance, is an appropriated custodian's closet. We always reserve space for faculty exhibitions because it's important for students to see their professors as working artists." An honors graduate of Brandeis with a B.A. in Art History, Tolnick earned her M.A. in Art History at Brown and almost immediately set out on a career of curating exhibitions. Over the past 20 years she has worked with dozens of Rhode Island artists, including Howard Ben Tre, Leslie Bostrom, and David Macaulay. She has overseen exhibits on everything from Andy Warhol's films to Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture to American painting and sculpture during World War II. At URI she has worked with faculty members on major exhibits of their work, but she has also gone broadly afield in exposing the campus community to both contemporary and historic art. "I was hired to make the Galleries more outward looking than they had been," she says. Established and emerging artists from throughout the Northeast have shared the Galleries with international and Native American artists. "It's a lot of work because we have to generate everything ourselves," says Tolnick. "We don't book traveling exhibits. The Main Gallery is big, yet accessible. It makes it possible to move across boundaries." Recent Main Gallery exhibits have included works by German/Chinese paper sculptor Eva Yeh and a large group exhibit of progressive work centered on the human figure. "We try for variety, but we have to consider expense too," Tolnick remarks. "The Eva Yeh show, which was very well received, was expensive just for shipping everything from Europe. My student interns made the exhibit display bases, working with the artist in three different languages. Raising money for exhibits has become more and more important for us, and we've had some success." Tolnick's number one wish for the future? "I'd love to see the Galleries named, and it would be wonderful if we could achieve that by creating an endowment." u |
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