Baton Rouge Gallery’s unique art selection process
When the Baton Rouge Gallery hung its first piece in 1966, it did so as an artist cooperative called Unit 8 Gallery. A growing trend of the ’60s, artist cooperatives were for-profit, private galleries where groups of artists shared responsibilities and pooled earnings for the exhibition and sale of their art. It was a creative family, where every artist learned from one another.
Baton Rouge Gallery has transformed over the years, with BREC joining forces and giving the gallery its City Park home in the ’80s. It’s no longer for-profit, but the cooperative spirit lives on in the artist membership program.
The 56 current artist members determine the artistic direction of the gallery by selecting new members each year from a batch of local and state applicants working in an array of media. If you’ve got the vision, conceptual strength and consistency of work the gallery is looking for, you’ll be invited to become a member and have your work displayed. Memberships work on a five-year basis, meaning a reevaluation every five years to assess members’ new work in the interim.
Frankie Gould, member since 1985. Acrylics, colored pencils, mixed media, watercolor, scratch board, block prints and sculpture.
“[The artists] are the only ones who can kick an artist out,” Director Jason Andreasen says. “They are the only ones who can bring an artist in. … That offers visitors a really unique view of what quality local contemporary art is. You don’t have a single voice or a single perspective dictating the work that will be seen.”
The artist members may not select any new members in a year if none are inspiring enough. In other years, Andreasen has even seen them induct as many as six. The average, though, is two to three new members a year. They’re welcomed with shows to introduce their works—part of BRG’s emphasis on engaging the public and giving artists plenty of creative freedom.
“Even within individual shows, they’re able to do what they want,” Andreasen says. “They’re able to lay it out the way they want, include the pieces that they want, light it how they want. So they’re given a lot more autonomy over what their exhibitions end up looking like than they might in a commercial gallery or in a museum setting.” batonrougegallery.org
SEE THE GALLERY’S NEWEST ART
Baton Rouge Gallery will welcome its newly inducted artist members for 2017 with a group exhibition Nov. 14-30.
—KACI YODER
LOUISIANA ART & SCIENCE MUSEUM
Louisiana Art & Science Museum. Photo by Jordan Hefler.
What do the solar system and contemporary paintings have in common? You can see them both at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum. The River Road museum in a historic train depot offers an experience to stimulate both sides of the brain, with art and science housed under one rooftop. For its younger visitors, the museum presents educational and entertaining programming to encourage them to think outside the box. It has an annual attendance of 175,000, with approximately half this audience being schoolchildren. On view right now: “The Art of Chaos & Order” by Sam Losavio on display in the Soupçon Gallery, and “The Red That Colored the World” in the Main Galleries.lasm.org
MANSHIP’S SECOND-FLOOR GALLERY
Next time you’re having lunch in or near the Shaw Center, pop by The Gallery at Manship Theatre. The exhibition space is on the second level of the building, right above the theater. The open space showcases rotating works of local and national professional artists. It is free and open to the public. manshiptheatre.org
LSU MUSEUM OF ART
Courtesy LSU Museum of Art
One of the largest university-affiliated art collections in the South is right here in Baton Rouge. The LSU Museum of Art houses more than 6,500 objects in its permanent exhibit collection. It has come a long way since opening its doors in 1962 inside LSU’s Memorial Tower. The museum moved to the Shaw Center for the Arts in 2005, where it now serves more than 20,000 adults and children per year. So what will you find during a visit? The museum offers a wide array of touring exhibitions of regional, American, and European painting, sculpture, decorative arts, works on paper, and photography. On view right now: “Bonjour | Au Revoir Surréalisme: Prints from the Atelier of Georges Visat.” lsumoa.org
—ELIZABETH MACKE
JOBS IN THE ARTS
Rodneyna Hart, Exhibition manager at Louisiana Art & Science Museum
You’ll never see Rodneyna Hart do most of the work she does, but you’ll experience it in every dimension.
“I’m the art elf,” Hart says. “I’m pretty much only there when we’re closed or when the gallery’s closed to the public. And then whenever I’m done, people come in, and they’re like, ‘Wow, everything’s different!’ And that’s my whole job.”
Once a curator or director conceptualizes an exhibition, Hart does everything from negotiating the art loans to processing the shipments and checking for cracks in the art itself. She sketches out on paper how visitors will move through the exhibition and interact with the pieces. She chooses lighting and paint colors for the walls and installs pedestals. You’ll even find her climbing in a mechanical lift to hang paintings or, occasionally, rearranging everything if a curator wants a different direction upon final approval.
“And then I promptly pass out with a glass of bourbon,” she jokes.
Jokes aside, Hart’s skill at—and passion for—creating immersive artistic experiences is the real deal. Studying both sculpture and painting at LSU gave her a three-dimensional point of view, and years of experience in exhibitions at Baton Rouge Gallery and LSU Museum of Art before finding a home at LASM has made her a pro.
“I grew up here,” Hart says. “I used to come [to LASM] for field trips. I’ve touched every display space in here, and I have visions for the rest of them. So to get to transform these spaces I’ve known forever, it’s a big sense of ownership.”
—KACI YODER
THE WALLS PROJECT
Mural by The Walls Project. Photo by Allie Appel
Thanks to the The Walls Project, Baton Rouge is a much prettier place. Since launching in 2012, the organization has beautified the city with more than 60 murals. The organization is also behind the annual MLK Day Festival of Service, which in 2017 grew to a four-day event. More than 70 businesses participated last year, painting murals, planting gardens and helping to clean up blight in the city. thewallsproject.org
