The Storm

This is what the gallery looked like at 9:30 p.m. last Monday when Sandy caused the Hudson to spill over onto West 23rd Street. Amazingly, we only took in about 4 inches of water, but as we have learned over the last week, that's enough to cause havoc and require a virtual re-building of the gallery.

Our plan for now is to re-open with a show of selected works by gallery artists as soon as the space has been put back together. We did this during the summer when we were only open by appointment and trust me - we know how to make it interesting. After that we will resume with Hendrik Kerstens whose planned opening was so rudely interrupted.

Hendrik - who proved himself a prince among men by helping to save not only his own work but that of every other artist in the gallery - was staying at The Standard Hotel downtown and had to be evacuated to our home. A wonderful experience that made me feel that as long as my son is at college and his room empty it's a great way to get to know your artists!

Stay tuned for news of our re-opening. And I hope all those less fortunate than we were are on their way to recovery.

Fame High this Friday

"FAME HIGH" QUAD CINEMA 34 WEST 13TH STREET October 12 - 18

Outside of my gallery life, I am a passionate film lover and I recently became a co-executive producer of the documentary FAME HIGH.

The film opens tomorrow at the Quad Cinema in New York for one week in order to qualify for the Academy Awards and has already received a rave review from the L.A. Times.

FAME HIGH, captures the in-class and at-home drama, competition, heartbreak, and triumph during one school year at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA), also known as "Fame High", a place where talented teenagers reach for their dreams of becoming actors, singers, dancers, and musicians.

In FAME HIGH we follow a group of novice freshman and seasoned seniors struggling to find their voice - not only in their art but in life - with the help of, and sometimes in spite of, their passionate and opinionated families. Each student has sacrificed countless hours to become artistically good...but will they become excellent and be satisfied both personally and professionally?

"Are our dreams worth the sacrifice?" This questions is as relevant to these young artists as it is to their parents. In a time when performance-based entertainment is commonplace, it is safe to call FAME HIGH, "the facts behind the fiction." Overnight success is a myth, and FAME HIGH shows that the reality is nothing trumps endless hours of hard work.

Producer/Director Scott Hamilton Kennedy and cast members will be present for brief Q & A's in the LOBBY following the Fri. 10/12 6:15 show.

You can buy tickets for the screening here.

I hope many of you can make it.

One Year ...

It's hard to believe it's been a year since Steve Jobs died. With his ubiquitous presence in our lives and the omnipresence of his image and products and the continued growth of Apple he seems to hover above us like The Wizard of Oz.

To those of us in the visual world life simply wouldn't exist in the way it does without Apple. I would guess most of us spend more time on some kind of Apple device than we do with most humans and that our interactions with these devices are more productive than most other hours of the day. This is not an endorsement of withdrawing from human interaction! My one (and only) beef with my wife is how much time she spends checking e-mail on her iPhone, but again I'm not a Conde Nast editor-in-chief!

But Steve Jobs was not only a visionary and a business man - he was as great a friend to photography as the medium has ever had. Today, on the one year anniversary of his death, Apple put up this moving tribute on their landing page with nothing else to distract the viewer. In case you're not going to apple.com today I'm sharing the video.