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Art
Look with Eileen
The New Year usually finds me reflecting on what I want to do around the gallery to make peoples visits more fun. Since the busy fall season always brings lots of folks to the gallery including many visiting us for the first time; we always try to ask what changes they would like. This year the trend we have been noticing for the last few years reached record numbers, we had the most people ever that have never been to a fine art gallery. They tell us that they have wandered into the poster shop at the mall, maybe stopped by an art festival, maybe even purchased a piece from a website; but never ventured into a “real” gallery. While I’m flattered that they found my gallery, I feel bad that they may have missed out on the riches of owning art. Watching people discover the power of original art always takes me back to my early collecting days – or to last week when I found yet another piece of art that was meant to be mine. If you are an art collector you understand the emotional response. But for all the people that made us their first gallery experience, the question is what kept you away until now? Many of our visitors say they thought it would be intimidating because they didn’t know much about art. And too many walk in still believing that you need a lot of money to buy an original. As they quickly discover, wonderful art exists at all prices. We encourage questions and I hope all that visited left armed with enough information to want to visit another gallery. Even after collecting art for over thirty years; I still walk into galleries where I am ignored or treated poorly. I love art so much that I will explore the art just to further my education but I never buy from any store where I don’t feel respected. If you love art, don’t let anything stop you from looking at it at every opportunity. There is too much incredible art out there to miss. If you are reading this and you have not started collecting, why not? What has stopped you? How can I help you become a more astute art lover?
Questions for
Eileen about
this month's
segment? Talk
with her on the ANB
Message Boards.
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Eileen
Berger
Owner,
Just Lookin'
Art Gallery www.justlookin.com |
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Eileen believes she was born an art lover but her true passion for Black American art began in 1968 at a show at Howard University. Attempting to learn more about art collecting in the pre-internet days of the 1970’s proved to be a frustrating experience; there was a dearth of available information and almost no galleries exhibiting African American art in Washington, D.C. Fortunately her career as a photographer allowed her to travel and explore galleries in many cities. While few of them exhibited art that she wanted to collect, she did glean more knowledge along the way. Knowing that she wanted art that wasn’t easily found and much more information than galleries seemed willing to share; she embarked on a research and collecting journey that still continues. In 1990, disturbed by the availability of original art and still unable to find galleries she felt ‘at home’ in, she decided to plunge full time into the art business. After managing a Washington, D.C. area gallery for a few years, she opened Just Lookin’ in 1994 determined to create the gallery she had always hoped to discover. In 1997 she started a gallery newsletter ‘Off the Wall” to share her enthusiasm and keep art lovers informed. This past year she embarked on a monthly ‘hands-on’ seminar series covering topics from the mediums of art to proper cataloging and insuring collections. She lives on a couple of acres with her life-mate where she spends her few hours of spare time gardening and working on her first book about collecting. |
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