Alliance Moves to Preserve Works of Artists With AIDS

The New York-based Alliance for the Arts has begun “The Estate Project for Artists With AIDS,” a new program to preserve artists’ works after their deaths. The project will coordinate organizations nationwide that will raise funds for services including documentation of work, preservation and storage of work, and advisory services for artists with AIDS.

“The arts community must do what it can to provide help to every artist who is stricken and to preserve the cumulative legacy of all artists with AIDS,” said Randall Bourscheidt, president of the alliance. “It is through their artistic expression that these artists will continue to live and the memory of this terrible disease be kept alive.”

As the first step of “The Estate Project,” the alliance has published the 33-page booklet, “Future Safe: The Present is the Future,” as a guide for artists with AIDS and other life-threatening diseases to plan and secure the future of their estates.

The brochure is free and can be obtained by calling (212) 947-6340.

MORE CLOSURES: Santa Monica’s Bess Cutler Gallery, a promising newcomer to Los Angeles that for just over a year had shown up-and-coming L.A. artists including Sandow Birk, Anthony Ausgang and Russell Crotty, pulled up its Colorado Avenue stakes on May 31.

Owner Bess Cutler, who also runs a New York gallery of the same name, said the closure was forced because running both spaces had become too much to handle.

“We have three huge shows coming up in New York, and we just couldn’t keep doing both,” she said, referring to an already-sold-out October exhibition of works by controversial L.A. artist Robert Williams, as well as shows by Crotty and another L.A. artist, Jose Lozano.

But Cutler, who has reportedly had trouble paying her artists and other bills, admitted that the recession was also a factor in the Los Angeles closure, since she could not afford to pay enough staff to adequately run both galleries.

“We certainly hope to return, though, maybe after the first of the year, and probably in a smaller space,” Cutler said.

Cutler’s move meanwhile leaves some questions as to the future in that location of Boritzer/Gray Gallery, which had sublet from her. But co-owner Etan Boritzer said the gallery was trying to renegotiate a lease with the building owners.

Also closed recently is Ersgard Gallery, another Santa Monica gallery that was just a block down from Bess Cutler. But the space at 1001A Colorado has already been occupied by curator Sylvia Haimoff White, who moved in her Contemporary Artists’ Services gallery at the first of the month.

OTHER GALLERY NEWS: Former Richard/Bennett Gallery owners Richard Heller and Bennett Roberts have returned to the scene as the curators of “Deja Vu,” an exhibition featuring eight of the defunct gallery’s former artists, including Kim Dingle, Yolande McKay, Raymond Pettibon, Craig Roper and Cameron Shaw. The exhibition runs Saturday through July 18 at West Hollywood’s Asher/Faure.

Santa Monica’s Remba Gallery pays tribute to the late Mexican master Rufino Tamayo with a current exhibition of Tamayo’s lithographs, etchings and Mixografias, running through July 25. Tamayo died on June 24, 1991 at the age of 91.

GOING HOME: Suzy Kerr has resigned from her post as executive director of the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, effective July 31.

Kerr, who established LACPS’ current downtown gallery in February of 1990, is leaving the organization to return to Europe and concentrate on her own creative work. A British-born artist who has won recognition in Los Angeles in partnership with Diane Malley, Kerr will work solo upon her return to Europe.

The LACPS board is conducting a national search to fill the position.

GRADUATE SHOWS: Two current M.F.A. exhibitions are worth special notice because of the already recognized stature of the artists involved. Controversial artist Joe Smoke, whose works depicting homosexual male couples provoked a recent NEA grant denial for Highways in Santa Monica, has his UCLA M.F.A. show at the university’s Wight Art Gallery today through June 28. And Margaret Garcia, a noted Chicana artist who has already exhibited at venues including the Municipal Art Gallery, Laguna Art Museum, and Loyola Marymount’s Laband Art Gallery, has her USC M.F.A. show (curated by Josine Ianco-Starrels) at Plaza de la Raza’s Boathouse Gallery, through July 1.

OUT AUCTION: The second annual “OUt Auction,” a fund-raiser for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, will feature a new twist from your usual art auction. Seven noted artists--David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Bloom, John Baldessari, Ross Bleckner, Nayland Blake and Rachel Rosenthal--have made special tattoo designs specifically for the charity.

The event begins at 7 p.m. on June 20 at a showroom at 9244 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. Also on the blocks will be fine art works by more than 200 artists including Mike Kelley, Millie Wilson, Betye Saar and Raymond Pettibon. Tickets are $25.

Related events include a special “OUt for Your Rights Performance” featuring Buck Henry, Ann Magnuson, John Fleck and Tim Miller, on June 17 at 8 p.m. (also $25), and free previews of the artworks from noon-8 p.m. beginning next Sunday. Information: (310) 276-2752.

ART/FOOD EXCHANGE: Santa Monica artist Sandy Bleifer is opening her studio on weekend days through June 28 and offering to exchange selections of her art work for donations of a minimum of two grocery bags of food to be distributed to the area’s homeless. Bleifer will offer a series of six hand-collaged serigraph landscapes that she first exhibited in 1975 at the recently closed Space Gallery. The studio, at 2651 Main St., will be open Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 6 p.m. Information: (310) 450-6678.

EVENTS: Members of the AIDS Project Los Angeles Creative Writing Workshop will read from their stories, essays, poems and plays next Sunday at the Museum of Contemporary Art from 3 to 5 p.m. The readings are free with paid museum admission. Information: (213) 621-2766.

The annual “Summer Nights at MOCA” series begins on Thursday with performances by jazz harpist Lori Andrews and an ensemble of supporting performers from 5 to 8 p.m., with a break for an “Art Talk” by MOCA curator Julie Lazar at 6:30 p.m. Lazar will also offer a 6 p.m. gallery tour of the “Alexis Smith” and Karen Finley (“Memento Mori”) exhibitions. The series continues July 9, Aug. 13 and Sept. 17 with similar outdoor performances, art talks and gallery tours. Admission is free.

“Dress for Poet,” a fashion show featuring visual artist Lun-na Menoh’s wearable sculptures, will be at Venice’s Beyond Baroque at 8 p.m. on Saturday. The sculptures incorporate both textile and text to illustrate what the artist sees as bondage in fashion and language. Admission is $6. Information: (310) 822-3006.

MURALS: SPARC celebrates its “sweet 16th” birthday next Sunday with a special tour visiting a wide number of works, including the mammoth “Great Wall of Los Angeles” and “The World Wall,” a traveling installation by Judith F. Baca. Special guest lecturers and muralists are expected. Information: (310) 822-9560.