Dean Sobel and the Clyfford Still Museum

Contemporary Forum presents

Dean Sobel and the Clyfford Still Museum

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 – 7pm

Phoenix Art Museum – Whiteman Hall

Central at McDowell

Admission is Free – Everyone is Welcome

Refreshments will Follow

“For those of you unfamiliar with artist Clyfford Still, he is most certainly the ultimate manifestation of an artist’s contempt for commercialism, museums, galleries and collectors.  He is famous for denouncing the galleries and museums of the art world as Nazi gas chambers.  After a brief period of selling and displaying some of his work, Still retreated to a remote farm in Maryland and spent the remaining decades of his life painting furiously, cursing critics and the commercial art world and hiding his work.  In his one-page will, he specified that the body of his work could never be sold, never be separated, never be shown next to another artist’s work and could only be exhibited to the public in a Clyfford Still museum that would be built by an American city and would exclusively house his entire collection.”  

That city turned out to be Denver, Colorado, and the Director of that museum which does not yet exist – at least not in tangible form – is Dean Sobel who will explain how this artist may end up being remembered as having produced the most commercially valuable collection of paintings in art history.

This event is generously sponsored by Bentley Gallery/Bentley Projects.