BORN 1973

EDUCATION

• 2003 MFA, Brooklyn College, CUNY
• 1994 BFA, The Rhode Island School of Design
• 1993 Brown University

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

• 2013 George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2011 Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, NJ
• 2011 Circle Gallery, Annapolis, MD
• 2010 George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2009 Rhode Island School of Design
• 2008 George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2006 George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2004 George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2003 George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2000 The Prince Street Gallery, New York, NY
• 2000 The Williamsburg Art and History Center, Brooklyn, NY
• 1996 Suffolk County Community College, Brentwood, NY

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

• 2017 Revelry & Revelation: Realism Today, Salmagundi Club, New York, NY
• 2017 “New York Cityscapes,” George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2011 “The Buildings of New York,” George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2011 Ridgefield Guild of Artists, Ridgefield, CT
• 2010 “New York Moments,” George Billis Gallery, NYC
• 2010 First Street Gallery, NYC, Lance Esplund selects
• 2009 Adelphi University, Garden City, NY
• 2009 “Summer in the City,” George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2008 “City Lights,” George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2007 “Good Night Sun,” George Billis Gallery
• 2006 “In the City,” George Billis Gallery, New York, NY
• 2005 Omni Gallery, Uniondale, NY
• 2005 Nassau County Community College
• 2004 RISD Biennial, Shamim M. Momin, Whitney Museum of American Art, Curator
• 2004 Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
• 2004 Grenning Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY
• 2004 Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, DE
• 2004 “Industrial Beauty,” George Billis Gallery, NYC
• 2004 “New Views,” The New York Historical Society, New York, NY
• 2003 Sheppard Art Gallery, Ellicott City, MD
• 2003 Gross-McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
• 2003 Holland Tunnel, Brooklyn, NY
• 2003 Fishtank Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
• 2002 The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
• 2002 Omni Gallery, Uniondale, NY
• 2001 The New York Historical Society, New York, NY
• 1999 The Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY
• 1997 “Landscape, Seen and Unseen,” Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY

PUBLICATIONS

• 2017 Fine Art Connoisseur, October 2017, Editor’s Notes by Peter Trippi, Illus.
• 2011 City Journal, Winter 2011, cover
• 2010 City Arts, 7.13.10-8.2.10, vol.2, issue 12, p.14
• 2010 The New York Times, Home Section, March 11, 2010
• 2008 Harper’s Magazine, Readings, May 2008
• 2006 The New York Sun, Art in Brief, November 2, 2006
• 2006 The New York Sun, Arts, Section II, July 20, 2006
• 2006 The New York Times, August 6, 2006
• 2005 Greenwich Times, December 23, 2005
• 2005 Art and Antiques, September 2005
• 2004 Art and Antiques, December 2004
• 2004 The New York Sun, July 29, 2004
• 2004 The Southhampton Press, March 16, 2004
• 2003 The New American Paintings, MFA Edition, Lawrence Rinder, Whitney Museum of American Art, Juror
• 2003 The New York Times, December 13, 2003
• 2003 The New York Daily News, November 16, 2003
• 2003 The Boston Globe, October 12, 2003
• 2003 The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 20, 2003
• 2002 The New York Daily News, November 10, 2002
• 2002 The Jerusalem Post, May 31, 2002
• 2002 The New York Times, March 3, 2002
• 2001 The New York Times, November 4, 2001
• 2001 Ha’Arretz, June 11, 2001
• 2001 The New York Post, April 29, 2001
• 2001 The New York Daily News, April, 22, 2001
• 2001 Forbes F.Y.I., Spring, 2001
• 2001 Harper’s Magazine, Readings, February 2001
• 2001 11211 Magazine, January 2001
• 2000 The New York Daily News, October 1, 2000
• 2000 New York Newsday, April 18, 2000
• 2000 The Brooklyn Papers, March 20, 2000
• 1998 The New York Times, August 14, 1998
• 1997 The New York Daily News, June 25, 1997

SELECT AWARDS, GRANTS, AND RESIDENCIES

• 2009, Rhode Island School of Design, Professional Development Fund Grant
• 2003 Joan C. Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant
• 2003 Elizabeth Greenshields Grant
• 2002, 2000, 1998 E.D. Foundation Grant
• 2001 Aljira Residency

SELECT COLLECTIONS

• American Capital
• Pfizer Inc., New York
• The Museum of the City of New York
• Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New York Inc.
• The New York Historical Society
• Brooklyn College, City University of New York
• Time Warner, New York

SELECT TEACHING

• 2005-Present The Rhode Island School of Design
• 2004 Princeton University
• 2003 and 2002 The Maryland Institute College of Art
• 2002 and 2001 The Jerusalem Studio School, Israel

RADIO AND TELEVISION

• WBAI, November 23, 2001
• Metro Channel, April 8, 2001
• PBS, WNET Thirteen, August 2000
• NY1 Television, March 26, 1998

Nicholas Evans Cato is represented by the George Billis Gallery, New York City

George Billis Gallery
525 West 26 Street, Ground Floor
New York, NY 10001
212.645.2621
[email protected]
georgebillis.com

Michael Klein is part of a group of artists returning to classical principles in the creation of their artwork. Klein had two major solo exhibitions in New York City and participated in the American Chinese Oil Painting Artist League (ACOPAL) exhibition held at the World Art Museum in Beijing, China. The artist is an award winning painter receiving the William F. Draper Grand prize at the Portrait Society of America in 2016, also being awarded top honor in the Grand Central Academy still life competition in 2014. His passion is to depict an accurate representation of our human experience, poetically blending paints and canvas he recreates the visible world around us and injects his personal spirit into each piece. Due to many years training under renowned artists, such us Jacob Collins, Michael Grimaldi, Kate Lehman and Travis Schlaht, Klein has emphasized that working from life is an important part of the process, as depicted in his delicate floral paintings.

In 2017 Klein and his business partners, Joshua LaRock and Louis Carr started East Oaks Studio, a community in Raleigh North Carolina. East Oaks Studio has a passion for spreading hope through the beauty of art. Their video production company was launched through a successful Kickstarter campaign in July, selling over $75,000 in one month. They have also embarked on a new show called The Line, featuring paintings by today’s most sought after contemporary realist artists. Klein’s work has been published in Fine Art Connoisseur, American Artist Magazine and American Arts Quarterly.

Dita Amory

As Curator-in-Charge and Administrator of the Robert Lehman Collection, Dita Amory oversees the care and preservation of a collection of 2,750 objects of western European art –paintings, drawings, manuscripts, maiolica, period frames, textiles, furniture, small bronzes –all collected by Robert Lehman and his father, Philip, through the first seven decades of the twentieth century. This magnificent collection was given to the Metropolitan Museum in 1969 on the death of Robert Lehman.

Dita manages all exhibitions presented in the Lehman Wing whether curated by Lehman Collection curators or colleagues elsewhere in the Museum. Her past exhibitions include Marines and Landscapes: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drawings in the Lehman Collection; Italy Observed: Views and Souvenirs, 1706-1899; in addition to Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors (2009) and Madame Cézanne (2014-15), for which she co-authored publications. Her forthcoming exhibition, From Leonardo to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Robert Lehman Collection, traces five centuries of European drawings selected by Robert Lehman as he built on his father’s already magnificent holdings.

As guest author, Dita has contributed catalogue essays to “Bonnard en Normandie,” Musée des Impressionismes, Giverny, 2011; “Bonnard,” Musée des Beaux-Arts, Quebec City, 2016; and “Bonnard-Matisse. “Long Live Painting!” Städel Museum, Frankfurt, 2017. A graduate of Trinity College, she received her M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Dita was chief curator of the National Academy of Design from 1991 to1996.

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Gregory Peterson

Gregory Peterson is a corporate attorney in New York. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School, and also was an art major at the High School of Music and Art here in New York City. For over thirty years he has collected Contemporary Realism, internationally. Works from his collection are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums, and the collection has been exhibited publicly at the New York Academy of Art in Tribeca. Mr. Peterson is also a past Trustee of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. He curated scholarship programs for the Acadia Foundation, and has spoken on art collecting at public and private venues across the US and abroad.

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Shannon Robinson

Shannon Robinson is a former corporate litigator who retired to become the president of a nonprofit foundation known as Windows to the Divine which promotes patronage and philanthropy through the arts. Through exhibitions, symposia and salons, the foundation encourages everyone to become a patron of the arts by collecting original art and supporting the vocation of the living artist. The foundation also promotes the vocation and charitable works of the Dominicans in Denver in their service of the poor and elderly.

Since 1999, Shannon has served as the curator and chairperson of the Windows to the Divine biennial national exhibitions. In 2015, through the foundation, she launched a national network of collectors and artists called Collectors for Connoisseurship (C4C) which provides educational programming and access to special arts events such as “The Renaissance of Realism” symposium held at the Denver Art Museum and the upcoming C4C Arts Weekend in 2017 to be held at The Metropolitan Museum in New York City.

As an art collector for over 30 years, Shannon is passionate about the arts and education. Her work as an advocate for artists and art collecting has been featured in several arts publications, including Fine Art Connoisseur, Larry’s List and Southwest Art Magazine. With her Master’s certification from Regis University in Art History and Collecting, Shannon speaks on a wide range of topics at collector salons hosted by Windows to the Divine and its partners at museums and galleries in Colorado and around the country.

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Betsy Thomas

Betsy Thomas is an independent art advisor and consultant based in New York with over 15 years of experience in the European Art sector. A veteran of the auction world, Betsy began her career at Christie’s in New York in 1996 and joined the 19th Century European Paintings and Sculpture Department as Vice President and Specialist from 2000-2009. Her expertise spans Continental and British Victorian and includes but is not limited to deep knowledge of many sub-movements within the century including Orientalism, the Barbizon School, and French Academic art.

She founded Betsy Thomas Fine Art Advisory, LLC in 2008, a firm that offers advisory services to both private and corporate clients assisting them in navigating the global art market. A sampling of the works bought and sold through her firm include a prominent textile collection, a collection of artist’s letters, Arts & Crafts furniture as well as American and Impressionist paintings and sculpture.

She is a frequent contributor to Fine Art Connoisseur magazine and wrote essays for Masterpieces of Orientalist Art: The Shafik Gabr Collection, ACR Editions, 2012.

She is adjunct faculty at Sotheby’s Institute Art in New York where she teaches in the Masters of Art Business Program as well as in the Online Studies program.

Betsy holds a B.A. from Pomona College and a M.A. degree in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She is Chair of the Courtauld Alumni Association and is on the Board of the American Friends of the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2016.

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Jennifer Tonkovich

Jennifer Tonkovich is the Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York. In her nineteen years at the Morgan, Jennifer has curated a number of exhibitions devoted to old master and nineteenth century drawings, with a particular focus on the French school. She has worked extensively on the eighteenth-century French collector Jean de Jullienne and the creation and sale of his drawings cabinet. Jennifer has also cultivated an interest in collectors and dealers of old master drawings during the twentieth-century, and has lectured and written about Pierpont Morgan (1843-1913) as a collector and about Eugene V. Thaw as a dealer and collector of old master drawings. Her current exhibition, on view now at the Morgan, celebrates the completion of Eugene Thaw’s gift of his collection to the museum. Containing more than 160 sheets, Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection is the largest exhibition of drawings mounted by the Morgan.

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Peter Trippi

Peter Trippi is editor-in-chief of Fine Art Connoisseur, the magazine that serves collectors of historical and contemporary representational art.  He is also president of Projects in 19^th-Century Art, a firm he established to pursue research, writing, and curating opportunities. Last year he co-curated an exhibition about the Dutch-born, London-based painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who lived from 1836 to 1912.  That project opened at the Fries (“Freeze”) Museum in Leeuwarden, Holland, then traveled to Vienna’s Belvedere Museum.  It is currently on view at London’s Leighton House Museum, and is accompanied by a book published by Prestel.

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Shelley Farmer

Shelley Farmer is Director of Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York.  This is her 20th year with the firm. She began her tenure at Hirschl & Adler Galleries in the Print Department and has served as Director of its Modern and Contemporary arm since 2008.

Shelley’s primary areas of focus are Modern, Postwar and Contemporary American Art.  Her expertise in paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture also includes historical material, as Hirschl & Adler has been specializing in American and European art of all periods throughout its 65-year history.

Under her direction, Hirschl & Adler Modern represents a select group of established and mid-career contemporary artists as well as Estates, mounting up to eight exhibitions a year while participating in top-level International art fairs including Art Basel Miami Beach, TEFAF New York, The ADAA Art Show, and others.

She works with private collectors, consultants, institutions, and museums with the goal of placing works in collections both large and small.  Her clients range from first-time buyers to seasoned private collectors and major American and international museums.

Shelley graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College with departmental honors in Art History and American Studies.  Her graduate work includes the Sotheby’s Art Institute in New York and the NYU Appraisal Studies Program.

Private Invitation to Guests of Gregory Peterson for Met Symposium

Collectors for Connoisseurship National Symposium
Patronage and Collecting: Then and Now
Sacerdote Auditorium in Uris Center at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Friday, October 13, 2017
Registration 12:30-1:00pm
Symposium 1-4:30pm

As the chairperson of Collectors for Connoisseurship (C4C) it is my pleasure to extend this special invitation to friends and colleagues of art collector, Gregory Peterson, to attend our national symposium and exhibition. C4C is a national nonprofit members-only community that directly connects collectors and artists.

Gregory will serve as the collector member of the panel of experts during the symposium which will include Schedule of Speakers. He has also graciously participated as a curator of the contemporary realism exhibition referenced below of works by Nicholas Evans Cato, Max Ferguson, David Fertig, Scott Fraser, Diana Horowitz, Michael Klein, Lucong, Jill Soukup, Skip Steinworth, Amy Weiskopf and Vincent Xeus.

In collaboration with museums, galleries and other nonprofits, C4C hosts exhibitions, salons and symposia such as the 2017 C4C Arts Weekend to be held in NYC from Oct 13-14, 2017. The C4C Arts Weekend will feature a symposium at The Met and an exhibition of contemporary realists in the Patrons’ Gallery of the Salmagundi Club, Revelry & Revelation: Realism Today (open during gallery hours from Oct 13-23).

As space in the Sacerdote Auditorium is limited, please RESERVE NOW. Your $26 donation is tax deductible.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Shannon Robinson, Chairperson

Image Above: Nicholas Evans Cato, Ground Work #1, Oil on linen, 12” x 24”, Revelry & Revelation: Realism Today Exhibition at Salmagundi Club, Oct 13-23, 2017