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Art Boca Raton 2016. A Conversation with Lee Ann Lester
Art Palm Beach 2016.
The first edition of Art Boca Raton, a sister fair to Art Palm Beach, will open its doors to collectors on March 18, 2016. Founded by seasoned fair organizers Lee Ann and David Lester, Art Boca Raton will present modern and contemporary art of the 20th and 21st centuries in the International Pavilion of the Palm Beaches on the grounds of the Research Park at Florida Atlantic University. The Lesters have a history of creating successful fairs that are enmeshed in the respective city’s cultural core and they continue their vision and dedication to furthering vibrant art communities with Art Boca Raton. Committed to becoming part of the city’s art scene, Lee Ann and David Lester are partnering with local institutions and organizations to create Art Boca Raton Art Week, which involves not just fairgoers and art patrons but also community leaders and residents of Palm Beach County.
By Heike Dempster
Heike Dempster - You created multiple art fairs, such as Art Miami and Art Palm Beach and also operate the SeaFair through Next Level Fairs. How did you get into founding and operating art fairs?
Lee Ann Lester - Basically, we started as young professionals. David is an attorney and I am a psychologist and I used to work for corporations, so I was an industrial psychologist. I became quite interested in the arts when I was young. My family enjoyed the arts and music. We were five children. Each of us played in the orchestra and we were encouraged to go to museums, go to art galleries. Fortunately we were living in San Francisco. There are a lot of cultural institutions. As a young person I took it for granted that everybody lived like that, not realizing that the rest of the world did not have major museums and parks and school outings to museums. In that way I have been extremely fortunate. Then I was married and my husband’s family was also collectors. They had a ready to wear business and they had to go to New York a lot. They used to go to museums and they became good friends with artists–by the end of World War II–who were at the New York Arts League, and they started collecting some of those artists. We became collectors right after we were married and then we started a small art gallery just out of curiosity. We did that sort of on the side, and then one thing led to another and we had one gallery, then two galleries, then three galleries. Then, I left my career and seven years later my husband left his career and then we became art dealers in Los Angeles for about 17 years. We represented artists from the Barcelona area, Catalonia, and Italy, and then we were going to China actually in the mid 1980s to the 90s. That’s when we became fascinated with what was happening in Asia. Hong Kong and China. We were quite international art dealers. Then we started an art fair in Chicago and then we started Art Miami and then Art Asia Hong Kong and then we started fairs in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles and Palm Beach. We sold Art Miami in 2000 and in 2001 we sold five fairs to the Daily Mail group. In 2005 we started the SeaFair art ship and slowly turned that into a corporate event venue in Miami. It’s been rather interesting. Entrepreneurs are always trying to solve problems and trying to find niches in the market. I think ours was always how do we help promote dealers in this rapidly changing information age. Retail is obviously–from 20 years ago–going through rapid changes. We are always looking for top quality. Art Miami has gone on to be a preeminent fair now during Art Basel Miami Beach. We are really pioneers in the art fair business in the United States. Now we are really focused on the Palm Beach/ Boca Raton/ South Florida market. Again we are trying to find new methodology to promote galleries and give them that retail access that galleries used to have. Last year at Art Palm Beach we had 85 galleries from 29 countries and we had 28,000 people attending.
LeeAnn and David Lester
H.D. - Why did you choose Boca Raton for the new fair?
L.L. - Boca Raton has always been an interest to dealers in the in the Palm Beach area for a number of years. Boca, historically, has one of the biggest galleries centers in all of South Florida. Boca Raton is known as the Beverly Hills of Florida. Today, it is a very interesting market because it is the cross roads of a lot of major corporations. The fair will be out at the Research Park at Florida Atlantic University, which is a university that started basically in the late 1960s and it was supposed to be a university for the information age. It has a tremendous amount of programs focused on technology. It has a medical school and it has one of the top robotics and engineering schools in the nation. It was adjacent to what was the IBM headquarters where they actually developed the personal computer. Today of course the research park has information companies, publishing companies, medical research companies. Boca Raton is a very forward thinking community that has a tremendous amount of collectors and of course it has a fair number of snow birds, who are here in the winter time. It has the tenth highest valued income, a high number of country clubs and it has a private airport. It is at the mid point and sort of in between Palm Beach and Miami, where people from Fort Lauderdale, Aventura and of course all the communities west can access the fair.
Diego Santanelli, Apocalypse zero.8M, 2016, enamel on canvas, 70 x 60 inches
H.D. - What are your expectations for the inaugural edition of Art Boca Raton?
L.L. - It is really sort of a cousin or sister fair to Art Palm Beach so in that way it is not really a new fair. It is just really another branch of an existing brand. I think we expect upwards of 10,000 -12,000 attendees, based on the tracking that we see from the early commitments that people are making. We have some very interactive exhibitions. The Boca Raton Museum of Art also operates a very active art school. They are going to actually be partnering with us, having art demonstrations. They are going to do interactive programs, where people can actually come in and sketch and work with artists. The FAU Faculty, the curator of the FAU galleries, has curated an exhibition opening the following week and some of those artists will be at the fair. Also, Art Synergy, a countrywide movement to unify and promote the diverse culture of our vibrant arts community, will exhibit at Art Boca Raton. We have about 20 artists that we selected for that exhibition.
Giorgio Milano, Ansible, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 48 inches.
H.D. - Are these selected artists creating public art or is this happening at various venues?
L.L. - It is a combination of non-profit galleries, artist studios, art education, for example in Delray we are working with the Benzaiten Center for Creative Arts and two of our artists are going to be doing glass blowing demonstrations there. We have the Lake Worth and Delray arts district that will be having gallery openings and gallery walks during that week.
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H.D. - Could you share some highlights of the fair in terms of galleries, artists and programming?
L.L. - We have Korea. We have Paris. We have Finland. We have Singapore. The artists come from all over the world. We have major collections. An entire collection of Cuban artists from the mid 1980s all the way to the late 90s is being sold. We have a tremendous variety. We have a Chihuly exhibition. Some pieces from the 1980s and pieces that he actually made himself in Venice, Italy in the early 80s. They were called “The Venetian Series.” It is a pretty diverse group of dealers as well as diverse forms of art. Including photography. The lecture series is pretty extensive all the way from Russian modernists to conceptual art to a major art investment firm out of Paris and Miami. They will be discussing the golden rules of collecting. We will have great pieces from Rauschenberg, Alex Katz, Lichtenstein, and some very rare pieces by Andy Warhol when he was actually in Japan in the early 80s, when he was sketching and doing commercial art. Tremendous standards of 20th and 21st century art.
Annalaura di Luggo, CDPe, 2015, Occh-IO/Eye-I project, photograph printed on pearl Fuji paper coupled to aluminum plate and acrylic, 40 x 40 inches, edition 1/5 + 1 AP.
H.D. - Can you elaborate on the cultural programming?
L.L. - We have an extensive lecture, film screenings and art discussions. All of that is on the website at www.artbocaraton.com. Each day there is a major lecture on Andy Warhol being given at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, which we are helping to promote. On Saturday, the curator of the FAU art gallery will be giving curatorial tours of their major exhibitions. It is a pretty active week we are having. The local museum has three different exhibitions on Andy Warhol. The entire city is very involved.
Cat del Buono, Voices. Courtesy of WhiteSpace Collection.
H.D. - Art Boca Raton partners with the Boca Raton Museum of Art. Please tell us more about the partnership.
L.L. - The Inaugural gala on opening night benefit’s the Boca Raton Museum of Art in support of the art school.
Art Boca Raton. March 17 - 21, 2016. International Pavilion of the Palm Beaches at the Research Park at Florida Atlantic University. 3450 NW 8th Avenue, Boca Raton, FL 33431.
Vernissage: March 17, 6 - 10 pm
Public Hours
Friday, March 18, 11am - 6pm
Saturday, March 19, 11am 6pm
Sunday, March 20, 11am - 6pm
Monday, March 21, 11am - 6pm
Heike Dempster is a writer and radio host based in Miami and actively involved in the local art scene.
