Kelly McChesney, who helps collect and curate the modern art at CBC, won has made the list of 2016 Indie Arts Awards from INDY WEEK.
Triangle art gallery owner Kelly McChesney is one of the major players behind Capitol Broadcasting’s growing contemporary art collection. The CBC Headquarters on Western Blvd has become a veritable art museum in its own right since the building’s redesign and expansion several years ago.
In mid-December, INDY WEEK published its annual list of winners for the 2016 Indie Arts Awards. McChesney sits atop the list, honored in part for merging her Flanders Gallery with the experimental Lump to save the latter.
“All the Triangle-based arts institutions, collectives, and people the INDY selected as winners of our 2016 Indies Arts Awards, which we have given out annually for more than twenty-five years, have one striking thing in common: this timely goal of widening inclusion and broadening discourse,” reads the publication’s feature about the winners.
McChesney is profiled in a special article in the awards’ issue:
But McChesney is much more than a gallerist. Her support of artists is almost legendary. She tirelessly builds relationships with local corporations to develop their collecting programs, teeters atop ladders to hang shows, and trucks artists around the East Coast for deliveries and art fairs. And she often opens her space to experimental, site-specific, non-commercial work.
She is also quoted for her dedication to her mission:
“I just enjoy knowing artists,” McChesney says with a laugh. “The art world has really saved my life. Maybe that’s dramatic, but artists opened up my mind. Really, you can explore anything, you can do anything, you can think anything, you can leave everything you’ve known behind and your mind is a blank slate to create and think.”
Damien Stamer and Derek Toomes, two artists whose work appear in the CBC collection, are interviews in the piece.
Read the full article:
