FORT SMITH — While the new Fort Smith Regional Art Museum won’t officially open until Jan. 19, staff members will begin moving offices and artwork into the building in early November, Executive Director Lee Ortega said Friday.
The museum also will host a “Membership Kickoff and Celebrity Whodunnit Auction” on Oct. 25 at Fianna Hills Country Club. The event will be the last major fundraiser before the new museum officially opens.
The museum will occupy a former bank building at 1601 Rogers Ave., a busy artery just southeast of downtown. Arvest Bank donated the 16,000-square-foot building in January 2009 after its buyout in 2003 of Superior Federal Bank.
Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects of Little Rock, the samefirm that helped design the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, is directing the renovation.
Renovating the building to comply with national art museum standards - including up-to-date security and climate control - will cost about $2.3 million, Ortega said. The museum has raised $3 million toward the project, including a recent $500,000 anonymous donation.
Ortega, who was hired in February 2011 to direct the museum’s opening, spoke Friday at a Fort Smith Public Library “Food for Thought” gathering.
The Fort Smith Regional Art Museum, which now displays the acronym RAM on its exterior, replaces the historic Fort Smith Arts Center. The arts center opened in the 1960s in a Victorian home in the city’s Belle Grove district. It displayed artwork by local and regional artists and offered educational and cultural activities.
“We’re going to continue to do all those things,” said Marta Jones, an artist and president of the art museum’s board of trustees. “But because the new museum meets climate control and other standards for national art museums, we also will be able host traveling exhibits and loans. It will allow people to enjoy art that hasn’t beenavailable before.”
The museum has a 200-piece permanent collection, mostly American art from local and regional artists. Ortega is organizing loans for the planned outdoor sculpture garden.
“We want people to be able to enjoy art inside as well as out,” she said.
Ortega also is working to hire staff members, which will include a program specialist and a registrar/exhibitions coordinator to oversee traveling exhibits, loans and the permanent collection.
Ortega said she hopes to offer new exhibits every threemonths. She also said she has met with staff members at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville and the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, which have expressed willingness to work with the new Fort Smith museum.
Fort Smith’s Regional Art Museum will contain more than 5,000 feet of gallery space. It will include a shop that will sell small-scale artwork and one-of-a-kind items by local and regional artists, she said. The building will be available to rent for weddings and other events. Securing steady, ongoing funding will be the next big task after the facility opens, Ortega said.
“There are many grants and gifts we won’t qualify for until we are open and operating as a museum,” she said.
Major donors so far have included: Sparks Health System, Mercy Health System, Hanna Oil and Gas, Hennesey Foundation and local philanthropists Sam and Glenn Yaffee. Other support has come from the City of Fort Smith, Arkansas Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts.
More information about the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum and its Oct. 25 membership kickoff is available by calling (479) 784-2787.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 09/23/2012