RAMming Speed

Renovated museum revealed in River Valley


A collection from the FSRAM’s permanent collection is currently on display. The exhibit, “Faces of Arkansas: Selections of Portraiture From RAM’s Permanent Collection,” contains several works by Arkansas artists.
A collection from the FSRAM’s permanent collection is currently on display. The exhibit, “Faces of Arkansas: Selections of Portraiture From RAM’s Permanent Collection,” contains several works by Arkansas artists.

The Fort Smith community has been waiting long enough, says Lee Ortega, pausing inside the newly opened Fort Smith Regional Art Museum.

Almost exactly four years after being given a spacious new home on Rogers Avenue, the museum is open to the public, the firstexhibits are on the walls and art classes are taking shape inside the building’s many interior rooms.

“We’re just trying to be here for the community,” says Ortega, who two years ago was named the museum’s executive director.

The backbone of the museum has been in the community for many years.

The Arkansas Association of University Women launched an art project in 1948. The growing collection would move into the Vaughn-Schaap House as the Fort Smith Art Center in 1968.

But the collection of about 200 permanent works and the ambitions of those behind the museum outgrew that location. The museum closed temporarily after the new space, a former Arvest Bank building, was awarded to the Fort Smith Art Center in January 2009.

After several years and more than $2 million worth of work, the newly christened Fort Smith Regional Art Museum - often called FSRAM or just RAM - opened to the public on Sunday. About 500 people got a preview of the space the night before duringa gala highlighting the building and its first major exhibit, “The Secrets of Mona Lisa.”The exhibit, produced by Grande Exhibitions, features a series of explorations intoLeonardo Da Vinci’s work “Mona Lisa,” perhaps the world’s most famous painting.

Art researcher Pascal Cotte took a series of infrared and other color spectrum images of the work, which was created about 1514 and has since been repaired or retouched many times.

Ortega says the exhibit was a good fit for RAM because it combines science, art and pop culture. Future exhibits will follow suit, Ortega says.

“It’s been well received by the community. (Newexhibits) will be about what the community will respond to and demand.”

Aside from the various traveling exhibits Ortega hopes to land for RAM, other events and exhibits at the museum will continue with a community-oriented flavor.

A companion display for the Mona Lisa exhibit, called “Mona Lisa Smiles,” will go on show Feb. 16. The works in that collection will be created by Fort Smith area students.

Also currently on the walls at RAM are a collection ofdiverse works the museum owns. “Faces of Arkansas: Selections of Portraiture From RAM’s Permanent Collection” contains works made by Arkansas-based artists or those with deeply rooted ties to the area.

“We thought it was fitting, because RAM has a history of working with local and regional artists,” Ortega says.

A second tier of portraiture will go on display Feb. 14 as part of a partnership with the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock.

The museum will also become a multipurpose space as a home to art workshops, public performances, school tours and private functions.

“We’d like to incorporate the museum) into their everyday lives,” says Ortega.

Many future exhibits have been planned, including an invitational that will be open to regional artists.

The museum is currently open from Thursday throughSunday. Ortega says the museum will spend its first year analyzing community needs and may restructure its operating hours and programming.

Whats Up, Pages 18 on 01/25/2013

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