sfnm.co\/linda<\/a><\/p>\nIn conversation Durham is animated, passionate, and razor sharp on details from decades ago \u2014 she\u2019s not planning on scripting her presentation. \u201cI\u2019m going to organize the images and recall and tell stories,\u201d she says. \u201cI want them for the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those memories go back to the mid-1960s. \u201cWhen I moved here, it was so early that there wasn\u2019t a contemporary art exhibition scene in town,\u201d she says. \u201cThere were great artists, but there were no galleries that represented them.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was intrigued by the gallery business and agreed to work for a year for the late Forrest Fenn, who dealt in late 19th- and early 20th-century works, to understand how it operated. As she later wrote in a memoir, \u201cI learned that the world of artists, paintings, exhibitions, dealers, and consultants had a profound and intoxicating effect on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
On her 365th day of employment, Durham asked Fenn\u2019s gallery manager for a raise. \u201cHe laughed at me,\u201d she says, \u201cso I resigned on the spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her year in Santa Fe\u2019s nascent gallery world gave her many contacts in the world of living artists. \u201cI knew them as friends first,\u201d she says of John Fincher, Paul Pletka, Larry Bell, Dick Mason, Ken Price, and others.<\/p>\n
Durham organized a traveling exhibition of their work and took it to a major art fair in Toronto, mostly because it was much cheaper than going to Europe. She lost money on the venture, but it gave her instant credibility in the art world, locally and nationally.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter I got back, someone suggested I open my gallery here. I didn\u2019t know it was impossible, so I did it,\u201d Durham says. \u201cI just thought, I\u2019ll act as if I were a gallery owner, and pretty soon it turned into a career.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked what made her decide to buy a particular work for herself, rather than selling it, she replies, \u201cThat\u2019s not easy to answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
After pausing for a bit, she continues, \u201cThe work of the artists I represented didn\u2019t look alike, but there were three essential things I found in all of them. They had a deep commitment to their art, they each tapped into a very particular creative well, and they were all brilliant. [The ones I purchased] demand attention and say, \u2018Slow down, I\u2019m here, look at me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For her Renesan presentation, Durham will focus entirely on New Mexico artists, and thanks in part to a recent move to a smaller home, on works that have special resonance for her.<\/p>\n
One is a large-format painting by nonagenarian painter Jerry West, who grew up near La Cienega and whose father was both a rancher and a visual artist. \u201cI\u2019ve known him since I moved here because he lived out in Cerrillos and he lived on the same highway,\u201d Durham says. \u201cWe have a long history, and I showed his work several times during my gallery years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The painting depicts West\u2019s memory of going into the old Palace Restaurant and Saloon on Palace Avenue to watch the television in the bar because he\u2019d heard Georgia O\u2019Keeffe was going to be on a TV show. \u201cJerry didn\u2019t own a television,\u201d says Durham, \u201cso it\u2019s a painting of him standing in the bar looking at the television. It\u2019s a great painting, and it only belongs in my collection and then the museum.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\")
<\/p>\n
Linda Durham, one of the original leading contemporary art gallerists in New Mexico, will speak at CCA Santa Fe about her adventures in the Santa Fe art scene and the particular pieces she chose for her own collection, including a painting\u00a0 of the old Palace Restaurant and Saloon by notable artist Jerry West.<\/p>\n
ALEX TRAUBE<\/p>\n
(The New Mexico Museum of Art has in its collection several of West\u2019s paintings, including one titled Japanese Internment Camp. West\u2019s father and uncle both worked at the camp above Santa Fe, and his father sketched it several times, documenting the irony of guarding prisoners who included educators, Buddhist priests, Presbyterian ministers, gardeners, and poets. West\u2019s 2009 painting is based on his father\u2019s sketches.)<\/p>\n
Another painting Durham will discuss is by Eugene Newman, whom she describes as the artist she secretly respects more than any other. \u201cAcross from my desk where I write I have a wonderful painting of his that sold to Robert Tobin,\u201d she says. \u201cRobert was a magical friend in my life, and I loved him so much.\u201d <\/p>\n
Tobin was a major supporter of the Santa Fe Opera, as well as the Metropolitan Opera and arts groups in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he died much of his collection was supposed to come to Santa Fe,\u201d Durham relates, \u201cbut a lot of it went to auction instead. I went online and for $400 got this painting that Robert might have paid $10,000 for. It\u2019s not an \u2018easy\u2019 piece, but it\u2019s one I can\u2019t dismiss.\u201d<\/p>\n
A \u201cgreat piece\u201d by Santa Fe installation artist Erika Wanenmacher is also on Durham\u2019s discussion list (see \u201cMeeting a Maker\u201d in the October 24 issue) as well as a small piece by Robert Kelly, a native Santa Fean now active in New York.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the 25th anniversary of the gallery, he made a stylized painting of my logo, LDCA25, and it\u2019s a treasure,\u201d says Durham. When she was downsizing recently, someone asked Durham if she was letting go of it. \u201cI couldn\u2019t possibly do that, but I\u2019ve thought about writing on the back, give this painting its history.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Durham\u2019s initial career choice had worked out, you\u2019d might\u2019ve seen her on Broadway instead of in a Canyon Road gallery. She grew up near Camden, New Jersey, and started working as an actor at age 13 in a summer stock company, doing one- and two-line roles.<\/p>\n
After two years as a theater major at Ithaca College, she married a graduating senior and moved to New York City. \u201cI was voted most talented in high school,\u201d she told Pasatiempo in 2021. \u201cI thought in New York they would certainly notice this.\u201d<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t, so she applied for a job at the about-to-open New York outpost of Hugh Hefner\u2019s Playboy Clubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like one of those cattle calls for Broadway shows,\u201d she recalls. \u201cWe all showed up in our bathing suits and leotards, and I got hired.\u201d On her first night on the job, working as \u201cBunny Jill,\u201d she waited on television personality Ed Sullivan.<\/p>\n
Durham kept the job for four years, then married her second husband, Bart Durham, at age 22. (\u201cLots of my life, it\u2019s not that its unsavory, but what is that space right between savory and unsavory?\u201d she muses.) Durham was a University of New Mexico graduate, and the couple moved here in 1966, building their own home outside Cerrillos.<\/p>\n
It was a major gear shift for someone coming out of New York\u2019s fabled 1960s nightlife, but an ability to think on her feet and improvise has always been one of Durham\u2019s hallmarks. Her seemingly natural theatricality prompted the question of whether she\u2019d ever thought about going back to her first love.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did a one-person show several years ago, and the four performances sold out,\u201d she enthuses. \u201cI would love to do something else like it, but I need to find a partner to help put it together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, her Renesan presentation promises to be the best possible substitute.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Santa Fe has spawned a bumper crop of memorable characters over the decades, and one of the most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17,118125],"class_list":{"0":"post-218209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-pasa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115671588082073287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}