Park West Gallery
Park West Gallery, one of the world's largest art dealers/galleries in terms of unit sales[1], conducts fine art auctions across theUnited States and Canada, as well as on cruise ships around the world. In addition to its main gallery and art conservation facility in Southfield, Michigan, Park West operates a framing and distribution center in Miami Lakes, Florida, and maintains a catalog and Internet sales business. Park West's extensive relationships with artists and the ability to reach art enthusiasts around the world results in approximately 300,000 pieces of fine art sold each year.[2] Since its modest beginnings, Park West has brought the normally exclusive world of fine art to over 1.2 million clients in over 60 countries around the world.[2]
History
CEO Albert Scaglione, a former engineering professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and graduate from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, founded Park West Gallery in 1969 after leaving his job at NASA where he worked on solving solving heat shielding problems.[2] Starting out selling paintings out of the back of his truck, Scaglione, with a mission to introduce fine art to the public, has grown Park West into one of the largest galleries, auction houses, and art dealers in the world. Today, the gallery itself consists of a 63,000-square-foot Greco-Roman building offering 23 exhibit spaces, each devoted to a particular artist or type of art.[3].
Today, Park West Gallery mounts exhibitions featuring works by old and modern masters, including Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Francisco Goya, Joan Miró, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Park West Gallery also represents numerous contemporary artists, including Yaacov Agam, Peter Max, Csaba Marcus, Anatole Krasnyansky, Fanch Ledan, Marcel Mouly, Linda LeKinff, Tomasz Rut, Igor Medvedev, Itzchak Tarkay, and Scott Jacobs.[4] In addition to fine art, Park West Gallery also offers animation cells from Disney Fine Art, Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, and other smaller studios as well as a large sports memorabilia collection featuring exclusive items from such notable athletes as Muhammad Ali.[5]
Unlike traditional galleries and auction houses, Park West has always tried to bring art to the people by conducting auctions around the United States and the world. From the earliest days of the company, Scaglione traveled as far as Texas and Florida to conduct auctions.[6] During the 1990s, Park West Gallery began conducting fine art auctions aboard cruise lines and discovered an opportunity to bring art collecting to a large cross-section of the public. Today, Park West conducts thousands of auctions aboard such cruise lines as Carnival Cruise Lines, Celebrity, Disney, Holland America, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Regent, Royal Caribbean International, and Oceania, as well as at Sandals Resorts. "Our core business is to create art auctions all over the world," Scaglione has said. "Our mantra, from early on, was to make art accessible to people."
Among its charitable activities, Park West Gallery donates artwork to university art collections such as Jackson Community College, Texas State University-San Marcos, and Wittenberg University, and to other institutions, notably New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Selected Exhibitions
- June 2008 Tarkay: Recent Works, a collection of more than 40 paintings, watercolors, mixed media and limited-edition serigraphs by figurative artist Itzchak Tarkay.
- September 2007 Agam: Kinetic Art, a collection of unique hand-signed works by famed kinetic artist, Yaacov Agam.
- August 2005 Picasso: A Pictorial Autobiography, a diverse collection including ceramics, drawings and paintaings on paper, and pieces from The Suite Vollard and The 347 Series.
- February 1993 Salvador Dali: Illustrations of "The Divine Comedy", a collection of more than 50 works illustrating the 14th century poem, where Dante Alighieri is guided through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.
Books
- Salvador Dali: The Divine Comedy, Sacra Biblia, Albaretto Collection, Original Drawings and Paintings (1993)
- The Works of Tomasz Rut, Volume I (2002 ISBN: 0-9710771-0-X), catalogs works from 1992-2001. The book is a monograph of the timeless and inspirational work of Rut, with full-color illustrations of dramatically posed nudes and imaginary figures that evoke the harmony and form of the old masters. Volume I includes a foreword by Bruce Helander, a writer and artist whose collages frequently appear in The New Yorker, and an essay by Carol Damian, Ph.D., an Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Visual Arts Department at Florida International University.
- Fanch, The Graphic Work (2003 ISBN: 0-9742588-1-4) explores the life and artwork of Fanch Ledan, with brilliant, full-color images of his work, organized by decade. The book includes an essay by Eleanor Hight, Ph.D., University of New Hampshire art professor, as well as a chronology of Fanch's life and work to date, and background information on Park West Gallery.
- The Works of Tomasz Rut, Volume II (2006 ISBN: 0-9742588-3-0), catalogs works from 2001-2005. This book continues to capture the dramatically posed nudes and imaginary figures of Volume I with numerous full-color illustrations. Volume II includes a dedication, acknowledgements and forward by the artist, Tomasz Rut, and an essay by Roland Nairnsey, a sales trainer, motivator and avid collector of Tomasz Rut paintings.
- The Serigraphs of Igor Medvedev (2007 ISBN: 0-9742588-4-9) features beautiful, full-color examples of Medvedev's serigraphs, organized by their subject matter: boats, architecture, and doors and windows. The book also includes several essays by Anthony F. Janson, co-author of History of Art, a popular textbook on fine art. His essays include a biographical sketch on Igor Medvedev, a description of serigraphy and background information on Park West Gallery.
External Links
References
- ^ http://www.mlive.com/businessreview/oakland/index.ssf/2008/05/gallerys_cruise_ship_strategy.html
- ^ a b c http://www.parkwestgallery.com/aboutMSUAlumni.aspx
- ^ http://www.parkwestgallery.com/aboutNWATraveler.aspx
- ^ http://bio.parkwestgallery.com/
- ^ http://www.parkwestgallery.com
- ^ http://www.metromodemedia.com/features/ParkGallery0051.aspx