It enriches your life and expands it. Galleries certainly shouldn't be about isolating art from the rest of the world. That user-friendliness is nothing new on the Ketchum gallery scene, but it's hard to come by in urban areas, Reed said. It's an approach that reflects what's happening in museums across the U.S. and in Western Europe, according to Kristin Poole, artistic director of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts. They're changing from dark, dusty storehouses where scholars work in semidarkness to spaces that open their doors for a variety of uses, some art-related and some not.
Galleries here are in step with that phenomenon.
They're making a constant effort to engage people, and they're very generous and compassionate about their commitment to the community. The Sun Valley Center, a nonprofit educational arts organization, has community outreach as its primary mission. When its gallery exhibits fine art, it is almost always in conjunction with a multidisciplinary program. A center exhibit that opens July 14, for example, will feature artists who chronicled the American West after Lewis and Clark made their original journey. In conjunction with the exhibit, the center is holding lectures, slide shows and classes for adults and children.