Skylark

The Skylark Foundation is committed to encouraging innovation, striving for social justice, and supporting diversity. We award grants to organizations or projects that translate these values into strategically designed and executed activities. For the next 5 years,from 2013 – 2017, The Skylark Foundation will focus on one project: preparing and executing a travelling exhibition of contemporary art to 4-6 universities and colleges across the United States. The exhibition will be composed of a selection of works from the Blake Byrne Collection, a major collection of contemporary art. It will include gifts of art from the collection that have been donated to the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and The Nasher Museum at Duke University, as well as works from the current collection. The exhibition will be scheduled to coincide with each schools calendar so that it will be on view for one semester and can be incorporated into the art history curriculum. There will also be a philanthropic component to the project that will be of interest not only to art history students, but to those studying law and business as well. We are proposing a panel discussion whose members may include alumni who are art collectors and donors, board members, and faculty from the art, law and business schools, to talk about collecting, philanthropy, ethics, and the contributions individual collectors have made to establish the permanent collections of our public and private museums. The exhibitions will begin in the spring of 2015. A request for proposal was sent to several outstanding independent curator candidates in search of a Senior Curator for the project. Joseph R. Wolin, a curator, professor and writer based in New York has been selected. The exhibition he proposed, entitled Open This End: Contemporary Art from the Collection of Blake Byrne, will highlight both iconic and lesser-known works from some of the most significant and compelling artists of the last fifty years. It will tra