Art Center Sarasota Receives Tourist Development Cultural/Arts Grant

The Sarasota County Commission awarded Art Center Sarasota a $72,855 Tourist Development Cultural/Arts grant to help fund its 2023-2024 exhibition season, which runs through September 2024.  The season, comprised of seven exhibition cycles, most encompassing up to four exhibits, showcases the works of professional and emerging artists from Florida and around the country. 

“Art Center Sarasota has helped make Sarasota an important visual arts destination for visitors from across Florida and elsewhere,” said Kinsey Robb, ACS’s executive director. “While we exhibit the works of artists from our region and state, we’re also a vital resource for locally based artists. Art Center Sarasota truly serves as a creative hub for our entire community. Over the course of a season, our exhibitions provide a visible platform for hundreds of artists to share their work with the public. Our exhibitions are admission-free and artworks on display are available for purchase. The TDC/A plays a vital role in recognizing the importance of arts and culture not only for the residents of Sarasota, but also for the many tourists who travel here to enjoy the numerous visual and performing arts programs offered. We are incredibly grateful and honored to receive this grant and look forward to our 2023/24 exhibition season ahead!” 

Exhibitions director Christina Baril adds that Art Center Sarasota's 2023-2024 season “will highlight an array of solo artists and thought-provoking juried shows that shed light on our unique cultural climate. At the heart of this season is a celebration of diversity, not only in the personal histories of our artists, but also in their materials, techniques, and concepts.” 

What moves Robb the most about the upcoming season? She says it’s the ability to provide access to audiences to view work by artists at different stages in their careers, adding that the experience can be profoundly illuminating. That’s especially true for younger visitors.  

“It’s eye-opening for young people to realize that artistic merit develops in stages,” Robb said. “We reveal that by exhibiting the work of emerging, mid-career, and accomplished artists.” She notes “That providing visitors with unique, unexpected, traditional and experimental work opens up space for dialogue and connection; this season we will be looking at art through multiple lenses.”

Highlights of the 2023-2024 season include:

• November 27, 2023 - January 13, 2024: Juried by Mara Torres, owner and curator of MARA Art Studio + Gallery in Sarasota, the juried show will feature still life works, and solo exhibitions include figurative painting, ceramic sculpture and a sculptural installation by Tom Casmer. In his upcoming exhibition, “ges•talt,” Casmer brings to life the infrastructure that lies beneath the skin, the fabric of the world around him.
• March 14 - April 20: In addition to solo shows in figurative ceramics and portrait photography, and a juried exhibition inspired by great art and artists from art history juried by Professor Alecia Harper, Angela Pilgrim celebrates the complex inner worlds of Black women and invites viewers to contemplate the spiritual dimensions of existence in her solo exhibition of layered prints and mixed media works. 
• May 23 - July 27: The Annual Juried Regional Show is Art Center Sarasota’s largest juried show of the year and invites artists from around Florida to submit their work. This year’s theme, “Beyond Comfort,” asks artists to express their perception of beauty and/or the grotesque in contemporary art and society. The juror for this show is Virginia Shearer, Executive Director, Sarasota Art Museum.