Friday, July 16, 2010

From the Journal

Art center resumes mission to challenge community with an ambitious set of goals

By Mary Giunca | Journal Reporter
Published: July 16, 2010
(Journal photo by David Rolfe)
By 6:30 last night, Marilyn Burke had settled herself onto a grassy spot in front of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art with about 20 other people. "I thought half of Winston-Salem would be here," she said. "I've been waiting all year for this."

By 7, about 150 people lined the stone walk into the museum, awaiting the cutting of a ribbon and the chance to see the newly remodeled SECCA for themselves.

Eighteen months, $1.8 million and a new owner -- the state of North Carolina -- has transformed the gallery.

Larry Wheeler, the director of the N.C. Museum of Art, welcomed the crowd. "This is a new SECCA for a new time in a new North Carolina," he said. "It's going to charge up the community."

People snaked through in an orderly line peering around, as if afraid to miss anything. They took in the polished concrete floors that replaced the old carpets. They dropped business cards into a basket in order to make a live sculpture pose.

Lighted cases illuminated glass jewelry art. Patterns undulated on the walls. A dance troupe gathered in front of one of the works and performed. (Sidenote: The "dance troupe" was Paper Lantern, and they performed directly in front of the above pictured work.)

Over the course of the night, about 500 people made their way through the museum. (Sidenote: Many of us who were there last night feel this number is too, too conservative. We heard 3 times as many attended.)

"It's as if you've never been here before," said Mary Kerr, a longtime supporter of SECCA. "It's hard to even remember. They're really pressing your sensibilities."

Kerr said that she didn't see a lot of the people she usually saw at SECCA openings, and she said she thought that was a good thing.

SECCA's strategic plan lays out some ambitious goals for the museum, which closed in January 2009.

At the end of 2008, SECCA had about 128 members, and that year about 8,400 people visited the gallery.

By 2014, SECCA intends to sign up 1,200 members, achieve 80 percent capacity at activities and programs and increase gallery attendance 30 percent each year. In order to do that, it will need to reach out to the larger community in ways it never has before, longtime observers of the arts scene have said.

Last night was meant to give people a taste of what the new SECCA could be like.

Milton Rhodes, the president and chief executive of the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, said that the community is ready for a new SECCA, one that will be a standard bearer.

"SECCA really has become a beacon for what the town is trying to brand itself as, a City of the Arts and Innovation," he said.

The community's roots are still pretty conservative, Rhodes said.

"Other places are changing rapidly against people's best wishes, but they're changing," he said. "We've got to move with that as a community."

Janice Ray is a teacher in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School system and has lived in Winston-Salem all her life. Last night was her first visit to SECCA.

"For somebody like me, who wouldn't normally come to just an art exhibit, they should try to create some kind of event, where you come and stay for the night," she said, "with music or wine tastings."

Bruce Foriest, who recently moved back to town, said he had last been at SECCA 15 years ago to see Ruby Dee perform.

He wondered why those he sees at the Diggs Gallery and Delta Fine Arts had not made the trip across town to SECCA.

"I'm going to be advocating for it," he said.

Several people said that SECCA has always been too sophisticated for Winston-Salem and likely always will be. But energy, vitality and creativity were the watchwords invoked by many arts administrators and visitors.

Rhodes said that this time around, he thinks SECCA has a chance to fulfill its potential as a place for the community to gather and experience contemporary art that will alternately engage and delight, challenge and occasionally infuriate.

"I think the town has changed," he said. "The focus is on the creative class, a knowledge-based economy.

"SECCA will push us. It will challenge our standard."

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