Loyal buyers secure a positive start - The Art Newspaper

6 THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL/MIAMI BEACH DAILY EDITION 4 DECEMBER 2008
Vero Beach
Gated community becomes Florida cultural hot spot
Private museum for super-rich snowbirds with a taste for contemporary art is a testing ground for mid-career artists
An exclusive residential community
in Florida may be an
unlikely place for a gallery
that organises museum-quality
travelling shows but Windsor
is unlike most gated communities.
The Canadian retailing
billionaire Galen Weston and
his wife Hilary founded it in
1989 in Vero Beach, 140 miles
north of Miami. Windsor
includes many of the amenities
you would expect in a
development catering to millionaires:
sprawling mansions
(an oceanfront estate with
seven bedrooms and 12 bathrooms
is currently available
for $14m), the obligatory golf
course and tennis courts and a
gun club (boasting “new clay
shooting games from England
and Europe”).
What makes Windsor
unique is its art gallery, which
opened in 2002. It is run by
Galen’s daughter, Alannah, a
branding expert whose day job
is creative director of the
upmarket London department
story Selfridges. At Windsor,
Ms Weston has overseen an
ambitious exhibition programme,
which has included
shows devoted to Bruce
Weber, Ed Ruscha and Peter
Doig. This year the gallery
hosts “Alex Katz: Seeing,
Drawing, Making”.
The Art Newspaper: Why did
you first open the gallery?
Alannah Weston: My parents
had told me they wanted me to
be the creative director of
Windsor and to inject the community
with some new energy.
I looked at the development
and said: “this is a fantastic
village and therefore it must
have a cultural heart.”
TAN: How have the residents
responded?
AW: There is tremendous support
for the gallery and I think
it’s because of the quality of
shows we’ve done. A lot of
people who live at Windsor
are there for six to eight
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months a year; most of them
have lives up north or in
Europe that are built around
the cultural institutions of
their region. If you’re an educated,
sophisticated person
you’re not going to go without
culture for half the year.
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But not everyone loves our
shows: our inaugural photography
exhibition on the theme
of the beach included the
famous Tierney Gearon pictures
[which show the photographer’s
two young children
nude], which I happen to
Clockwise, from far left: a
luxurious Windsor estate;
the Gallery at Windsor, with
a Tierney Gearon photo
displayed at right; gallery
director Alannah Weston
own. Somebody actually left
the community because they
were so shocked by them but
my attitude and my parents’ is
that these are not really the
sort of people we want at
Windsor anyway.
TAN: What is the brief you
give your curators?
AW: When we began, the brief
was quite tight. It was about
photography and it was about
themes that made sense in the
environment. We then started
to realise that works on paper
were starting to emerge as a
theme so the main brief now is
to work with mid-career artists
who are established but may
not have reached the peak of
their careers.
The curators we’ve worked
with have been very perspicacious
about their choices: Ed
Ruscha had a Whitney show
and Peter Doig had a Tate
show right after we did our
works on paper exhibitions, so
the Windsor gallery has
become like a laboratory
where the artists can test their
ideas, see how a group of
works can sit together.
If you want to develop an
institution of this kind that is
small and only hosts shows
every year or two, it’s important
to be incredibly consistent.
Another important factor
is the quality of the catalogues
we publish.
TAN: How unusual is it to
have a gallery like yours in a
residential community?
AW: There are golf course
communities that have exhibited
some sculptures but to
have a private museum where
internationally recognised
shows are being generated is
very special and is a real talking
point for the people who
live there. We’ve had several
residents who have come to us
through our exhibitions.
Our residents want to be
with like-minded people.
These are intelligent people
who have decided they’re
going to spend time in the
warm weather; that doesn’t
mean they’re going to switch
their brains off completely.
Interview by Cristina Ruiz
❏ “Alex Katz: Seeing, Drawing, Making”,
7 December-20 April 2009. Open by
appointment. See Listings, p15.