A dream that has been in the making for more than a decade became a reality on October 3, when the Sedona Museum of Art opened in Suite 4 of Harkins Plaza in West Sedona.

“We’ve had a quiet start,” joked board chairman Harley Todd. For now, the museum will welcome visitors Thursday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., but the organization hopes to expand those hours as it recruits additional volunteers. Admission is free.

“We’ve been looking at a lot of different ways to make this happen, and the current board has decided to make it happen,” said Mike Schrader, chairman of the recovery committee. “So here we are. We’re standing in it.”

“It took about four months to put the entire exhibit together,” said board vice president Mary Byrd. “Then we found a space that already had partitions and was almost set up as a museum. We jumped on it, and it took about four months from there.”

Byrd and Schrader said the Harkins Plaza site has advantages in terms of parking, pedestrian traffic, visibility and location.

“Between the ice cream, the movies, and the thrift stores, we’re sure to see a fair amount of tourism here,” Schroeder said.

FAMoS currently includes Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst, Jim Reynolds, Charlie Dye, Lillian Wilhelm Smith, Kurt Walters, Stephen Quiller, Alan Wylie, Jerry Bewley, Nika Fleisig, and Christine Fleisig. Despain, Susan Kleewer, Franklin Fireshaker, David Cheslaje Paladin, Frank McCarthy, Joella Jean Mahoney, Gloria Rothrock, Anna Mary Seffert, James Muir, Theodosia Greene, John & Ruth Waddell, Zoe Mozart. The exhibition will be on display until mid-February.

“This is kind of a retrospective of the different types of art that were here,” Bird said. Most of the works on display are on loan from local collectors, but some are from the artists themselves.

“The main art that Sedona was known for was Surrealism, with visiting Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, both very prominent Surrealists,” Schroeder said. The surrealism section of the exhibition also includes works by Max’s son Jimmy Ernst and granddaughter Amy Ernst, as well as works by guest French surrealist artist Yves Tanguy, as well as unique prints by Max Ernst whose history is still unknown. It is.

“The other big art area that Sedona is known for is, of course, the Cowboy Artists of America, and these are two notable pieces of original cowboy art by members of the Cowboy Artists of America. [CAA]” Schroeder said. “Lillian Wilhelm Smith was something of a pioneer of female artists who came and lived in Sedona in the early days.”

CAA was founded in 1965 at Oak Creek Tavern (now the Cowboy Club) in Uptown.

“She owned the C.K. ranch where Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning lived before they built their home on Brewer Road,” Ms. Byrd said. “Many of them have different connections.”

Around the corner, Zoe Mozart’s work further strengthens the Sedona connection.

“The state tried to bulldoze her house, but some people came together and saved it,” Byrd said. “She’s one of the big four pin-up artists, and there’s all kinds of articles written about the depiction of female pin-up artists and the depiction of male pin-up artists, and then she ended up here…She was in Hollywood and… He had a lot of connections and also did great work.” Sedona’s connections to the film industry. ”

Mozart was the creator of the famous Jane Russell poster for the 1943 Western film The Outlaws.

Some of the exhibits also feature works by American Indian artists or with American Indian themes.

“He has a very interesting personal history,” Schrader said of Paladin’s work. “He was half Navajo and half white, and when he was about 16 he was put in a German prisoner of war camp because he was scouted by the CIA, then the OSS, because he had learned the language and the language.” He loved the streets. They discovered him in Australia when he was about 14 years old. This story is a little hard to believe, but he does quite a job. ”

Muir’s life-sized “Man in the Maze” stands outside the museum’s front window. Schroeder said the bronze was “the first to come out of the foundry.” A striking John Waddell painting depicting John Waddell’s wife and fellow artist Ruth Waddell and her friend Nancy Spero with sun and moon faces in a “Coraline” style hangs nearby. are.

“I’ve never seen this before,” Bird said.

Next, visitors can find an example of Green’s work, who previously lived on Coffee Pot Drive.

“This is her early work, but it definitely shows some of the edge she had,” Schrader said. “Pretty fascinating. And Gloria Rothrock, she lived here for a long time. Her art was pretty popular in the New Age world.”

Next to these pieces hangs a large nude painting by Mahoney, the subject of a recent retrospective at the Sedona Arts Center, painted in refreshing shades of cool blue and teal.

“This is the way she sets it up, you can hang it either way,” Schroeder said. “When you hang it like this, it looks more like her landscape. It’s wired in both directions.”

“While our theme is the journey of art through time, many of the other underlying themes are how people came to see Sedona as a refuge,” Bird said. looked back. “For example, Nika-san. [Fleissig], [Rabbi] Alicia [Magal]’s mother was a Holocaust survivor. Paladin, World War II. Max Ernst came to Sedona traumatized by World War I and devoted to the Dada Surrealist movement. Many people came here seeking refuge from what was happening in the outside world. And another theme is the idea that art can extend your life. Ruth Waddell began painting those flowers when she was in her 90s. ”

The museum also has a small multimedia room that is currently showing an oral history film about Muir that was funded by a grant from the Arizona Community Foundation.

“We originally had a whole oral history project going, and James was one of the first ones we worked on, but we’ve since been collecting other oral histories,” Bird said. Ta. “We’ll have more work coming out in the future, so we’ll keep it on a continuous loop here for people to see. This is more than just a gallery. It’s an educational experience. And we are We’re going to reach out and find school groups that would like to come.”

“I think people can be a little scared to go into galleries,” Schroeder said. “They may come here and be artistically minded and have their own aspirations, but when you walk into a gallery, someone tries to sell you something. You just want to have fun and learn, but that’s not the environment you’re in…We wanted to make this a more welcoming place for all visitors.”

“We are working on planning the next exhibition,” Schrader said. “There are a lot of possibilities. Maybe we could have another exhibit about Sedona art. Or maybe we could have a traveling exhibit. Or maybe we could have artists who have relatives or people who live here. , you may know that you have a collection of a particular artist that you would like to make available to the public, so there may be an opportunity to exhibit very high quality work by lesser known artists.”

“We have a multi-year lease here and will be hosting temporary exhibitions on a regular basis,” Bird explained. “Our vision is to regularly host temporary exhibitions of the highest artistic value, and we hope to have a larger permanent exhibition space in the future.”

“We’ve already done all kinds of surveys of the community over the past few years,” Bird continued. “Sixty percent said they were in favor of the museum and would support the museum. We did a feasibility study, a capital campaign feasibility study, and then in 2017 we developed a major business plan and facilities plan. It’s predicated on having a permanent land location where we can do that. So we think we’ve done our due diligence, but then we talked about having a permanent location. The board of directors decided to establish our first location here, to establish our first location here, and to work in a larger facility at the same time.”

Byrd said building a permanent collection will have to wait until a permanent location is completed.

“Without a physical presence, you just weren’t authentic when talking to a lot of people,” Schrader said. “You were conceptual. It’s no longer just a concept. There’s a reality that we can build, and we can get people excited about the possibilities.”

“We are looking for grants and private donors to support our educational mission,” Bird said. “We need volunteers, committee members. We are looking for more directors.”

“Anyone who loves art should stop and say ‘hello,'” Schrader said.