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Week of 16 October 1998 Vol. II, No. 10 Arts The Sherman Gallery has arrived By Eric McHenry The Sherman Gallery's location -- on the second floor of the George Sherman Union Link, neither in the Mugar Memorial Library nor in the Union proper -- is an appropriate one, given its history. It's never really had a home. Responsibility for the Gallery since the building renovation that created it in the early 1980s has been passed from the Student Activities Office to the Office of the Vice President for Arts Publications and Media, back to the Student Activities Office, and most recently to the visual arts division of SFA. With a new name, budget, exhibitions coordinator, exhibitions committee, and sense of mission, it appears finally to have settled. Katherine French took charge of the Sherman Gallery in mid-1997, after serving for nearly two decades as program coordinator for SFA. One of her first undertakings in the new position was to create, with the help of the exhibitions committee, a concise mission statement for the Gallery. According to that document, its purpose is quite simple: to showcase the work of BU students, faculty, and alumni, as well as work related to the visual arts curriculum. The exhibitions committee, which comprises SFA faculty representing each of the school's subject areas, meets monthly to select and plan upcoming shows. The Gallery now hosts eight to ten openings per year. "The improvement in the quality of shows there has been astounding," says James Eisenberg, reservations coordinator for the University. "It's a tricky space to use. The shape is somewhat odd, and it's difficult to mount a show well. I think Katherine and her associates have done an amazing job of making the space work." Katherine French puts the finishing touches on a Sherman Gallery exhibition of paintings by SFA Teaching Associate Sam Lacombe (SFA'88,'90). French, who in mid-1997 became exhibitions coordinator for the Gallery, says its mission is to showcase the work of BU faculty, alumni, and students. Photo by Vernon Doucette Recent installations have included work by Stephen Frank, SFA assistant professor of photography; drawings by the late SFA Professor Marianna Pineda, which accompanied a BU Art Gallery retrospective exhibition of her sculptures; and Through Our Eyes: Artwork by Homeless Children. That show, cosponsored by the visual arts division and the School of Social Work, was particularly instructive to students in the SFA arts education program, French says. Although the Sherman Gallery is limited to art and artists that meet the criteria of its mission statement, it is by no means limited. "We're very ambitious," she says. "We have a strong institutional memory, and we're able to draw upon that in order to put forth some of the best of what BU has produced. "Jon Imber (SFA'77) curated Recent American Portraits: A Personal Selection, and many New York galleries lent to that exhibition. It had work by Fairfield Porter, Alex Katz, and Philip Guston [late SFA professor of visual art] -- very valuable pieces by very renowned artists. Obviously they weren't students or alumni, but their work spoke to an alumnus who curated the show." Soaring ambitions require deep pockets, of course. French says the Gallery would not have experienced its recent renaissance without seed money from the Humanities Foundation at Boston University. Dedicated to enhancing the life of the humanities on campus, the Foundation provides various forms of support for University institutions, faculty, and students. "Our initial grant to the Sherman Gallery accomplished exactly what seed grants are supposed to do," says Katherine O'Connor, CAS professor of modern foreign languages and director of the Foundation. "In academia, a seed grant so often goes to a project that cannot be sustained, for whatever reasons. This is a case of what I would call the miraculous antithesis of that scenario." Although the Sherman Gallery's official source of funding is now SFA, the Foundation continues to be a benefactor. It recently approved three allotments of $15,000 each for a master class series and catalogues that will accompany retrospective exhibitions featuring Imber and the late painter James Weeks, longtime SFA professor of visual art. The proposals French has put forth for consideration, O'Connor says, have not been difficult to approve. "They say exactly what they need to say, and the prose is lucid and direct," she says. "But what's most important is that these are precisely the sorts of projects the Humanities Foundation exists to support." Praise for French's work hasn't come exclusively from internal sources. Flattering write-ups in the Boston Globe and Boston Herald have helped give the Gallery a regional reputation. And with unsolicited slides coming in from all sorts of visual artists, many of whom have no affiliation with the University, French has had to become expert at the delicate decline. "We're booked solid for the next year and a half," she says.