A Thank You to the Jane Lombard Gallery
The following is written by one of the organizers of the Artists Against Tyranny fundraiser.
One day in late November after we began receiving submissions from a special group of Myanmar artists for an online art fundraiser, I said to a friend in Myanmar, “These painting submissions from Myanmar artists are so beautiful, they deserve to be displayed at a gallery in NYC to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for humanitarian aid”. After that conversation, I mentioned the idea to a Myanmar supporter local to NYC. She said, “I was just at a gallery yesterday that featured a Myanmar artist and met the gallery owner. Why don’t I email her and ask?”. Before we knew it the gallery owner had agreed to let us use their downstairs gallery space for not just one day but three days!
Under normal circumstances, artists in NYC have to book a gallery space one or two years in advance and most galleries charge 50% of all earnings!!! Ms. Jane Lombard at the Jane Lombard Gallery was extremely sympathetic to our cause and offered her much-coveted gallery space to showcase and sell the artwork made by Myanmar artists during a time of immense crisis in the country.
Once the gallery space was secured we began collecting the artwork that was dispersed all throughout Myanmar to be shipped. There was no guarantee the paintings would arrive safely. But lo and behold, almost all the paintings arrived safely.
Immediately after some of the organizers arrived in NYC, we began to unbox the paintings to begin stretching and framing. What a learning curve it was since we had no experience, but we gave it our best! Many of the paintings did not fit the frames we had ordered leading to a lot of last-minute scrambling. On the morning of hanging the paintings, two of the organizers carried paintings throughout NYC to the gallery… On the way, one tripped on a sidewalk crack and another planted her face into the filthy NYC subway rail, which required disinfection afterward. Fortunately, no paintings were harmed! Three of the ladies spent half a day hanging up most of the pieces using a ladder, measuring tape, hammer, nails, and a leveler. On the morning of the first day of the gallery, eight new frames arrived in the mail and one of the organizers spent the taxi ride to the gallery framing the remaining pieces!
We are simply grateful to Jane Lombard, Courtney, John, and the rest of the staff at the Jane Lombard Gallery for their support of Myanmar artists facing extreme human rights violations at the time. We hope you enjoyed reading a bit more of the background to the Artists Against Tyranny Gallery event!