The Museum is featuring the AWA exhibit as one of the highlights of their fall 2014 season.  Organizers are putting together a variety of events around the opening week which will be held in tandem with the12th annual Southeastern Cowboy Festival and Symposium.  This year, the museum spotlights women artists as they offer three full days of events, lectures, a symposium and living history encampments complete with reenactments, pow-wow dancing, music and poetry. 
 

To be exhibited at the Booth: “Symphony in Blue and Green,”  a 30 x 30 oil on linen by Master Signature Member  Bethanne Kinsella Cople of Alexandria, VA.

According to The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 51% of today’s visual artists are women, yet only 5% of the art currently on display in American museums is by women artists. Women artists are notably scarce in Western Art.   

“The Booth Museum is excited to be focusing our spotlight on women artists in 2014,” stated Seth Hopkins, Executive Director of the Booth Western Art Museum. “We look forward to hosting the AWA member exhibition and offering a weekend full of related programming during the opening.”

AWA Master and Signature members: Please look for full guidelines on size requirements and deadlines for this important exhibit in your email inbox soon, with catalog details to follow.

President Ann Larsen

If you are a Master or Signature member, AWA has a pleasant announcement to make regarding your annual dues for 2014 – the cost of your membership has dropped for a second year in a row.  

AWA President Ann Larsen cited the board’s commitment to keeping entry-level Associate membership affordable at $60 per year, while also bringing the cost of the more expensive Signature and Master Signature memberships down. 

“It’s a great time to be a member with all that we have going on in 2014, including the Cape Cod show in August and the Booth Museum show in October,” said Larsen. “So we’re delighted that we can once again lower the cost of membership for our Signatures and Masters – many of whom kept this organization afloat for a number of years.”

The U.S. Copyright Office released a 124-page report last month reversing its 20-year-old position opposing resale royalties for visual artists.  At issue is whether or not visual artists should get a cut of the profits when their art is resold at increased value.

“Congress should be concerned,” the Copyright Office’s report concluded, that the current copyright system “is disfavoring a discrete class of authors,” namely painters, illustrators, sculptors and photographers who don’t “share in the long-term financial success of their works.” The report’s authors note the emergence of resale royalty statutes by 70 countries over the last two decades as one of the reasons for its reversal.

Currently, no Federal resale law for visual artists exists and California is the only state to have a resale law on the books. But that law came under attack in October 2011 when a group of artists and their heirs filed class action suits against auction houses , and  for failure to pay royalties.  In 2012, the judge dismissed the suits on the grounds that the Resale Royalty Act violated the  of the United States Constitution, and was therefore invalid as law.  An appeal was filed in 2012 and is still pending.

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Ann Self, new Board Treasurer, is enthusiastic about the job

Ann Self mingles with the crowd during the Opening Reception at the November AWA show in Texas.

 

Signature Member Ann Self, a painter who divides her time between Maine, Kansas and the Southwest joins the AWA Board of Directors stepping in as Treasurer as 2014 gets underway.   

“AWA is a group of dynamic and dedicated artists – who are a lot of fun, too!” notes Self. ” I wanted to get more involved with the organization and am very

 pleased for the opportunity to work more closely with these women.  I did not expect to be offered the position of treasurer and I feel honored for this trust that was placed in me.  Looking forward to a fantastic year!”  

Southern California sculptor and board member Judeth Davis turned over the ledgers after spending a busy year in the Treasurer’s seat.  While serving in office, Davis overhauled AWA’s antiquated bookkeeping system, streamlined the PayPal process, put AWA’s books into a cloud-based format and better aligned  accounting procedures with stricter IRS guidelines for nonprofits.   

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AWA Board and Officers 2013

Ann Larsen, President, Edinburg, NY  Kathrine Lemke Waste, Vice President, Sacramento, CA Paula Holtzclaw, Secretary, Waxhaw, NC Judeth Davis, Glendale, CA Carol Swinney, Immediate Past President, Casper, WY Bethanne Kinsella Cople, Past President, Alexandria, VA Ann Self, Treasurer, Hutchinson, KS DeBob Jacob, Maypearl, TX