Real Art Ways

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Real Art Ways, founded in 1975, is one of the oldest alternative art spaces in the United States. Currently directed by Will K. Wilkins, it hosts a variety of art exhibitions, musical performances, and film showings. Located in the slightly eccentric Parkville district of Hartford, Connecticut, it seeks to serve needs both within the immediate community and Hartford at large.

[edit] External links

• A history of Real Art Ways on their website.

Founded in 1975 by composer/oboist Joseph Celli, Real Art Ways is one of the country's early alternative arts spaces. Real Art Ways (RAW) began when a group of visual artists and musicians took over a rambling upstairs space on Asylum Street in downtown Hartford. The founding members created a bare bones salon in which they lived, worked and presented the work of others primarily of an experimental nature. The idea of alternativity to the mainstream is central to Real Art Ways – the organization arose at a moment when alternative ideas were being explored (e.g. alternative foods, alternative medicines) and alternative institutions were being established (e.g. alternative newspapers, alternative schools, food co-ops, alternative health care programs). In the early years, RAW presented significant emerging artists including Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, with establish avant-garde artists John Cage, Stan VanDerBeek, Ornette Coleman and many others.

Real Art Ways (RAW) presents and produces new and innovative work by emerging and established artists, and serves as a crucial connection for audiences and artists regionally, nationally and internationally. The organization has sustained itself through committed support for new ideas and disciplines, and has steadily built a diverse and unique audience that crosses lines of color, sexual orientation, economics and age.