The Center for Emerging Visual Artists was founded in 1984 as Creative Artists Network (CAN) in Philadelphia, PA by Felicity R. "Bebe" Benoliel in an apartment at the Barclay Hotel on Rittenhouse Square. The non-profit organization serves emerging artists who live and work within 100 miles of Philadelphia, an area that includes the cities of Baltimore, MD and New York, NY, and the entire states of Delaware and New Jersey. The Center for Emerging Visual Artists provides a two-year career development program to artists accepted by the organization's Board of Artistic Advisors.
Famous alumni of the program include the painters Jane Golden and Vincent Desiderio, and photographer Judy Gelles.
Following the death of Founder and Executive Director Benoliel in 2000, the organization began a process of reorganization under Antonia W. Hamilton. In 2001 Maida R. Milone, Esq. was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer. The organization began using the name "The Center for Emerging Visual Artists" in 2004.
In recent years, the organization has increased its emphasis on programs that serve the entire community, including artists, art collectors, and the general public.
Famous quotes containing the words center, emerging, visual and/or artists:
“Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.”
—Thomas Merton (1915–1968)
“That which is given to see
At any moment is the residue, shadowed
In gold or emerging into the clear bluish haze
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Through the rubbish of cloud and tree-spattered pavement.
These days stand like vapor under the trees.”
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“The upshot was, my paintings must burn
that English artists might finally learn.”
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