The Fine Art of Commissioning
Thursday 19 January 2023
11:30 - 12:30 pm
Chair:
Adriana Kent Paice, Woven Spaces
Panel:
Cynthia Corbett, Director, Cynthia Corbett Gallery
Jane Adams, Founder, Author Interiors
Listen to the recording
A panel on ‘The Fine Art of Commissioning’ will explore how collectors move on from building a collection to commissioning an artist to create a unique work, for either a private home or public space.
This live panel discussion will be recorded and released as part of the BeSpoke podcast, which reveals the stories behind the creation of unique objects, experiences and places, hosted by Adriana Paice Kent, Founder of Woven Spaces, joined by Cynthia Corbett, Director Cynthia Corbett Gallery, and Jane Adams, Founder, Author Interiors.
(Woven Spaces is a creative property development company that weaves together placemaking, craftsmanship and community. For more information about the BeSpoke podcast and Woven Spaces, please visit: www.wovenspaces.co.uk. )
Adriana Kent Paice
Adriana is the Founder and Director of Woven Spaces, a creative property development company that weaves together placemaking, craftsmanship and community.
She is also a curator, artist and editor. Adriana has created BAFTA nominated interactive sculptures for the London Stock Exchange, curated Thomas Heatherwick’s award-winning British Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai and has edited books on British design for Sir John Sorrell.
Her work in interactive textiles includes international collaborations with poets, musicians and fashion designers. As a member of the Greyworld group of artists, she created many large-scale interactive installations in public spaces, including works for the London Stock Exchange, Land Securities, The Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Channel 4. She has recently completed an award-winning development of a handsome art deco building in Fitzrovia.
Cynthia Valianti Corbett
Cynthia Valianti Corbett a native of Marlborough Massachusetts is the Founder and Director of the Cynthia Corbett Gallery and the Young Masters Art Prize (https://www.thecynthiacorbettgallery.com/) & (https://www.young-masters.co.uk/) an international contemporary art gallery which has an annual exhibition programme and regularly exhibits at contemporary art fairs.
Cynthia trained as an art historian at Christie’s Education before establishing her gallery in 2004. Prior to this, she had a high-profile career as an international economist specialising in emerging markets and was the principle architect of the debt conversion plans for most
of Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s. Cynthia was also a regular commentator in the financial broadsheets in both New York and London. She relocated from New York City to London in 1986.
Cynthia obtained a BA with Honors (Magda Cum Laude) & was a Commonwealth Scholar, from UMASS Amherst in Political Science and holds an MALD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Since opening her Gallery, Cynthia’s original stable of artists have all established successful careers. Cynthia also enjoys the process of identifying trends and supporting fledging careers and with this in mind launched The Young Masters Art Prize in 2009 which is a unique not-for-profit competition, open to international and UK-based artists. The Prize aims to give an international platform and exhibition opportunities to both emerging and established artists. The Prize was founded to celebrate artistic skill and innovation with awareness of the Old Masters, relevant cultural history and the art of the past. In 2014, the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize was created to showcase the growing renaissance in ceramics world-wide and 2017 saw the addition of the Young Masters Emerging Women Artist Award. The fifth edition and tenth Anniversary Exhibition of the Prize took place in October 2019. Always on the lookout for new talent, in 2017 Cynthia presented and promoted Young Masters to Tufts University’s newly acquired School of the Museum Fine Arts (SMFA). The result was extraordinary as three female SMFA alumni were chosen as finalists for the 2017 Prize – out of a shortlist of only 18 artists. Two of these artists won both the Emerging Women Artist Award and the First and Second Prize of the overall Young Masters Award.
Cynthia is a founding member of the Association of Women Art Dealers (AWAD), an AWITA member, supporter of many arts organisations including BFAMI, The Royal Academy of Art, The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), The Tate, Serpentine Gallery, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston Massachusetts and is both a Patron of the V & A Museum and an ArtAngel Angel. She is a member of The Arts Club (Dover Street), The House of St Barnabas in London, Soho House in London and The Norwood Club in New York.
Cynthia’s other passions include theatre, walking, reading, travel and Jazz singing. She is married with one daughter and lives in Wimbledon, London.
Jane Adams
Jane originally studied dentistry but always had an interest in interiors and beautiful things. Throughout her studies, she was the one who had eclectic ornaments and antique furniture in her dorm room, including a wall of top hats.
After graduation and seven years as a full-time dentist, Jane decided to pursue her passion for interiors, continuing dentistry part time. She began to work with developers in London and Edinburgh who were turning offices into residential spaces. From there her career as a full-time interior designer grew, gaining numerous clients across Scotland and other parts of the UK.
Working with private clients, Jane noticed that they didn’t have the confidence, or the sheer will to trawl through hundreds of different search pages before they found a piece that was ‘the one’. Clients needed handholding when it came to finding beautiful things to put in their homes. Jane encouraged her clients to go out of their comfort zone and to embrace the quirky and unique, to enjoy the delayed gratification of having a beautiful, unusual piece being made specially for them. This is where the idea of AUTHOR was born.