Robin Rice Opens Hampton’s Home to Collectors

Renowned Photographer and Gallerist Is Now Private Dealing by Appointment

The Robin Rice Gallery, since 1990, has established a reputation as a space where collectors experience groundbreaking photographic art that challenges, enriches and speaks directly to the viewer. Artists like Jose Picayo, Danielle Epstein, Michael McLaughlin, John Dolan and Patricia Heal have made their reputations, in part, through thoughtful exhibition and promotion at the gallery. The style of photography lends a mood of nostalgia, occasionally capturing the unusual, evoking feelings of romance, a classical time and place where glamour and beauty is celebrated.

Robin Rice is both a noted photographer and dealer who have placed her gallery’s art in the collections of such institutions as The Fashion Institute of Technology, The Brooklyn Museum, The Peninsula Hotel, Bergdorf Goodman, and Donna Karan. In the tradition of the great galleryists like Alfred Stieglitz, Rice has dedicated a significant portion of her career to making her own work and the work of her protégées available to a diverse range of buyers -- upscale tastemakers like Ralph Lauren and Barbara Warner’s H Groome store in Southampton -- who sell the photographs in their own establishments.

The Robin Rice Gallery was recently named “Best Affordable Art Gallery” in New York Magazine's “Best Of” issue 2004.

"I love the moment when the viewer is first drawn to an image," says Rice. "Sometimes it’s indefinable, a moment when the viewer not only shares but also reconnects to an experience remembered. When that moment comes, I'll do whatever I can to make it possible for a client to have the art that moves them. Along with being a photographic artist myself, I am also a matchmaker: I bring people together with art."

Rice is extending the boundaries of her West Village, NY gallery to include private viewings of her stable of artists for clients in her Bridghampton Home from Memorial Day to Thanksgiving 2004. Prospective buyers are now able to phone for an appointment when in the Hamptons and view Rice's own work and the stable of artists she represents.

Prospective buyers are able to see how the work looks in a home setting to further elaborate on hanging style and display in an authentic environment. Rice demonstrates how to form a collection and consults buyers on how to hang and install the art in their own homes, a unique artistic sensibility when individuals are forming a collection.

Rice says the no pressure environment is more about introducing art lovers to new works than about selling individual pieces. (Costs range from $400-$2,500). "I believe in affordable art and I will try my best to bring new collectors together with the pieces they want," she says.

In addition to the new, intimate extension of her gallery at her Hampton home, a portion of the Gallery's inventory will be shown at the Art & Modernism Show held by Jean Sinenberg from July 8-11 at the Bridgehampton Community Center.

Robin Rice Private dealer by Appointment 631-537-1002
Appointments available from Memorial Day through Thanksgiving 2004.