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Theater & Arts
Culture Clash
New peace-themed gallery a place for big art in Dayton
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By By Ron Rollins,
Staff Writer
4:51 PM Friday, August 14, 2009
This peace thing seems to be catching on, a little bit at a time.
Since the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the Balkan war in 1995, the idea of promoting peace is becoming more and more part of our local landscape.
Most prominently, there are the Dayton International Peace Museum downtown and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which is approaching its fifth year. The third ScreenPeace Film Festival happens this fall. Wright State and the University of Dayton offer programs in peace studies and human rights.
Add to all this, now, a brand new art gallery that will exist solely to show works that explore the idea of peace. Its creators believe it may be the only one like it anywhere.
The Missing Peace Art Space opens Sept. 4 at 234 S. Dutoit St. in a 1900 carriage-house building that stood vacant and trashed for years. Near Fifth Street and across from Stivers School for the Arts, the two-story structure has been beautifully renovated by Steve Fryburg and Gabriela Pickett and their friends.
Fryburg, former director of the Peace Museum, and Pickett, an artist, are friends and fellow peace activists who decided that the physical space of the peace museum didn’t necessarily lend itself to showing large artworks of the type they wanted to exhibit to encourage community discussions about peace and art.
“Art is such an important part of peace,” Fryburg said, “all the way back to Goya and Picasso. Art can be a forum for the kind of discussion we should have.” Their non-profit gallery was formed as an alliance with the museum and the Unitarian Fellowship for World Peace. They have an ambitious lineup of artists — New York painter Max Ginsburg from Sept. 4-Oct. 12, and Italian artist Arrigo Musti from Oct. 22-Dec. 6. For more information, visit www.MissingPeaceArt.org.
Fryburg and Pickett want to conduct meetings and workshops, in addition to displaying work, and make the space available for local artists and children. They hope to use Pickett’s upstairs studio to encourage young artists to work peace themes. “It’s an art space, not just a gallery,” Pickett said.
There are several good things going on here. First, there is the always-inspiring fact of seeing active, involved people pouring their time, money and effort into a new community project. Next, there is the possibility of bringing a fresh new perspective to the St. Anne’s Hill district, with the addition of a new art gallery. With Stivers and the High Street gallery nearby, and the Front Street artists’ colony a stone’s throw away, it would be neat to see this neighborhood emerge as a livelier, busier Dayton art spot.
“St. Anne’s Hill wants to become more of a culturally active area with the arts,” Pickett said. “We think we’re part of that.”
But finally, there is the larger, over-riding peace initiative in a city whose largest employer is an Air Force base. “Can you think of any better place?” Fryburg asks. “You don’t make your point by preaching to the choir. This isn’t all black and white.”
“But peace can be Dayton’s future, part of the Dayton recovery,” he says. “It isn’t going to be manufacturing again. Why couldn’t it be peace?”
He hopes his new art space will become part of the local conversation. “We know we’ll bring in some art work that will be controversial. We wouldn’t be a good gallery if we didn’t.”
Let the conversation begin.Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2165 or rrollins@
DaytonDailyNews.com.
CulTuRe Clash
Ron Rollins
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