Thomas Urquhart
Chateau de La Napoule
(Image courtesy of La Napoule Art Foundation)
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La Napoule Art Foundation President Noele Clews announced the appointment of Thomas Urquhart as the foundation’s new Executive Director. From its base in Portsmouth, NH, the foundation operates the Clews Center for the Arts in La Napoule, France, near the site of the famed Cannes Film Festival.
"We are ecstatic to have found someone of Thomas Urquhart's stature to lead LNAF into the next decade," says Clews. "He combines an extensive background in the arts with a broad international and cultural experience. And he has the perfect blend of idealism and pragmatism that the board feels is essential for a 21st century non-profit. We look forward to his leadership in refining our focus on sculpture and our artist residency program."
La Napoule Art Foundation was founded fifty years ago by Marie Clews to honor the memory and work of her husband, American sculptor Henry Clews, Jr., and to fulfill their vision of a center of Franco-American culture. The foundation’s program is based in a medieval castle at the edge of the Mediterranean in the heart of the French Riviera. It was a ruin when Clews bought it in 1919. Over the next two decades, the heyday of the expatriate American artist community in France, he and Marie lovingly restored the buildings and created a formal garden.
Today Chateau de La Napoule houses the main collection of Henry Clews’ work and is home to an Artist Residency Program for sculptors and artists from around the world. The grounds, with their sculpture gardens, are also open to the public. They serve as the venue for outdoor performances of opera, ballet and music as well as the site of private functions, from weddings to Cannes Film Festival events. Last year, 40,000 visitors came to the chateau.
"It is an extraordinary facility," says Urquhart, "an ideal milieu for inspiration, and a magnet that attracts renowned as well as emerging artists. Over the years it has hosted an impressive roster of artists." Urquhart sees his task as raising awareness of the foundation, helping focus a competitive artistic program, redefining the Artist Residency Program, and developing a first-rate center where selected artists can work for up to a year at a time.
Urquhart, who is British, is a graduate of Oxford University. A Maine resident, he began his career as an arts administrator with the American and Boston Symphony Orchestras, and as director of the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Massachusetts. Besides the arts, his other love is the natural world, and as director of the Maine Audubon Society from 1988 to 2000, he brought a series of outdoor sculpture exhibits celebrating art in the landscape to the Society’s sixty-five acre visitor center. He has lived and worked in France and, during a sabbatical there, wrote For the Beauty of the Earth: Birding, Opera, and Other Journeys, a personal exploration of the relationship between art and nature. He lives now in Falmouth, Maine.
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