University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

Page 23 text:

maintain his integrity as a collector. The photographs themselves were at the gallery by mid-July. It was a thrill to see the originals after working with press pictures and catalog cards with postage stamp size reproductions of the photo- graphs. Particularly exciting was being able to handle Sir John Herschel ' s Feathers, circa 1845, one of the first (continued on next page 7 was constantly faced with the problem of promoting Nash as the collector of fine art photography while playing down his public image as rock star ... 19

Page 22 text:

The Graham Nash Opening seen a Diane Arbus show at the Boston Museum while Graham was on tour. They liked the gray walls with the photographs so much that we called Boston to find out exactly what paint they used. While all the hanging and painting was going on, I was at my desk writing press releases and making telephone calls. The first step in my publicity work was to design a publicity campaign. Once I decided what information was going to be released and when, I had to determine who it would go to. Making up the publicity mailing list was a frustrating task. It seemed as if there was always someone I had left out. It taught me to be informed and flexible. I was given a lot of freedom to do my own publicity but with this license came the responsibility of handling the press coverage so that it would be suitable for the gallery and Graham Nash as well. I was constantly faced with the problem of promoting Nash as a collector of fine art photography while playing down his public image as a rock star of Crosby, Stills Nash. At times this was a difficult task; I had to refuse a television appearance and a radio interview for Graham, both excellent coverage, to 18

Page 24 text:

The Graham Nash Opening 20 photographs taken on light sensitive paper. The photograph seemed so fragile without being matted and behind glass. The photographs were framed and ready to put into sequence, and it was Graham ' s desire to have the photographs placed in a random but aesthetically pleasing order. Lydia came back from her leave of absence at the end of August to begin the preliminary arrangements. Graham came down a few weeks later to play shuffle-the-picture as his wife, Susan, puts it. We called it the final sequencing. It gave us great pride to show Graham how the exhibition had progressed. He shared our enthusiasm, for this was the first time he had seen many of his photographs framed and ready to be displayed. We toured through each gallery mak- ing notes and discussing various aspects of the exhibition. Jackson, Graham ' s son. was always present either in one of his parent ' s arms or crawling on the Gallery floor. Marc tried to amuse Jackson by giving him his watch to play with, but soom regretted his generosity when Jackson decided to break in a new set of teeth on his watchband. At one point Graham was thinking about taking a picture out of the show because he did not think it could be sequenced anywhere. It was Kemmler ' s Photography Enthusiast, the only picture in the show that made a statement about photography itself. I expressed my disappointment and Graham half jokingly remarked, It was taken by an unknown photographer, nobody famous. Why would you want to keep a photo like that? I like it! I replied. Graham took another glance at the picture and said, For you, Virginia, we ' ll keep it! There were other times when Graham would be thoroughly engrossed in his collection. In his enthusiasm, I could catch glimpses of the charisma I knew he had to capture an audience of 60,000 at a rock concert. It was this magnetic creative energy that made Graham the ,artist--as the creator of music or the collector of photographs. Both depended on his aesthetic judgement. In one day my efforts during the summer had been culminated. On October 6, I hosted a press meeting with Graham that included correspondents from radio stations, newspapers, all SCU media, Ccnterstage and Life magazines. The meeting was over at noon, giving the staff the afternoon hours to recover and attend to last minute preparations for the opening. As Director of Publicity, I was given the task of going to a Hallmark card shop to buy 1000 royal blue napkins to match the gallery ' s decor.