In January of 2023, 25-year SculptureNow (SN) Curator Ann Joncompleted jury selections for that year’s sculpture exhibit at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Massachusetts, where the exhibition had been held for nine years. Not long afterwards, the exhibition’s 501(c)(3) umbrella agent, Berkshire Taconic, sent her a letter stating their fiduciary relationship had ended.
Jon worked hard with contacts at Berkshire Taconic and SN board members to come to an agreement to move the relationship’s closing date to December 2023 to honor previous agreements includingsculptor stipends, marketing materials, crane costs and Jon’s own salary. It was exhausting, but she succeeded.
I was on the SN Advisory Board to help Jon manage the 2023 exhibition under the constant uncertainty. She worked with a surrogate organization in a hand-off from Berkshire Taconic under the Orwellian name of Good Causes. It was a swan song for Jon at age 80 to manage a SculptureNow exhibition one more time for the organization she founded in 1998, before retiring.
Wanting the annual exhibition that had been established as a premier platform for contemporary sculpture in Western Massachusetts and beyond to continue, The Mount stepped in to take ownership. In doing so, it ensured that the show that highlights the work of both emerging and established artists through a diverse range of sculptures in many sizes and media would continue to be thoughtfully sited throughout the nearly 50-acre estate.