Name: Art: What's it All About Anyway?
Start: 2025-12-10T11:00:00-05:00
Location: 707 N Tamiami Trl, Sarasota, FL, United States, Florida 34236

In this engaging talk, Mike Solomon will examine what drives us to make art and to create institutions like art centers, museums, galleries and art fairs.
Inspired by his parents Syd and Annie Solomon and their milieu, Solomon has been versed in art and writing from his earliest years. His activities having included exhibiting for over 35 five years in galleries and museums and his work is in many collections including the Ringling Museum, The Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY and the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina. Among his esteemed collectors are the late Dan Flavin Jr., and the writer Edward Albee. Other private collectors include Beth Rudin de Woody, artist Richard Prince and Tom and Darlene Furst. Solomon has had 3 solo museum shows and has been represented by Berry Campbell Gallery in New York since 2015. Two new important exhibitions are now in the works. He is included in the definitive book on contemporary artists of the Hamptons, Studios by the Sea by Bob Colacello and Jonathan Becker. His work has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, New York Times, Huffington Post, Sarasota Magazine, SRQ and The Surfer's Journal, among others. Bruce Helander writing for Huffington Post called Solomon, "A tastemaker if there ever was one."
Solomon has also written extensively on art which includes a commentary on the important national exhibition "Drawing Surrealism" at the Morgan Library, New York. He has written on Chuck Close for a Guild Hall Survey in East Hampton, Alice Aycock on her Park Avenue Paper Chase installation, and the retrospective on James Books at the Parrish Art Museum. His "On working with John Chamberlain" was featured in White Hot Magazine. His essay, "Bad for You" was written for the contemporary exhibition, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody, at Shizaru Gallery, Mayfair, London.
Solomon has lectured on art and artists at The Pollock Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, The East Hampton Public Library's prestigious Tom Twomey Lecture Series, and he's been the keynote speaker for the Ladies Village Improvement Society's Annual Luncheon at the Maidstone Club in East Hampton. Other talks were at The Phillips Collection Washington, DC, The American Museum of Folk Art, New York, The Center for Architecture, Sarasota, The Leedy House, Winter Haven, The Ringling Museum, Sarasota Art Museum and the St. Pete MFA, St. Petersburg. He is currently finishing his manuscript for the memoir Our Salon by the Sea centered on his parents lives and his growing up in the art world.
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