Anna O'Sullivan left a multi million-dollar art business in New York to work at Kilkenny's innovative Butler Gallery. She tells Gemma Tipton about her transatlantic double life
What makes a good gallery a great gallery? The Butler in Kilkenny has always had an excellent reputation, one far greater than its relatively small size would imply. Atmospheric, in the basement of Kilkenny Castle, yes; but ideal as a gallery to show contemporary art? Maybe not. When it comes to defining the reputation of an arts space, curators are just as important, if not more so, than architecture, bricks and mortar. One such curator is Anna O'Sullivan, who, after 22 years in New York, has returned to Ireland to run the Butler. She explains the attraction. "The space at the Butler is fairly limited, but it is such an interesting gallery, and it comes with an excellent international standing."
She says she never assumed she would stay in New York forever. "I always felt it was a long-term apprenticeship rather than a permanent move." Nonetheless, such a shift, from Manhattan to Kilkenny, seems to require some further explanation than a simple desire to return home. Trained originally at the National College of Art and Design, O'Sullivan arrived in the US at a time when "leaving Ireland was the done thing", to be a performance artist and to work in experimental spaces such as Franklin Furnace.
Moving to the Robert Miller Gallery in the Chelsea district of the city, O'Sullivan worked with artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Philip Pearlstein, Renée Cox, Al Held and Bruce Weber and with the estates of Alice Neel, Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell and Diane Arbus. She dealt with clients from Damon Dash, Elton John and Meg Ryan to Walter Zifkin (chief executive of the William Morris Agency) and the film producer David Hoberman.
"You have to remember that while it was a contemporary art gallery, it was also a multimillion-dollar business," says O'Sullivan. "At that level your role is to advise clients rather than to tell them what to buy or what to like. It's to help them to make choices. If someone has come in looking for a particular work by Lee Krasner, for example, and it is not available, you might guide them towards something equally beautiful, which they might enjoy. For that kind of work you have to be well informed."
Nonetheless, working in the not-for-profit sector is a welcome return to her roots for O'Sullivan, and although the Butler does sell work, she suggests that she is looking forward to working with artists in an environment where the pressure is not always to make the sale. "I may have some very experimental ideas about exhibitions, both in the gallery and offsite around Kilkenny. I won't censor myself, and in that I'll be continuing in the innovative tradition of the Butler."
A number of people in the Irish art world had let O'Sullivan know that the Kilkenny job was coming up, thinking it might pique her interest. "What initially attracted me," she remembers, "was the idea of going somewhere very different." In fact, she had briefly considered a return to Dublin, but she discarded the idea. "If I wanted to live in a capital city, I would have stayed in New York." A move from O'Sullivan's East Village apartment to the 18th-century gate lodge where she is now living seems to underline this choice.
"Nonetheless," she adds, "the timing seemed absolutely right." O'Sullivan had already made the choice to leave Robert Miller and to work freelance for a year, a decision that must have indicated she was already planning to leave the commercial sector. In fact, O'Sullivan went to work at the Louise Bourgeois studio, and Bourgeois herself donated $5,000 (€3,750) to the Butler, to welcome O'Sullivan to her new job.
"I really felt I wanted to experience what life was like in Ireland again; it is a very different country to the one I left." But if Ireland has changed, so has the US. "New York is such an incredible city for art; people there are culturally hungry, and they really participate. I came to take for granted all the incredible people I would meet. But the current climate in America has altered. The whole era of Bush has changed the place, and huge sectors are disillusioned with the administration. As an immigrant, I felt that much of the freedom and openness I had gone to find had been eroded and that there is actually more of that in Ireland today than there is in the US."
O'Sullivan's arrival is a major opportunity for Kilkenny, given her unparalleled contacts with artists on both sides of the Atlantic. While in New York, she had always maintained strong links with Ireland, and art students will particularly remember her for the introductory talks she would give them on NCAD's annual trips to Manhattan. She was also always available to Irish curators and artists looking for advice and pointers on arrival in New York.
At the Butler she is planning to introduce the work of some of the most interesting contemporary US artists to Irish audiences. "The artists I have been talking to in America want to show in Kilkenny because it is interesting to them. These are people who don't really need the exposure that an exhibition in one of the big Dublin galleries might bring; they already have that."
An exhibition of Eve Sussman's work is already planned for August and September, and O'Sullivan is working with James Siena, David Sandlin (born in Northern Ireland but living in Atlanta) and Jeanne Silverthorne.
O'Sullivan also plans to work with Irish artists. "What I'm looking forward to is exploring the work of a younger generation of artists, of making rounds of studio visits. I think it's important to get to know artists in their own environment, to talk with them directly in the studio.
"Even though I was in New York for 22 years, I never had that sense that this was my life forever. Another aspect of life that has changed is the ease of communications; with the internet, and with direct flights, you start to see that it's not either/or, Ireland or America. You can maintain links with both countries and be a true dual citizen."
The Butler Gallery Collection: A Selection is showing until Apr 25th. For more, see www.butlergallery.com