Verve magazine: Asheville-based Fine Arts League of the Carolinas sets sights on new cash, curriculum

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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From the September 2011 issue of Verve, on the streets now, a story about the Asheville-based Fine Arts League of the Carolinas and its executive director, Sheri Kahn, planning for big changes:

This fall, the League, like the street it sits on, is about to get a facelift. A few months ago, the nonprofit hired Kahn, a former instructor at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. In addition to cleaning up and reorganizing the building on Depot Street, Kahn is traveling to universities in Western North Carolina and around the state, making a new pitch to cash-strapped administrators: When there’s no budget to hire art faculty, why not outsource classes to the Fine Arts League? She and her staff are tweaking the school’s curriculum to create a comprehensive four-year program. (It has long been three years.) And, they’re making a new marketing pitch to students around the country: move to beautiful Asheville for classical art training with some of the country’s best realist painters. Though she has not yet nailed down funding, she’s working with a patron to secure an endowment for the school that would help her hire more faculty, buy equipment and house students—both in Asheville and in Italy. Still, even with a cash infusion, she and her board are battling a bit of a perception problem: In a digital age, who has the time or cash to study classical art?

Ambitious. I like it.