The Fence Comes to Sarasota

Traveling Exhibition Features World Class Photography
By Sue Cullen

The Fence, North America’s largest public photo exhibition, is now open at Nathan Benderson Park through January 31, and getting it here was a bit of a coup for Sarasota and a nod to its reputation as a small town with a big heart for the arts. “The Fence is considered to be one of the best traveling public art exhibits in the country and probably the world,” said Jim Shirley, Executive Director of the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County. “This is high-quality photography curated by professionals in the industry.”

Artwork from photographers worldwide was selected by a jury that included pros from high-profile media such as National Geographic, New York Times, Vanity Fair and Le Monde as well as curators from museums and art centers. Large-scale photographs from the more than 40 winners are displayed in a series of up to five pictures that tell a story. They are arrayed along a fence on Nathan Benderson Park’s Regatta Island. The Fence (fence.photoville.com) includes seven thematic categories–home, streets, people, creatures, nature, play and food. Admission is free, and the exhibit is open during park hours.

United Photo Industries created and produced the traveling exhibit that opened in Brooklyn this summer and also is being displayed in Boston, Atlanta, Santa Fe, Durham, Denver and Calgary, Canada, as well as Sarasota. Getting it to Sarasota wasn’t easy. A couple of local artists had approached the Alliance two years ago about bringing The Fence here, but with a World Rowing Championship on the horizon and the Bayfront in transition and out of contention as a possible location, the timing didn’t seem right, Shirley said.

More recently, one of those artists, photographer Ann McGough, contacted well-known local promoter Barbara Strauss. “The Alliance has been 100 percent involved in The Fence since the beginning, but Barbara is the force that made it take place,” he said. With only a very short time to make it happen, Strauss said she approached Stephen Rodriguez, President and CEO of Sarasota Aquatic Nature Center Associates (SANCA), which oversees Nathan Benderson Park.

“When Barbara told me about it and said they were looking for somewhere for it to go, I thought ‘What a great opportunity for us to have something else that is world class that is not necessarily sports’,” Rodriguez said. “It was an opportunity to show the public this park can be utilized in so many different ways to serve the community, and this is one of those ways. I saw a lot of opportunity with this and like that it is a three-year event.”

Because The Fence is being held in a public venue, Shirley believes it will draw a diverse audience making it available to populations that may hesitate to attend traditional venues. “We do a lot of studies about why people go, and do not go, to arts events. Some people, particularly diverse populations, may not go to a museum, but outdoor venues break down some of those barriers and give more diverse sections of the population an opportunity to be involved in the arts,” Shirley said. “It is a significant achievement that a lot of people in a community of this size will get to see an exhibit of this quality.”

Deported musician Jose Marquez poses for a photograph that a visitor is taking of his family from across the border wall at Friendship Park, the only federally established binational meeting place along the 2,000-mile border dividing the United States and Mexico on May 15, 2016. Marquez has not been able to hug his daughter Susana in 14 years, since he was deported from the United States after living and working in San diego for 18 years.