Remembering Joseph A. Chazan, MD
Click the image to watch AS220 founder and former Artistic Director talk to Joseph A. Chazan, MD, on episode 3 of TV220.
Dr. Joseph A. Chazan, MD, passed away late last month. While thinking about how AS220 could pay tribute to this man who was so important to our organization, it occurred to me that I did not know Dr. Chazan personally. However, I am reminded of his contributions every day as I walk around our campus in downtown Providence, and through the halls of our spaces.
Dr. Chazan was an avid collector and patron of Rhode Island artists. Shauna Duffy, AS220’s Co-Executive Director, says “Joe Chazan was probably the single greatest supporter of artists in Rhode Island in the past 50 years.” Through his interest, he forged relationships with countless people and organizations in Rhode Island's creative community, including AS220.
Joe came to AS220 at a make-or-break moment in the fall of 1992. Located in Providence's Jewelry District, we had launched the "Build AS220" campaign, a grassroots fundraising effort to buy a permanent home of our own. As luck would have it, one of Dr. Chazan's connections, Diana Johnson (Director of Brown University's Bell Gallery), introduced him to AS220 at 71 Richmond Street, above Club Babyhead, where he met Artistic Director Umberto Crenca and AS220's building developer extraordinaire Lucie Searle.
From this initial meeting, when "nobody would give AS220 the time of day" according to Lucie, Joe was inspired to serve as the Chair of our capital campaign. He was a major booster of the entire effort, including the promotion and sale of our limited edition Building Box print portfolio (featuring work by Howard Ben Tré, Leslie Bostrom, Ruth Dealy, Alfred DeCredico, and Denny R. Moers) which was the centerpiece of our fundraising effort. Thanks to Joe’s leadership, and the support it helped to garner, AS220 purchased our own building at 115 Empire Street in 1993.
1. Diana Johnson 2. Joseph A. Chazan, MD 3. Ruth Dealy 4. Molly Dealy 5. Geoff Adams 6. Joseph L. Auger 7. Tom Hurdle 8. Paige Van Antwerp 9. David Karoff 10. Susan Clausen 11. Steve Durkee 12. Umberto Crenca 13. Lucie G. Searle 14. Chris Basso 15. Jeremy Woodward 16. Tom Paulhus 17. Tracy Brown 18. Dennis diBattista 19. Arnold B. Chase Jr. 20. Russell Kellogg
Not one to mince words, Joe later reflected: "You needed to raise a certain amount of money to take this downtrodden organization from one crummy building to ostensibly another crummy building, and you changed it into this unbelievable thing."
Joe continued to support AS220. In 1999, he underwrote Jonathan Bonner's sculptural work "Facing" that runs below the roofline of our Empire Street building (look up next time you're outside). In the early aughts, he was a supporter of "The Campaign for AS220" which allowed us to expand and improve Empire Street (and install another Bonner work, our iconic three-pronged AS220 sign). For this “Campaign”, Joe underwrote the commissioning of Rhode Island artist Joe Norman to create a limited edition portfolio, known as Suite Sixteen, proceeds from the sale of which supported this campaign. In 2018-2019, when it came time to do more work on our building, including installing an elevator, Joe supported our "All Access Campaign".
L-R: Joseph A. Chazan, MD, former AS220 Board Chair Matthew Cullina, founder and former AS220 Artistic Director Umberto Crenca, Senator Jack Reed, former Representative Jim Langevin, former Mayor David Cicilline, Lucie Searle, former Representative Patrick Kennedy, Bill Hatfield.
AS220’s buildings and resources are only important because they provide a home to communities of artists, all making and sharing work and ideas, asking questions, and solving problems. In this regard, perhaps Dr. Chazan's most important contribution is the NetWorks Rhode Island project. Over nearly a decade, NetWorks documented 113 Rhode Island artists and promoted them through video profiles on RI PBS, portraits, exhibits, panel discussions, and printed catalogues.
First launched as a project between Joe and AS220, under Artistic Director Bert Crenca, and now preserved in digital form presented by WaterFire Providence, NetWorks was a collaborative effort amongst many including videographer Richard Goulis, photographer Scott Lapham, Creative Director Victoria Veh, Nancy Whipple Grinnell of the Newport Art Museum, and numerous others.
The second floor hallway of AS220's Dreyfus building is lined with portraits of every NetWorks artist, from 2008 to 2016. Our visitors spend at least a little bit of time, if not a lot of time, studying this collection that represents a slice of Rhode Island's creative community.
When writing about his motivations in starting the Networks project, Dr. Chazan said:
"I ... have turned my energies again to artists as I try to help them in their efforts to form a more meaningful milieu in which we live. I remain most interested in introducing art and artists to the community and hope that NetWorks will advance this process. NetWorks is an unusual cooperation and collaboration of artists, art space, gallery and museum to not only present works of accomplished local artists but also to provide a window into their motivations. I find this quite gratifying since I strongly believe that one can accomplish a great deal by asking the question “How can we do this?” rather than “Why can’t this happen?” We did this together."
AS220 is always a community-driven collective effort. Thank you, Joe, for being such an extraordinarily impactful and dynamic influence on our organization and our community.