New Montclair Art Gallery Opening On Church Street

MONTCLAIR, NJ — A recently renovated fine art gallery will celebrate its grand opening in Montclair on Thursday, May 2.

The event at Clerestory Fine Art, a 1,450 square foot gallery renovated as a “museum-quality exhibition venue,” will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. The gallery is located on the second floor of the historical Hall Building on Church Street in downtown Montclair.

According to a news release, director and Montclair resident Kathryn Waggener McGuire is a painter, art historian, museum educator and host of the Montclair Figure Drawing Group. She moved to Montclair after working with special exhibitions in the education department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and completing her master’s degree in museum education and historical research at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has since written and curated extensively on American artist A.B. Jackson, and focused on developing programs for museum audiences with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Most recently, she served as co-director of Studio Montclair’s “Incubator for Emerging Artists.”

Waggener McGuire said that she was inspired to open Clerestory Fine Art after conducting studio tours and meeting artists in northern New Jersey and becoming “astounded at the amount of high-quality artists with large collections of artwork” who were also stunted by a lack of scholarly, for-profit exhibition venues or gallery opportunities.

Waggener McGuire said the gallery plans to present scholarly solo exhibitions devoted to its primary artists for the first year, then branch out into tandem shows highlighting both Clerestory artists as well as local arts organizations and collector’s private collections.

With an aim to “elevate the overall reputation of Montclair’s fine arts movements,” the gallery will also conduct Collector 101 panels and gallery conversations to complement its other community events, she stated.

Clerestory Fine Art’s inaugural exhibition, “Flesh and Petals,” features large-scale oil paintings of nudes and flowers by Montclair artist Brian Stymest.

The gallery is located at 40 Church Street in Montclair. Learn more here.

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