Fifty years ago, six women had an idea for enriching their community.
McLean, where they lived, was bucolic and had many accomplished people. What it did not have was a place to enjoy and learn about first-class contemporary art.
The women — three of them artists studying with noted painter and teacher Robert Gates, then head of the Art Department at American University — decided to do something about bridging that cultural gap. In 1962, they founded the McLean Art Club Emerson Gallery.
Decades later, that initiative has grown into the McLean Project for the Arts. Housed inside the McLean Community Center, the McLean Project for the Arts is recognized as one of the region’s top nonprofit visual arts organizations.
How the fledgling group eventually became MPA is explored in a special 50th anniversary exhibition. The exhibit, which opened April 19, runs through June 2. Part of a yearlong, multi-event celebration, the exhibition will fill MPA’s Emerson, Atrium and Ramp galleries.
“I feel really satisfied. We struggled so hard, and people laughed at us, scorned us, and it turned out to be what we hoped it would be,” said Nancy Bradley, 86, the last surviving member of MPA’s founding group.
Contributing $300 each, MPA’s founders initially rented a basement space in the McLean Art Center, a dance studio on Emerson Street, which gave the developing arts organization and now MPA’s main gallery its name, Bradley said.
At first, artists were required to pay $100 to mount a show.
“It paid our [monthly] rent,” Bradley said, recalling one year an artist canceled and they had to throw an emergency luncheon, charging $10 per person.
It occurred to them that a better idea would be to develop a permanent supporting membership.
“Suddenly we had some money,” Bradley said.
When the McLean Community Center was built in the 1970s — thanks to the support of people such as former Dranesville supervisors Nancy Falk and Lilla Richards and “everyone we knew going before the Board of Supervisors” — MPA found its permanent home, Bradley said.
Titled “Four Perspectives: Becoming MPA,” the event is curated by Nancy Sausser, MPA’s present exhibitions director, and past exhibition directors Sarah Tanguy, Deborah McLeod and Andrea Pollan. The history of MPA will be told through artists who have exhibited there in the past.
Sausser, who organized “Becoming MPA,” said she wanted an exhibition that celebrated both its artists and the curators.
“I am constantly grateful to the curators who came before me. They put together great shows that established the exceptional reputation of the place so firmly,” said Sausser, 53, who was the arts in education director for the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County before coming to MPA about eight years ago.
“It is a beautiful space, treats its artists really well and has a wonderful community. It’s been really fun,” Sausser said. “I think I have the best job at MPA.”
Given “curatorial and creative freedom,” each of the “Becoming MPA” curators came at the exhibition from their own distinctive perspectives, Sausser said.
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