Panel discussion for “Going Upstate: The Avery Family in Woodstock”

“Going Upstate: The Avery Family in Woodstock” curator Bruce Weber will moderate a conversation with artist and Avery family member Sean Cavanaugh, renowned collector Harvey S. Shipley Miller and artist and Avery family friend Robert Selkowitz.

$10 Byrdcliffe members / $15 Not-yet-members
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Sean Cavanaugh was raised in Greenwich Village before attending Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he majored in Studio Art and Environmental Studies. He is a director of the Milton Avery Trust, over-seeing the artistic estates of his grandparents, Milton Avery and Sally Michel Avery, as well as the work of his mother, the painter March Avery (Cavanaugh). He is Vice President of The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, furthering its mission to enrich education in the visual arts.

Cavanaugh divides his time between lower Manhattan and Bearsville, where he lives with his wife and child, also an artist. He maintains a rigorous artistic practice of his own—his work pervaded by environmental consciousness. He has exhibited in the United States and internationally; most recently (in 2024) he was the subject of a solo exhibition, Eyes on Nature: The Art of Sean Cavanaugh, at the Morris Museum in New Jersey.

In spring 2003, Harvey S. Shipley Miller embarked on a massive shopping spree which has seen him amass some 2,500 drawings by four hundred contemporary artists from twenty countries, a trove he plans to offer to MoMA, Jason Edward Kaufman writes in the Art Newspaper. Miller’s philanthropic activities extend far beyond this high-profile gift; in 1993 he became executor of Judith Rothschild’s $42 million estate. As sole trustee of the Judith Rothschild Foundation, Miller disburses grants promoting under-recognized artists and engages in “discretionary initiatives” that benefit museums. He has become a patron of the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, the National Gallery, and the Philadelphia Museum, among others, serving on various committees and donating art and money. — from ArtForum, 2004

Robert Selkowitz is the author of three books of paintings with maps showing where the paintings were done: A Painter’s Path through the Catskill Mountains (2004), A Painter’s Path on Cape Breton Island (2006) and A Painter’s Path through the Adirondack Mountains (2012).

His paintings have been published in art posters by Portal Publications, in art notes by H. George Caspari and Bay View Press, and in calendars by Ronnie Sellers Productions.