In keeping with the ongoing celebrations of its 40th anniversary, The Central Bank of The Bahamas (CBB) weaved a bit of business and pleasure at The Central Bank of The Bahamas Young Collectors Exhibition on Thursday past. Honing in on a group of young art collectors, Antonius Roberts, curator of the CBB Art Gallery, hopes to highlight the bank's work in making art accessible to younger generations of potential collectors.He has started close to home. Collaborating with four employees of The Central Bank of The Bahamas, Roberts has brought together pieces from the private collections of Banking Department Manager Derek Rolle, Examiner V Ruth Johnson, Administrative Manager Ian Fernander and Deputy Legal Counsel Stacey Benjamin in an exhibition that he hopes will "inspire more young professionals to engage in the process of collecting art"."My role at the Central Bank is really to reconnect the wider public with the Central Bank, and the role of the Central Bank has always been to inspire and to create opportunities for the young talent in the country," said Roberts.Sharing common ground, the four collectors were selected for their relationship with the bank and its influence on their affinity for visual arts. With frequent exhibitions and a permanent collection exposing staff to Bahamian artwork, Roberts thinks it was The Central Bank that sparked the employees' desire to begin to build their respective collections.Derek Rolle would probably agree. The deputy manager remembers the day he was "bitten with the bug" and developed a profound reverence for art."It hit me one day -- at a [Holly] Parotti exhibit -- the fascinating interpretation by the artist. I found it mind-boggling. A simple object became the most complex vision -- through the artist's eyes -- and that was translated onto a canvas for all to see," he recalled. "From that day, I was bitten with the bug. A fellow collector nodded at me at that moment and said, 'We welcome you to the fold'. At that point, I still wasn't sure I was a collector. I had made an awesome purchase that I marveled at, but I still did not consider myself a collector. As time went on, and I found myself acquiring pieces -- not for the sake of collecting, but for sake of the emotion they evoked -- I became a collector. Sometimes [I was] tortured by a piece, sometimes haunted, but a collector nonetheless."Roberts and assistant Jodi Minnis, who is also one of this year's Popop artists-in-residence, selected the show's works from the collectors' respective sets. In choosing each piece, the curators were influenced by each connoisseur's attachment to particular works."You kind of saw the excitement in their faces when they talked about certain works, like the story behind why they collect and why they bought that piece," said Minnis. "That helped when we were trying to decide which pieces to pick."With many works dating back to their creators' high school years, Roberts and Minnis also hope that the show will give the artists an opportunity to examine their individual progressions over the years.
"The exhibition itself is a way to get artists to reengage with their works, because some of the work is stuff they did a very long time ago," explained Minnis. "It gives artists an idea of where they've come from to where they are now, and I think that that's a very interesting aspect of the exhibition as well."Elaborating on why the show offers such a reflective flair, Roberts pointed out that many young professionals choose to begin acquiring artwork while artists are young because "people assume that those works are more affordable"."We are trying to send a message to young professionals... that you can be engaged in this whole process and it's really not a costly exercise," he said. "It just depends on when and where you want to get into the game."The Central Bank of The Bahamas Young Collectors Exhibit will be available to the public until September 6.
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