Launched at the 2017 event, SELECTS was a tremendous hit with audiences and collectors. Art Palm Springs SELECTS returns in 2018, offering patrons and collectors new ways to navigate the extraordinary artwork at the show by highlighting pieces chosen by noted curators, designers, and critics.

Donna Davies, Vice President of the Art Group for Urban Expositions, producer of Art Palm Springs, has tapped top professionals in the art and design communities to review the fair and make their picks, which will also be noted at the fair and accessible online for easy reference. “We’re adding these selections to give our audience another opportunity to connect with the artwork,” said Davies. “Seeing what pieces each of these curators, designers, and critics have noted gives our visitors opportunities to further engage with artworks at the fair.”

2018 SELECTS participants to date:

Leonardo Bravo, Director of Education and Public Programs, Palm Springs Art Museum

Katherine Plake Hough, Chief Curator, Palm Springs Art Museum

Christopher Kennedy, Designer, Christopher Kennedy LLC

MaryLinda Moss, Art Consultant / Owner of Source Art

Lance O’Donnell, Architect, O2 Architecture

Jordan Schnitzer, Arts Patron

The SELECTS pieces range in widely different genres, from Richard Roth, Loose Canon (Edward Cella); to Kelly Reemtsen, Gender Gap/Sledge Hammer (David Klein Gallery); and Gustavo Perez, Untitled 12-276 (Gerald Peters Projects). While long-time patrons and collectors have focused their own concepts of artists and genres that they personally prefer, by tapping into the sensibilities of these designers and art experts Art Palm Springs hopes to open the eyes of new collectors and expand the horizons of collectors that have not yet found their own scope of appreciation.

Although all of the participants are connected by the thread of their work as designers and art experts, the participating members of SELECTS are a diverse group. Leonardo Bravo is an artist, educator, and curator. He is the Director of Education and Public Programs with the Palm Springs Art Museum where he oversees partnership development and program implementation with school districts in the Coachella Valley and the development of new participatory audience engagement projects.

Katherine Plake Hough is Chief Curator at the Palm Springs Art Museum. During her four-decade career, Hough has expanded the museum’s permanent collection of art and exhibition program. She has authored over thirty exhibition catalogs and numerous essays and organized over forty-five special exhibitions, including fourteen that have traveled throughout the United States. She has been a guest juror for numerous exhibitions, presented lectures, and participated in symposia and conferences throughout the United States. Hough was the managing editor of two books published in 2014 by the PSAM on the occasion of its 75th anniversary. Danny Heller, Twin Palms Evening - George Billis Gallery

Christopher Kennedy is widely known for his work in home design and the annual Modernism Week in Palm Springs, where his design home is one of the most popular exhibits each year. Each year, in conjunction with Modernism Week, Christopher organizes and produces the Decorator Show in Palm Springs, featuring rooms by today’s biggest names in design. The Christopher Kennedy Compound attracts over 4,000 guests in 10 days, and grosses nearly $100,000 for Modernism Week’s education and preservation efforts.

Beginning as a teenager, Lance O'Donnell worked with famed Palm Springs architect Donald Wexler. His own home and commercial designs incorporate the best features of Midcentury Modern buildings and integrate them into the functional and easily livable modern structures he designs.

MaryLinda Moss, owner of Source Art, has a tremendous passion for art grounded in a degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a keen sense of aesthetic acquired over decades of collaborating with Interior Designers. She has developed a comprehensive process that guides designer and client through the art selection and procurement process, which she is bringing to her new online resource as a radical merging of a broad fine art network with personal curation and art plan services.

Jordan Schnitzer began to buy prints and multiples of the most important American artists of our time. The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation has also published the Catalogue Raisonne of Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, John Baldessari as well as published books on Andy Warhol, John Buck and Mel Bochner. One of the largest holdings in Jordan’s print collection is work by Andy Warhol. While Jordan’s collection of Andy Warhol’s work has been in approximately 30 museums, in 2016 the Portland Art Museum opened one of the largest Warhol exhibitions ever, consisting of 265 works, which was visited by over 103,000 people including 20,000 children! Every docent slot was full. In 2017, this exhibition traveled to the High Museum, in Atlanta, where over 130,000 people saw the exhibition. We are now very excited that this major Warhol exhibition is opening at the Palm Springs Art Museum, on March 3, 2018.

For a complete list of the SELECTS group visit art-palmsprings.com/SELECTS (http://www.art-palmsprings.com/selects/) . For the full schedule of events and information on participating galleries, go to the Art Palm Springs website: art-palmsprings.com.