01/13/2025
It has been quite a while since I posted on The Unintended Curator page. This has to do with life and the choices we all face eventually. Opening a brick-and-mortar gallery had been a dream since grad-school. Jen and I bought the property back in December 1997. We moved within the following months, dividing the space into a small storefront backed by a studio space for painting. Flying on minimal cash fuel of a teacher’s income, we rented the front to a hair salon; a relationship that lasted over 20 years.
When the hair salon moved on the eve of the pandemic, with my retirement from teaching in the wind, we began to think that the moment of opening a gallery was possible. Every small town needs a creative space as a linchpin in its connection to the wider culture. It took three years of planning and construction to create the space we envisioned. We opened in October 2022, fully realizing that the winter months in Culver, Indiana would be slow.
As fate would have it, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my 94-year-old father began a series of falls leading to an inability to manage the lighting business he had run since 1948. In February 2023, the family members in Pittsburgh requested I come in and manage his business affairs. This, as you might imagine, was not at all what I planned or even saw as a possibility. Family, though, is family. Dad moved into long-term memory care as we headed for Pittsburgh with my siblings agreeing I could close the business in 6 months. This, I imagined, would allow me to get back to what I saw as my true retirement gig.
However, arriving in Pittsburgh in March 2024, I realized the employees working for my father were in no way prepared for the business closing. One had been with him for close to 50 years, with the others having no less than 25 years of service. Closing, for them, would be an unfair burden. After completing a cursory inventory and managing any unfinished projects, it became clear the only just effort would be to work the business until it was healthy enough to attract a buyer, thereby ensuring the fiscal health of the employees. Realizing this might take a year, we rented out our gallery in Culver and dug in for the long haul.
Within the ensuing months, we saw good news and unwelcome news. The good news involved the business in Pittsburgh attracting a viable buyer. The new owner took over in January 2024. The unwelcome news? The new LLC was not prepared to purchase the inventory or the building which included 34,000 square feet of miscellaneous chandeliers, lighting fixtures, parts, architectural pieces, and random furniture. Back in Culver, the unwelcome news persisted; the group renting the gallery did not realize strong enough sales to keep their presence in Culver viable. The gallery closed in January 2024.
Fast forward to January 2025. We have been living in Pittsburgh for just shy of two years. My father passed away in September. We are now in estate mode. With half of the Pittsburgh inventory sold and the building on the market, there is light at the end of the tunnel. As with all things human in uncertain times, we are contemplating the future. Hear is what we know for sure, we will be in Culver and the gallery will be open for the summer of 2025. This, however, will be a last hurrah for our time in Culver.
Having experienced the cultural life of Pittsburgh, not to mention being centrally located to our grandchildren, we have decided to complete our 30 years in Culver and move to Pittsburgh. How and when this will occur is in the hands of Providence. In the meantime, if you happen to visit Culver during the summer of 2025, please stop by the gallery.
