Dan Kany

About

Daniel Kany's eponymous gallery--located at 89 Exchange Street in Portland, Maine--features contemporary glass art, painting, photograph and sculpture.Kany grew up in Waterville, graduated from Bowdoin College (’88, Magna cum Laude et Magna cum laude in Pschologica), and did his graduate work at the Johns Hopkins University in the Department of the History of Art with Michael Fried and Yves-Alain Bois.Kany worked for 7 years at Columbia University. During this time, Kany exhibited his paintings at galleries in New York City, Santa Fe, Venezuela, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Kany also worked as a drawing instructor, musician and a freelance curator. His first major curated museum exhibition ran in the first floor galleries of the Museum of the City of New York for eight months in 1998.In 1998, Kany moved to Seattle where he worked as Associate Director and Director of the William Traver Gallery and later the Friesen Gallery in both Seattle and Sun Valley. When Kany was the Director in 2005, Friesen Gallery received The Best Gallery in Seattle award from the Seattle Weekly’s prestigious Reader’s Poll (circulation 250,000). Kany was on the faculty of the Bellevue Art Museum and has lectured widely about glass art and the history of the studio glass movement.Kany was elected to the Board of Directors of Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) in 1999 where he has served variously as Chair of the Board, Secretary, Curator, Chair of Programming, and Director pro tem. Kany was elected President of the Sun Valley Gallery Association. Kany co-founded the Gallery Association of Portland Maine on which currently serves as Secretary.Kany’s books include two catalogs on the work of Lino Tagliapietra, widely held as the most respected glassblower in the world, and Robert Kantor: The Hope Series and Other Sculptures (Seattle: CoCA Editions, 2006) and Judith Kindler: Consume (Seattle: CoCA Editions, 2007).Specialties: glass art, contemporary art, painting, sculpture, fine craft, art history, photography, art theory, ceramics, Modernism architecture, design, blown glass, Maine art, International Studio Glass Movement, fine craft