Sheri Pasquarella's fast track in the art world launched in 1998 when, after graduating from Stony Brook University with two degrees earned at the same time -- a B.A. in art history and a B.S. in biology -- she landed a position at the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan.
Biology?
In high school, she'd been in a biology research program at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the lab experience stood her in good stead all through college. "It paid for my art history degree," she explained. "It was much better work-study to be working in a lab than to be working in the cafeteria. There are tons of programs and scholarships in science, but there are none in art history."
The tracks of art and science ran side by side when Ms. Pasquarella enrolled in an exhibition design program at the Fashion Institute of Technology. After creating a display box for a pair of scissors, using a Georgia O'Keeffe painting of a bull's head, she asked her professor, "When will we start talking about museum work as opposed to Bergdorf's?"
He told her she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and that she needed to get a Ph.D. in art history to become a curator. At the time, "I didn't know curator was a thing. Now everybody's a curator."
She then enrolled at Stony Brook, where faculty in both the art history and biology departments assured her she'd be able to do something worthwhile with her life in either field. "So, I chose the one I have more fun doing."
At the time, Eliot Spitzer, New York State's Attorney General, was bringing civil actions against corporate white-collar crime and securities fraud. "There was no Securities and Exchange Commission in the art world, so I was going to create regulation. I wanted to be an art lawyer." She was accepted at law school, but deferred to take the job at Marlborough.
Before she was 30, Ms. Pasquarella, now the executive director of The Church in Sag Harbor, had co-founded the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), a support system for a new generation of dealers and a community where dialogue around art and commerce could exist, and created SLP, an art consultancy.
The impact of globalization and the international expansion of a handful of powerful galleries played a big part in the conception of NADA. "I felt that with all of the changes, the market would continue to expand, and the people who were least powerful in that marketplace" -- the many smaller galleries -- "would bear the brunt of that burden."
"It makes more sense to regulate ourselves and to start working together," she said.
While she isn't actively involved in NADA today, Ms. Pasquarella maintains a positive relationship with it. The organization is still going strong, with important annual art fairs in New York and Miami, as well as exhibitions and a variety of other programs.
SLP, the art consultancy, was founded "to take a lot of the ideas and the ideology behind NADA and put them to use in the private sector. From my point of view, the mission or the core values were to create access, transparency, and knowledge in contemporary art."
"At that time, I was really into alternative economic models, things that were mostly capitalist but were different ways of doing capitalism. Collectivism was really interesting to me. That was what NADA was about."
One arm of SLP was its art advisory service, which focused on art collectors, many of whom later became museum board members. "After working throughout the art world in various positions, I saw all of these inefficiencies, and even exploitation, on the business side. I felt motivated to become an advocate for collectors, for people who were supporting the arts and yet simultaneously were often being misguided and sometimes exploited by the art world. It was really important for those people to have a positive experience."
SLP Creative, another component, offered business development for commercial galleries, nonprofits, artists, and art and design organizations. Clients included Performance Space 122, Ashe Leandro Interiors, the Coalition for the Homeless, and the artist David Salle, among others.
Several years before the pandemic, Ms. Pasquarella began to rethink her goals and decided she wanted to work in an organization "that was interested in the role of art in community."
Ms. Pasquarella was born in Sound Beach on the North Shore. She attributes her early interest in art to her father, a Sunday painter who was "always making art. We even had a kiln in our house." Her coloring books, she recalled with a smile, included a Rembrandt, a Seurat, and a Dali.
Over the years, the family moved successively east, eventually settling in Jamesport -- so when, in 2017, she found an empty church on the Main Road in Cutchogue, she was in familiar territory.
"I thought I would build an art center for art and community on the North Fork because there wasn't one." She began developing the idea, but then came Covid, and she had to abandon the project.
A friend told her that Eric Fischl and April Gornik had started something similar, but on the South Fork. "So I called David Salle," who'd been friends with Mr. Fischl since the early '70s when they were students together at the California Institute of the Arts, "and asked him about it, and he said, 'Yes! You guys were made for each other.' "
The job of executive director having been posted, she applied. Her first interview was with Cecelia Weaver, then the deputy director. What was supposed to be a half-hour conversation lasted three hours, and in June 2022, after another month of dialogue and interviews, she was offered the job.
Asked to describe her responsibilities, she said, "It's a tricky question, because in some ways I do everything. In some ways it's still an exploration of collaboration and collective agency and how that works to make cool things happen. I try to create a collaborative environment as opposed to a hierarchical one. That's hard, but it's necessary because we are a very small team. I don't think anybody really understands that we do over 120 programs with a staff of six people."
When she asked her colleagues, however, if they should try scaling back, her programming manager, Talena Mascali, said, "I don't know what it would feel like to do less."
Ms. Pasquarella said she is inspired every day by the commitment and passion of her staff. "I think I have a very large voice in everything that happens here, but I also try to do so in partnership with every single person who works here and to allow appropriate levels of their own leadership."
As an example, she cited the "Master Impressions" exhibition, which closed on Feb. 25. "It was my concept to do the show about prints and for Sam Havens, our workshop and residency manager, to curate it. The level of research he did was really impressive."
"It's been a great joy to help some of the younger staff develop and discover their own potential and provide them with tools and guidance and structure and rigor to get there."
