To the non-artist the term gallery ‘manager’ or ‘director’ has little meaning beyond ‘management’ of the ‘store’ where we go to see and occasionally purchase art. To artists, however, especially those who want to exhibit in a gallery, the gallery manager is an imposing figure with nearly godlike powers.
My own experience with gallery managers has ranged from awestruck to intimidated; I’ve been insulted and complimented, welcomed and ignored. Mainly the ‘gallerists’ or gallery director/managers serve as gatekeepers. They’re the arbiters of taste and style, the determiners of what’s seen or unseen, the declarers of what’s High Art and what’s not.
This may read like the cliché version because it’s based on experiences with the ‘old guard.’ But the old guard is going away. Many of them were of the uber-rich class, the galleries their ‘art playthings.’ Others were stuffy academics, risk-adverse elitists dedicated to preserving the status quo. Now that cohort is aging out, and in their place come younger, more open-minded and diverse gallerists who, while knowledgeable of art history, aren’t afraid of the new and innovative.
In the vanguard of this trend is Tim Hull, the galleries manager at Yavapai College. Tim is a Prescott native, which gives him a huge advantage in managing a large regional gallery. His family moved to Prescott when he was just a baby, and his mother has family roots in Prescott dating back to the 1870s. While his father worked as a contractor Tim attended Prescott High School, where his interest in art, photography and writing took root. He went on to study art and writing at Yavapai College and ultimately obtained a degree in English Literature from ASU.
You won’t see him with a hammer in hand unless he’s hanging a show, but he’d half expected to end up working in construction contracting like his father. Instead his interests steered him to writing and ultimately to art, which his family fully supported.
He began writing professionally in 1995, and in 1999 began writing for newspapers. He was a busy journalist and probably cranked out over 10,000 words a week. For the past 20 years or so Tim’s been writing travel guidebooks about Arizona, the Grand Canyon and the Southwest for Moon Travel Guides — you may have even bought one in a National Park gift shop or from almost any bookstore. He still writes, now in longer form, working on a novel.
During his teen years his interest in literature and the arts really manifested. British pop culture was particularly compelling. The 1980s brought musical and visual art together in a way never seen before — MTV — and Tim was an avid watcher/listener. At the same time Tim was reading the Beat poets, and the stream-of-consciousness aspects of Jack Kerouac and the synth-pop and audiovisual aspects of MTV congealed in his head, leading him to an appreciation of things new and innovative. Combined with his knowledge of literature and art history, this helped lead him to where he is today. Of course, he didn’t know it at the time, but it all contributed to a broad and open-minded enthusiasm for all the arts and now, art-gallery management.
By 2016 he left journalism in need of a life change. The following year he and his wife Katie took up full-time residence in Prescott to care for his elderly mother-in-law. Full-time caregiving takes its toll, so as a diversion Tim came back to Yavapai College and began taking art classes in drawing and printmaking with Josephine Archer and Carl Dahl. He feels printmaking is a great medium for surrealism and wants to create the most interesting, coolest images he can come up with. He also found the art community to be more open and less insular than the solitary life of a writer.
Tim has traveled worldwide extensively, visiting galleries, museums, even the graves of famous writers. This exposure led to a broader and more enlightened worldview that also influences his work as a gallerist. As a gallery and museum patron he always seeks uniqueness and originality, embracing newness.
Artificial intelligence is the new thing now, it’s not going away and it’s improving every day. AI is also something that scares the hell out of those old-guard gallery directors who fear it and automatically reject it. Tim’s view is more modern: “The future of art is about vision and ideas. AI will create a renaissance of people wanting to learn the very human skills of drawing, painting, etc.” He’s a gallery manager who welcomes and encourages all forms of new expression. He’s fearless and in no way intimidated by something new, unseen before, and untested. He brings a refreshing openness to mounting the most interesting, entertaining and enlightening exhibitions possible.
In 2022 Tim got involved with the Yavapai College Art Gallery in a part-time position. This year he became the full-time manager for all the Yavapai College galleries, including the Prescott campus and the Patty McMullen-Mikles Gallery on the Verde Valley (Clarkdale) campus. He also manages smaller art venues on campus, like spaces in the Art Building Level One Artspace and the Library. He wants to make the gallery the public face of the Yavapai College Prescott campus.
In a break from the past Tim intends to curate more thematic exhibitions, rather than simply mount submitted exhibitions as had been done before. There are plans for collaborations with other regional arts organizations, and Tim is actively seeking available spaces for popup Fourth-Friday exhibitions sponsored by the college.
“I don’t see any difference,” he said when asked about the disparity between being an artist and a gallery manager. “I’ve always been an arts advocate, and will continue to be,” adding, “I’m trying to create works of art with other people’s works of art,” which summarizes his philosophy succinctly.
To create those exhibitions Tim seeks artists with “vision” and “unique voices.” Of course, every old-guard gallerist says the same thing, but they seldom do it, preferring to stick with the safe, tried-and-true status quo. You can tell by the works on the wall that Tim really means it, and has a vision for the gallery’s future.
Naturally our conversation drifted to the current state of the business of art, which is an unpleasant topic for both artist and gallerist, but Tim had some interesting takeaways. He noted we’re in an “everything, everywhere, all at once” kind of epoch. With the internet, social media, and other forms of nontraditional publishing available to artists, the gallery is no longer essential for artists to show or sell their works. Galleries, especially those affiliated with colleges and universities, can be universal spaces for local communities to gather and view art curated for reasons beyond mere consumption. He expresses a fear that if our society’s income disparity continues as it is, the gallery system could revert to a system of patronage, with exhibitions held by the wealthy, the art only affordable to those with great wealth. No one wants this future, and we all hope the dissemination of art will remain ‘democratic’ for everyone.
The future looks very bright for the YC galleries, and it’s going to be different. One of Prescott’s major art events is the annual Plein Air Festival, Art in the Pines (for more see “Art in the Pines” in our November 2023 issue.) The college is now managing the festival, and will again be hosting the gala reception and exhibition this year in August. It’s a weeklong event with artists coming to Prescott from all over the country to paint in the open air, a unique opportunity to see artists at work and then their completed paintings in the gallery afterward.
Currently the Prescott gallery is featuring its 2025 Young Artists Showcase: A Juried High School Exhibition, through March, April-May brings the 2025 YC Art Faculty Exhibition, and fresh exhibits are already scheduled into early 2026.
Thirty years ago, when I first approached the Yavapai College art gallery, it was a very different scene. I attempted to show them new digital works made with this thing called Adobe Photoshop. The old guard wasn’t interested, and was downright hostile to digital art they hadn’t seen before. But those days are long gone, superseded with openness, inclusion and a refreshing embrace of the new and innovative. Its orthodoxy changed and evolved, and today the YC gallery is an inviting space, where diverse artworks can be experienced (and purchased), and welcoming all patrons of visual art. The gallery truly is the public face of the arts at YC, and a premier venue for visual art in Prescott.
Don’t forget the gallery is connected with the Jim and Linda Lee Performing Arts Center, so if you go to see a play or concert, check out the gallery too; you just might find the perfect artwork to add to your collection.
Photos by Dale.
