William Bartman, 58 - Director, Writer Who Created Art Nonprofit
Bob Feigel
William Bartman, 58; Created Art Nonprofit
By Dennis McLellan - Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 23, 2005
William S. Bartman, founder of Art Resources Transfer, a nonprofit
organization that publishes books featuring conversations between
artists and makes them and other art books available free to libraries
in underserved communities, has died. He was 58.
Bartman, a former Los Angeles stage and film director, died Sept. 15
of multiple organ failure at a hospital in Manhattan, said Yael
Meridan Schori, president of the Art Resources Transfer board of
directors.
Bartman, who required dialysis, had long-term health problems,
including an HIV infection, she said.
Bartman, an art collector, founded the Art Resources Transfer in Los
Angeles in 1987. He later moved it to New York City, where he opened a
nonprofit bookstore-gallery in Chelsea in 1996. That facility operated
until 2004.
Over the years, the nonprofit group published 17 contemporary
artist-interview books, which are sold in bookstores, museums and
galleries around the country.
Through its Distribution to Underserved Communities Program, the group
provides art books - as well as videos and interactive materials on
art and culture - free to libraries and schools around the country.
Since its founding, the distribution program has donated more than
140,000 art books, videos and other materials to more than 2,400
libraries nationwide.
"There was nobody who was more of a cheerleader for the artist and for
art than Bill was," Schori told The Times on Thursday. "He would go
through hoops to promote art and artists. He thought the world of
them, and thought that art changes the world and basically touches us
in ways that nothing else can do."
Schori said a story she heard at an Art Resources Transfer benefit in
May made her "understand even more what Bill meant."
An elementary schoolteacher from a poor area of upstate New York, who
had obtained art books through the distribution program, told the
gathering that she had established an "art corner" in her classroom.
That, in turn, led to having her students create their own artwork.
The teacher said one student painting, by a 9-year-old boy, "was very
dark and moving. I asked him, 'What is that?' He said, 'Well, my
brother died.' He would never say that in class."
Schori praised Bartman for making art available and "having this
outlet for people to express their feelings."
The Chicago-born Bartman grew up in Los Angeles and earned a
bachelor's degree from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., in 1968.
At the West Coast Theater Co. in Los Angeles in the 1970s and early
'80s, he produced and directed numerous productions.
He also founded an artist-in-the-schools program and a theater program
at the federal prison in Lompoc, Calif., which included the staging of
an all-inmate production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
Before launching the art group, Bartman also worked as an associate
producer and second-unit director on a number of films, and he
directed and co-wrote the 1982 movie "O'Hara's Wife," a comedy-drama
starring Ed Asner, Mariette Hartley and Jodie Foster.
He is survived by his mother, Norma Bartman; his brother, Thomas; and
his sister, Barbara, all of Los Angeles.
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen
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Wax-up and drop-in of Surfing's Golden Years: <http://www.surfwriter.net>
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deb...@comcast.net
Bob Flaminio
> Wasn't there a song about him called "Do the Bartman"? :)
I thought he was the guy who killed the Cubs' season last year.
--
Bob