Billy Dee Williams, Museum Artists And Emerging Artists, Showcased At Inclusive National Arts Club Exhibition

A slightly abstracted figure, mouth agape and eyes wide, prepares to return a serve from their tennis opponent. The energy of the action scene is amplified by a frenzy of joyful brushstrokes. Almost-alien or otherworldly spectator faces emerge from the array of colors juxtaposing the pale, monochromatic figures, fierce and focused with competitive zeal. Our gaze navigates the canvas, bouncing from the ball left of center and the play of colors and brushstrokes that build texture and drama.

Tennis, a 36-inch-square oil on canvas by Billy Dee Williams, is a highlight of the 31st annual Roundtable Exhibition on view at the National Arts Club (NAC) in New York through July 30. On sale for $7,600, the emotive visual narrative by the contemporary Renaissance man best known as the award-winning actor who portrays Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise, the villainous alter-ego Two-Face in Batman (1989), and starred alongside Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and Mahogany (1975), is priced well below what his works fetch at galleries.

Also a novelist, Williams made his Broadway debut in his 1945 at age seven in The Firebrand of Florence, graduated from The High School of Music & Art (M&A) in Harlem, and won a painting scholarship to the National Academy of Fine Arts and Design (now the National Academy of Design) in New York, where he was awarded a Hallgarten Prize for painting in the mid-1950s. He resumed stage (replacing James Earl Jones in the lead role of August Wilson’s play Fences, for four months beginning in February 1988), film, and television acting to buy art supplies.

“I’m so proud of the artists whose works we are honored and privileged to show. They range from artists whose works have also shown at the Whitney, MoMA, the Met, and many galleries. This is again a rare opportunity to acquire a piece that has shown here at the National Arts Club,” Charles Snider told a crowd at last night’s opening event. Snider is an art appraiser and co-chair of the NAC’s Roundtable Committee, along with Margaret Janicek, and Laura Daly, who is also chair of the annual exhibition.

The committee strives for inclusivity at all events, and the annual exhibition draws together established and emerging artists across genres, materials, and media. This year’s exhibition showcased many stunning museum-worthy Contemporary works, and Snider, Janicek, and Daly have made tremendous strides to make the NAC more accessible to a broader group of people who recognize the need for art appreciation as a primary effort to retain culture in our everyday lives. Such events work to reinvigorate and future proof a club that had, for some time, been at risk of becoming stagnant and antiquated.

We encounter a dystopian landscape, softened by luscious shades of dreamy colors and exacting brushstrokes that emit a sheen casting a supernatural glow in Joan Elizabeth Meyer’s Chain Reaction, an oil on canvas priced at $3,200. The New York-based artist, who has been painting for more than four decades, earned a BFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University, a full fellowship to North Carolina School of the Arts for set design and scene painting for the theater, and a MA from Florida Atlantic University. She was granted a 2020 fellowship to study painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy.

We contemplate a feminist future, transported by Julia Rivera’s There Will Never Be A New World Order Until Women Are Part Of It, an eco-oil and mixed media on wood on sale for $3,400. A young woman’s eyes are obscured by a map of the United States embellished with ample paint applied heavily in various ways to erupt from the canvas in a fury of bright, bold colors, subverting the state lines and the status quo. The Bronx-born artist attended Escuela de Artes Plásticas in Puerto Rico, and earned a MA in 17th-century painting and restoration at the Studio Arts College International, Florence, Italy.

We revel in the undulating swirls of Australian born, New York based artist Claire Hashman’s abstract oil on canvas, The Case No.2, available for $3,000. The fleshy pink evokes body parts and warmth, as yellow and a little blue guide our eye on the joyful journey.

This year’s Roundtable Exhibition presents an outstanding opportunity to view and buy diverse and affordable works in dialogue with each other to underscore the mission of opening this opportunity to a wide range of artists. Moreover, it’s an exceptional example of how Snider, Janicek, Daly, and others are guiding the next generation of art lovers, a Herculean task that can help to save humanity.

“Our mantra is that we allow everyone to have a place at the table, and this idea of inclusivity is the driving force behind almost all of our events,” Janicek told attendees last night.