Charles E. Friedman
2841 NW 70th Street
Seattle, WA 98177
206-781-0608
Career Objective: Art and Exhibit Preparator ? Ensuring proper treatment and protection of important art by using museum quality handling skills for custom packing, shipping, installation and security of both 2D and 3D art for local and traveling exhibits.
Specializing in big and heavy and small and fragile and using good old fashioned logic to solve problems.
Work History
1999 ? 2010 Seattle Art Museum: full-time Art Handler for the Registrars Department of the Exhibit Design Division
Packing and repacking of art for exhibitions at SAM or loans to other museums around the world.
Computer tracking and recording art movement using ?The Getty System?
Worked with curators, collectors and designers to securely install and transport valued and fragile works of art. Supervised art handling crews in more than one location.
Coordinated with security forces (private, city, state, federal)
Worked on problem solving of storage, moving and exhibiting very large, odd shape and extremely fragile art.
Contributed to a packing and crating manual for unified techniques for information sharing with others museums and vendors.
Designed and installed vibration dampening system for the museum van.
Equipment used on the job: Fork lifts, man lifts, and rental trucks of all sizes. Traditional and not-so traditional moving techniques and hardware.
Worked on remodeling of the storage space to handle new art accessions after the expansion of the downtown building and the addition of the Olympic Sculpture Park.
Domestic and international courier for art shipments by land and air.
1993 ? 1999 Part-time Art Handler and Preparator for:
Seattle Art Museum: Worked on installing art for special exhibitions and special projects using art from Sam’s permanent collection and others lending museums.
Designed the original light plan for the reopening of the Asian Art Museum after an extensive remolding project, to great reviews from the local press.
Bellevue Art Museum: As Head Prepartor. Exhibition installations and lighting was a challenge in a very limited space, when the museum was in Bellevue Square. Secured donated cranes for a 3rd floor delivery of ?The Frank Lloyd Wright Show? plus supervised the installation and lighting of a full scale walk through model of a Frank Lloyd Wright home at a near by outdoor site.
My presence at BAM helped it to qualify for loans from collectors of contemporary and ancient glass, because of my experience handling art glass.
Artech Fine Art Services: Installation and packing of art for residential, commercial, public places and for local museums.
Nordic Heritage Museum: Built custom caseworks that is adjustable and flexible for changing exhibits. Designed a system for a 2nd story window delivery for oversized art.
And lighting of a international glass exhibition.
Burke Museum: Lighting and art installation for reopening after a major remodeling project.
1989 ? 1993 Campbell Art Services: Annual exhibit installation and lighting for special arts exhibits, Seattle Arts Festival (Bumbershoot) and NW Folklife Festival.
Education: AA degree, Los Angeles City College: Technical Theatre*
BA degree San Diego State University: Technical Theatre
*advanced training in all aspects of stagecraft, lighting and scenic design.
Worked for: Los Angels Music Center: Stagehand/Carpenter
University of Southern California: Technical Director
Bella Lewinski Modern Dance Company: Lighting Designer
Royal Ballet of London: Stagehand/rigging scenery for flying
Skills: My 40 years of experience as a ceramicist and hot glass artist and metal fabricator gives me a special inside knowledge of the needs, proper handling and shipping of the most precious of objects, such as Tiffany glass, 1st Century Roman glass, 15th Century BC bronze Chinese sculptures, 100 to 1000 year old Asian pottery and more modern art glass collections.
I have a good way with collectors big and small and giving them the satisfaction that their art is indeed in very careful and thoughtful hands.
I have a natural ability of solving the hardest problems and coming up with the safest and easiest solutions. With a little bit of foresight thrown in, I can avoid many problems that could endanger art pieces.
I have run my own Arts and Craft gallery and have since turned it into a non-profit taxed exempt community Art Gallery. I do know some of the ins and outs of the gallery art business.
Show list: I have worked on all of the shows for the last 11 years, here just a few:
Impressionism-Paintings Collected by European Museums 1999
S’abadeb the Gifts-Pacific Coast Salish Art 2009
Native Visions Northwest Cost Art 1998
Chuck Close 1999
Leonardo Lives-The Codex Leicester 1998
Spain the Royal Collection 1492 to 1819 2004
Porcelain Stories 2000
Ancient Sichuan Treasures from a Lost Civilization 2001
The Gates of Paradise Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece 2008
Michelangelo Drawings for the Sistine Chapel 2009
Roman Art from the Louvre 2007
Van Gogh to Mondrian from the Kroller-Muller Museum 2004
Garden and Cosmos the Royal Paintings of Jodhpur 2009