COLETTE HOSMER | “Pig Tails” | Cast Porcelain (50) | 18″x3″x3″ each
Feast, Chinese European Art Center – Xiamen, China / CCA Santa Fe
Samantha Paige Furgason
Founder & CEO / AWI
Samantha Paige Furgason, Founder and CEO of ARTWORKinternational INC. (AWI), has been engaged in the arts for her entire professional life. She left her position as Co-Director of a prestigious contemporary Santa Fe gallery in May of 1998 to establish AWI.
Her mission: to create a global presence for her clients – numerous visual artists in the United States and abroad – by providing multifaceted career management.
Her expertise includes: securing museum and gallery exhibitions, and gallery representation; positioning public art works through Art in Public Places and commercial venues; acquiring coverage via the global art press, including Art News, Art in America, Sculpture and Art & Antiques; placement in national and international residencies; research into funding sources; grant writing (AWI clients have been award recipients of The Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Creative Capital grants, among others); and direct presentations to corporate and private collectors.
In addition, Ms. Furgason’s consultation has been sought by national and international art publications. She served as Art Resources for arté contemporary and Trend Global magazines.
Her writings on artists and the arts are widely published. Various publications have featured articles about AWI. AWI’s subsidiary ARTWORKinternational Press has published numerous books as part of its Acclaimed Artists Series.
Ms. Furgason has been a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico since childhood. Previous to launching her own venture with AWI, she held several top administrative positions within the contemporary art market. In addition to director level positions in contemporary art galleries, she has independently curated various projects in the United States and Canada, such as “Santa Fe on Site” at the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia. Several museums have requested her assistance in the capacity of juror.
Lectures on the business of art include presentations to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Santa Fe University of Art & Design, Santa Fe, New Mexico; New Mexico Lawyers for the Arts; and the Chinese European Cultural Center at Xiamen University, China.
For five years, Ms. Furgason served as Promotional Chair for Friends of Contemporary Art (FOCA) in support of contemporary programming at New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe.
Early in her career, as an art tour guide, she covered the arts of the past, present and future, as well as all genres – traditional to cutting edge. The tour groups ranged in size from 12 to 150 people, establishing Ms. Furgason’s reputation as an informed and confident lecturer on regional, national and international artwork and artists.
