Responses to Thomas Torak
Hi Tom,
Thank you for your letter. It is good to hear how the League is handling the lighting situation during the construction of the skyscraper next door. Also, you offered a bit of perspective the history of the League (I remember back when you were a monitor and student of Frank Mason’s during the time I attended his class.) You illuminate that there is both continuity and positive changes in the League culture and what the school offers to art students. The ASL2025/Unite group are accusing the Board members of malfeasance and incompetence, which if it were true, the majority of students, teachers and Life members long ago, as you said, “would rise up as one and put a stop to it.” There would also likely have been some very serious legal repercussions for the accused as well. No, the ASL2025/Unite are engaging in forms of scandal mongering, conspiracy theories, and defamation which are unproven hypotheticals and vindictive. I believe that the worst scandal is the huge loss of money that the League has had due to legal fees to fight the ASL2025/Unite court suits. $700,000 is a lot of money that would have better uses applied to the students, teachers, equipment, exhibits, and other art education activities at the League.
Again, thank you for your letter, sincerely,
Paul Wortman
Response to ASL2025, shared with us
Who are you? I assume that the 2025ers are not real humans but a Robot that assumes we can’t read. What rude, dishonest individual can continue to write to us anonymously, repeating others emails as if we can’t read, and interprets things like a paranoid, doped, Walter Mitty. Write your name and take the ridicule personally or just disappear. I’m surprised the other candidates want to be associated with such an unpleasant person. No one wins with these letters. Think please.
Stephen Charles Jones
Response to ASL 2025, shared with Susan Matz
Subject: An ASL Member’s Response to “An Open Letter to Sharon Sprung”
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2015 21:13:49 -0600
To: Meredith Gowell, ASL Life Member; Beth Kurtz, ASL Life Member; Mary Poerner, ASL Life Member….and the rest of your ASL2025 Cadre
I, for one of many I am sure, am tired of your quarrelsome arguing: Enough already! Go do some artwork or volunteer to teach art to youngsters or oldsters: Just stop your endless complaining!
By the way! Had I been in New York when Arthur Stein went to court to access the Art Student’s League membership list, I would have told him to go home as I consider ASL2025’s access to my contact information as an intrusion and violation of my privacy.
Michele Regine, Lifetime Member since the 60’s
Received by Susan Matz in response to her letters to the Membership
Dear Susan;
I have never given my consent to anyone of the ASL Guerilla League (aka: ASL2025), to use or include my physical or email address. None-the-less, it would appear that Arthur Stein, and company, have applied some sort of legitimate legal machination(s) to obtain ASL’s Membership List.
Well! If there is an angle to counter ASL20125’s caustic and costly antics, count me in!
Sincerely,
Michele Regine
Responses to Victoria Hibbs’ letter
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Victoria.
Last December we moved to Atlanta and since then I have been trying to find someplace comparable to the league. I have yet to find anything close. While I lived in NYC I took the league for granted and disagreed with the air right sale etc. looking back I can see why we had to move forward.
I guess hindsight is 20/20!
Sincerely,
Susan Siegel, Life member
Thank you, Victoria Hibbs, for your thoughtful message that I know represents the thoughts and experiences of many members of the League. Thank you for highlighting the stellar leadership of Ira Goldberg and Sal Barbieri, who have solidified the foundations of the League and are transitioning it into the future. Those in the ASL 2025 are stuck in oppositional camaraderie, perhaps some believing it is a good fight. We can only hope they are going to class and learning and making art all the while and maybe it will hit them how lucky we all are to have such an opportunity, which many of us always feel when we walk in the doors.
With gratitude to all working to nurture the ASL,
Frances Ludington, Life Member, BOC member 2009-2010
Responses to Dan Gheno’s letter
Thank you, Dan Gheno, for this straight forward response to the nonsense from ASL 2025. I have not been coming to the League recently so I have not been able to talk to and hear up close how the members of ASL 2015 actually think, but from afar, reading their literature, they seem mostly emotionally engaged and not well informed, not paying attention. I hope they can, as a group or individually, find worthwhile campaigns to put their energy into and do some good.
Frances Ludington, Life Member, ASL BOC 2009-2010
Hooray for Dan Gheno saying what many others are feeling. The communications for ASL 2025 are annoying at best. Thank you, Dan, for taking the time to clarify the falsehoods.
I hope everyone on the League’s email list reads your letter.
Leslie Lillien Levy
Thank you, Dan for a thoughtful letter responding to the hysterics of a vocal minority. As a life member, former employee and board member, I appreciate the time you took to set the record straight.
Mary Beth Marini
Right on, good for you. Thanks for articulating what we are all thinking.
Keep it up and best wishes,
Ludmila Bidwell (ASL student and former Board member)
Instructors, Students, Members and Friends of the Art Students League 