A Matter of Time: A Studio Visit with Rima Jabbur

About the Exhibition

The National Endowment for the Arts estimates that more than 340,000 Americans work as fine artists. Yet an Art Basel & UBS study of over a quarter of a million artists found that just four percent were the primary focus of exhibitions at nearly half of US institutions. For the rest, the arithmetic is unforgiving: decades of devotion to a practice that will likely never bring fame or financial stability. So, what keeps an artist at it, year after year, hour after hour, from the earliest days to the end of a life, still wrestling with the same questions?

A Matter of Time answers through a studio visit with painter Rima Jabbur. In 1997, just out of her MFA program, Jabbur had her first solo museum exhibition at the Maitland Art Center. Thirty years later, she returns with an exhibition shaped by three decades of work. In that time her paintings have been shown around the world, including in 2009 group exhibition curated by the Louvre at the Musée Ingres in Montauban, France. Yet success has not quieted the self-doubt that follows her into the studio.