When the Sarasota Museum of Art opens,a widely recognized leader in the fine art world will be at the helm. Anne-Marie Russell served as the top executive at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson in Arizona before starting as executive director of the coming Sarasota museum.  As the new institution prepares to open its doors, SRQ sat down with Russell to learn about her tastes outside gallery walls. 


Queen of Sheba I am obsessed with this Ethiopian place. Get the Queen’s Eight platter so you can get a little of everything. I like to try out something different every time I go. I can’t go in wearing all white because I will get messy.  I’ve eaten great food in New York, Tucson, Los Angeles, D.C., and this is the best I’ve ever seen.

La Varenne  I attended cooking school in Paris, the one that Julia Child started. She wanted a hardcore, real cooking school that was very physically demanding. I am so appreciative of that. Now if all else fails, I can cook. But cooking taught me the principle of mise-en-place, everything in its place. You have to organize stuff to start a project. You can’t just leave stuff by the stove.

Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life  The most magical documentary ever. It’s about the migration of a people from their summer home to their winter home. The idea of nomadic people and carrying your home around with you, it shows you home is wherever you are. It was filmed in 1925, a silent film. I would say it’s just exquisitely beautiful and magical, and feels almost hallucinatory. It’s like an abstract work of art, but it’s about this actual thing that happens. Filmmaking at its purest.

Windsurfing I love all these things that I am really bad at. I’ve been windsurfing over at Bird Key Park. It’s very forgiving there. I did it for the first time 30 years ago but I only ever did it on vacation before coming here. Now it’s something I can do any time. My parents are SCUBA divers, and we’d always have Caribbean vacations. Some of my happiest memories are in tropical locations, which is what made Sarasota such a magical place to come.

Water  Here's the irony: I moved here from the desert, where consciousness and discourse around water issues is ever-present. It's the next big resource fight globally and we're not paying attention to it like we should be. In the desert, water harvesting and scarcity drives policy and behavior, as it should. But here's the kicker: our aquifer here is seriously distressed but no one talks about water. And that water bill we just passed? Don't get me started. Watching all the stormwater run off into the bay is so troubling. Better urban and infrastructure design and engineering can radically improve capture, but the need to address this just doesn't seem to part of the general local consciousness.

Italo Calvino I can't write about art without invoking Calvino. Writing about good works of art is really hard. He had such a sense of humor and just understood the human condition. There was a forgiveness and a lack of judgment. It’s a critique without judgment. It’s contradictory. There is almost a Buddhist sensibility to it.

Sarasota School of Architecture  The only thing I knew about Sarasota before coming here was its world-renowned architecture heritage. I don’t know if everyone in Sarasota is as aware of the international importance, though thanks to organizations like the Sarasota Architectural Foundation more people are beginning to understand. Having the Walker Guest House at The Ringling Museum, talk about a special place. Architecture is the highest art form, and I deeply value the architectural heritage of this community.

David Bowie We all somehow believed that he would never die and would always be there. Pinups taught me that Bruce Springsteen is actually ok. To hear the line "The screen door slams/Mary’s dress waves” the way Bowie sings it, it was a very special album. I think it demonstrates his generosity and love for music. How many musicians celebrate other musicians that way? He was a great connoisseur. 

The Yoga Shack It’s really a charming environment that’s very simple with a sort of purity. It’s appropriately named; there’s not a lot of shiny bells and whistles. I like to do Power Vinyasa, a nice combination of the alignment of Iyengar with the energy of Vinyasa and Hatha. I’m very happy to see such a yoga scene here.

How to Behave and Why, by Munro Leaf  It’s ostensibly a kid’s book, but everyone should have it and read it. You can’t give it to people and say you are behaving badly. You have to say, you behave so graciously, and this is to remind you of why.