SARTQ Announces New Leadership in Rae Ramos

Todays News

Pictured: Rae Ramos. Photo by Rich Schineller.

The SARTQ artist collective has announced a change in leadership, as founder and member-artist Tim Jaeger steps down after 10 years guiding the organization. With the support of the group at large, member-artist Rae Ramos will step in as the incoming SARTQ director. “They are like my second family,” says Ramos. “I’m very thankful and very grateful for their confidence.”

“It’s a great time to change gears,” says Jaeger, who has led the group since its inception, including nurturing it through a brief hiatus and then spearheading its return in 2015. In his time, Jaeger has seen SARTQ through more than two dozen exhibitions and even more events, bringing a collective 37 local artists out to engage with thousands from the community. Annual print parties became a regular pleasure, and pop-up shows a spontaneous treat. “We’ve given back as much as we’ve taken,” Jaeger says with a note of pride, but admits it’s time to move on. He looks forward to continuing as a member-artist, “but it’s time to build something new,” he says.

And Jaeger has no qualms with leaving his baby with Ramos. “He won’t call himself an artist, but he is,” says Jaeger of the youthful new director. “And he’s exactly what SARTQ needs.”

Relatively new to Sarasota but a veteran of the arts scene, Ramos, since high school, has hopped from gallery to museum to gallery across the northeast, including stints at the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut, and Pace Gallery and Hollis Taggart Gallery in New York City. But it was a job with [blank] slate gallery that brought him to Sarasota, when the gallery opened a second location on Pineapple Avenue. First working part-time as an art preparator for Ringling College of Art and Design, he now handles programming for the college’s Sarasota Museum of Art.

“I’m not an artist,” Ramos says, inadvertently fulfilling Jaeger’s promise, “but one of my biggest passions is working with living artists and facilitating their hopes, dreams and aspirations.” As director, he’ll have an eye for expansion, but never so far as to lose that local flavor that makes SARTQ special. “I want to keep the Sarasota stamp on the group,” he says, “but also try things we haven’t tried before.”

As for Jaeger, he’ll still be around, and stepping down won’t change his favorite part about SARTQ—the camaraderie. “It’s those late-night conversations in local restaurants and bars,” he says. “The many, many meetings to discuss the climate of visual arts and what we wanted to change.” And as long as SARTQ has members, those dreams will continue.

Pictured: Rae Ramos. Photo by Rich Schineller.

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