About Us
The Art Renewal Center® was founded in 1999 for the advancement of traditional and contemporary representational art. As a registered 501(c) 3 non-profit educational foundation and one of the internet's leading art resources, the ARC has become a central hub for the promotion of Contemporary Realism (Post-Contemporary Art) and the resurgence of skill-based training in the visual arts. ARC Approved™ atelier schools and workshops are amongst the most popular parts of the ARC website, having expanded exponentially since our first listing in 2002. Applications for ARC accreditation are reviewed year round. In addition to our daily blogs and weekly newsletter, the International ARC Salon Competition, dedicated to realist artists, is the largest and most prestigious in the USA and perhaps the world. Other features include the ARC's annual scholarship competition, which distributes $30,000 each year to students who attend ARC Approved™ schools, dozens of articles, essays and entire books that can be read online, both historical and contemporary, the most popular of which is the ARC Philosophy of Fine Art and Aesthetics. The ARC museum contains images by around 6,000 artists with over 48,000 images, many at high-resolution, including a growing number of 21st century artists in our Living Master and Artist's Gallery. Applications are welcome. Also visit us on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.
Our ARC Salon competition and works that appear on ARC in general are intended to promote the highest quality in realistic art. ARC believes highly in freedom of speech and we do not censor based on subject matter or political commentary. Works are chosen based on their overall power and technical achievement. The subject matter of the works in the ARC Salon competition and on the ARC website in general are not necessarily expressing the views of the ARC, its staff or management.
Our Staff
Fred Ross
ARC Chairman
Founder
Founder and Chairman of the Art Renewal Center, Ross is the leading authority on William Bouguereau and co-author of the published Catalogue Raisonné William Bouguereau: His Life and Works. Ross received his MA in art education from Columbia University. His speeches and essays are read by over 300,000 art professionals, educators, students and fans each year; and have become required reading in countless classrooms. He has given lectures and speeches at prominent venues including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sotheby’s NY, The Dahesh Museum, NY, the Berkshire Museum, MA, The Wadsworth Athenaeum, CT, the MEAM Museum, Barcelona, as well as university campuses among other venues. Ross is also a well-known collector of 19th Century European painting and of Contemporary Realism, being published in numerous magazine and newspaper articles including Forbes Magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur among others. Ross has also been a frequent Juror in numerous competitions and is an ARC Salon and ARC Scholarship judge.
Kara Lysandra Ross
ARC Co-Chair and Chief Operating Officer
Founder
Kara Lysandra Ross is the Co-Chair and Chief Operating Officer for the world renowned Art Renewal Center (ARC). She holds a BA in Art History from Drew University. As an art educator she has been a contributing writer for Collections Magazine, and Fine Art Connoisseur, and has been published frequently in other magazines and newspapers. She was the co-editor of the William Bouguereau Catalogue Raisonné and author of chapter 28 in the published second edition. In her role at the ARC she spearheaded the introduction of the live exhibition associated to the ARC Salon Competition which has traveled to prestigious venues such as Sotheby’s NY, Sotheby’s LA, The European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) and the Salmagundi Club, serving as chief organizer and curator. She is an ARC Salon Juror, and has served as juror in other competitions for organizations such as the 2nd Velázquez Painting & Sculpture competition, China, the South African Portrait Society, International Guild of Realism, IX Arts, and the Ani Academy. She is also an expert on 19th century Academic French and English painting, co-authoring William Bouguereau: The Essential Works and is currently researching and writing the catalogue raisonné on Edmund Blair Leighton, for which she is accepted as the world authority, authenticating works by this artist for Sotheby's, Christie's, and Bonham's among others.
Iian Neill
Technical Lead
Founder
Iian Neill is an ARC founder and builder of both the original ARC website back in 1999 and its newly designed version. He holds a BA in Art History and English Literature from the University of Queensland, as well as a Postgraduate Certificate in IT, and has over ten years' experience as an ASP.NET consultant. He has given presentations on art history to the University of the Third Age and delivered a lecture at the Salisbury Art Studios on the subject of imitation and art. He is also the founder and developer of an innovative digital humanities text-as-a-graph project called The Codex, which visualises the connections between artists, artworks, and historical events. Iian was made a visiting researcher at the Digital Academy of the Academy of Sciences and Literature at the University of Mainz, Germany in 2018.
Angela Swanson Jones
ARC Salon Director
Angela Swanson Jones is a graduate of Brigham Young University and holds an M.A. degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. She has published articles with Fine Art Connoisseur and is the co-author of three books: Desperately Young: Artists Who Died in Their Twenties (ACC Art Books, 2020); Dictionary of Utah Fine Artists (Gibbs Smith Publishers, 2022); and the forthcoming biography John Hafen: Utah’s Aesthetic Conscience (Gibbs Smith Publishers, 2024). Her other topics of research include 19th and 20th-century realist religious art, and she is currently preparing a biography and catalogue raisonneì of the German painter Heinrich Hofmann (1824–1911). Prior to her appointment as ARC Salon Director, Angela was a volunteer with the organization and a proponent of its cause. After living for ten years in Europe, she now resides in Dallas, Texas.
Hongbin Zhang
ARC Chinese Realist Artist Ambassador
Zhang Hongbin is a far-sighted cultural manager and curator with an international perspective. He firmly believes that global interaction and cross-cultural exchange are the most important transformative forces shaping our era. To this end, he has been active at the forefront of the world's art field for more than 20 years, promoting cross-regional and cross-cultural dialogue between the East and the West and enhancing exchanges of values, beliefs, practices and mutual trust between people from different cultural backgrounds, making huge contributions through his efforts. As the founder of "Sheng Xinyu Art" established in 2002, Zhang Hongbin has won wide acclaim in the field of international figurative art. He currently serves as a member of the international jury of the "Almenara Art Prize" (Spain) and the "TARTGET PAINTING PRIZE" (Spain), as well as the chief editor of the overseas center of Collection magazine. In addition, he has also served as: International Committee Member of the Florence Biennale (Italy) and Chinese Ambassador of the Laguna Art Prize (Italy). Zhang Hongbin organized and planned global art competitions such as the "Titian International Portrait Painting and Sculpture Competition", "Velazquez Painting and Sculpture Competition", "Venice International Watercolor Festival", and "International Youth Art Competition". In addition, he has written and commented for well-known magazines such as Collection, Art Business, Art News, Gallery, Harper's Bazaar, Chinese Watercolor, Art Focus and so on. He has conducted nearly a hundred interviews with artistic figures from around the world. Moreover, the annual number of readers of the "Sheng Xinyu Art" public account (corporate media) has exceeded 2.1 million. In summary, Zhang Hongbin’s multi-faceted contributions in the field of art make him an outstanding figure in promoting global cultural exchanges and cross-cultural understanding.
Frank Gatti
Chief Financial Officer
BS in accounting from St. John's University, MBA in Finance from Wagner College, worked as a financial analyst on Wall Street for major banking institutions
Yvette Lytle
Chief Liaison for ARC Approved Schools and Artists/Museum Archivist
Associates Degree in Visual Communications from the Katherine Gibbs School, Website and Graphic Designer, Artist.
Sabrina Foland
Media Coordinator and ARC Store/Web Assistant
Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design from Montclair State University. Graphic Designer.
Michele Carnevale
Executive Assistant
Executive Assistant to ARC Chairman, Fred Ross. BA, AAS, in Professional Sciences from The Laboratory Institute of Merchandising.
Sherry Ross
Editor-in-Chief
Founder
Author of The Vinetrope Adventures, The Seeds of the Pomegranate, and The Sorrell Ridge Cook Book, Sherry Ross has also been published in many poetry magazines including POET Magazine and Enchanted Living Magazine.
Sean Colon
Technical Advisor
BA in International Relations
Thank you to Paul Ripley for writing many of the historical artist biographies that appear throughout the ARC museum and also to Don Kurtz, for providing many of the historical photographic resources.