Cure Gallery Puts Percentage of Profit into Artists’ Favored Causes

KINDER, GENTLER ART SALES: Arguing that the 1990s will be a decade of heightened social responsibility, the Cure Gallery is putting its money where its name is. In a novel sales policy, the gallery is donating 10% of the proceeds from its exhibitions to a charity selected by the featured artist. The AIDS Hospice Foundation, for instance, has been chosen by Keith Anderson, a young artist who applies a sensibility reminiscent of the German Expressionists to modern political and emotional themes. Anderson’s work will be shown March 8 to April 2.

Other shows and the charities selected include a group exhibit that will benefit People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; an exhibition of abstract works by the Swedish painter Sven Inge, to benefit the Rain Forest Foundation, and a show of paintings by a Rothko-inspired young Texas painter named Terrel Moore that will benefit the homeless.

“The ‘80s were a decade of ‘me’; the ‘90s, we feel, will be more a decade of ‘we,’ ” said Philip Miller, co-owner of Cure, which opened in October. Noting that artists--especially the “very contemporary” and emerging artists favored by the gallery--often can’t afford to make sizable contributions to charity on their own, Miller said, “We feel it needs to start on a commercial level and trickle down.”

For collectors, Miller and his partner, Marc Erlandson, say, there’s an added incentive in the gallery policy: 10% of a purchase price is tax deductible.

Cure Gallery, 8022 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. (213) 653-3877. Open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays. Opening reception for Keith Anderson will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday.

CLASSIC TRANSPLANT: New York has lost another well-respected art dealer to Los Angeles--this one, however, not in the contemporary field. Since 1986, Aldis Browne, who specializes in major 19th- and early 20th-Century European art, has been dividing his time between his Madison Avenue gallery in New York and Los Angeles, where he has been operating as a private dealer. In 1988, Browne held a six-week catalogued exhibition and sale of Old Master drawings and watercolors from the collection of Vincent Price in Los Angeles. In helping clients to build collections, he said, he generally handles everything from Matisse watercolors to top works by Cezanne and Van Gogh (yes, sometimes in those hard-to-believe high-market ranges).

Early this year, Browne--whose clients also have included the J. Paul Getty Museum--incorporated in California. As soon as he winds up his operation in New York, he’ll be operating from his new base in Venice.

When he first talked about moving to Los Angeles, Browne said, his New York peers were incredulous. “They told me I’d be crazy to do it, that I’d be back in a couple of months,” he said. But with Los Angeles (and the Pacific Rim, for that matter) now perceived as a growing market, that tune has changed. Just recently, Browne said, “a major Old-Master dealer in New York called and asked me about moving to Santa Monica.”

The infusion of some nationally recognized dealers in older art could be a boon to the art market in Los Angeles, which is seen primarily as a contemporary-arts arena. In fact, “L.A. has a pretty good wealth of pictures that came out years ago,” Browne said, “although most of the collecting is contemporary.”

Browne would like to provide an alternative. But should nothing else come of his move, he said from New York, “I tell you what--I’ll be the warmer for it. It’s freezing out here.”

Aldis Browne Fine Arts, Inc. (213) 301-6976.