Two major stories are bubbling under one roof at 117 W. Liberty, the address of the Ann Arbor Art Center. The most recent, visible, and highly publicized change is that a new showroom for Motawi Tile now occupies the front half of the address’s downstairs retail gallery, leading some people to ask, What happened to the Ann Arbor Art Center?
This question exasperates both Marie Klopf, head of the art center, and Nawal Motawi, president of Motawi Tile, for different reasons.
“We have three types of artists,” explains Klopf, the Art Center’s president since 2012: “New artists that haven’t ever done it before: we teach them how to price their artwork, the ropes of how to sell retail, and so forth. Then we have the artists who are established: they sell well, and they stay. Then we have artists who are ready to go to the next level, and that’s Motawi.
“Motawi has been considering having a downtown location. This is a way for them to stick their toe in the water. So nothing’s happened to the Ann Arbor Art Center. … It’s ‘Ann Arbor Art Center presents Motawi Tile at the 117 Gallery.’ They’re on consignment in our space, like all our other artists, only we’re giving them a lot more space than most of our artists.”
A smart, savvy businesswoman from the car world, Klopf is not the sort who is usually found at the helm of a nonprofit, though in a way she’s a perfect fit. “I’m used to helping companies be lean and mean,” she says. The former GM tooling engineer and president of Current Motors (the electric scooter company) took the job as head of the AAAC when then-board member JPaul Dixon called her and asked, “Do you like art?”
“I said, ‘Who doesn’t like art?'” Klopf recalls. It was intended to be an interim post while the board conducted a national search, but “I fell in love with it and put my hat in the ring.”
After a decade of recession, and the loss of grant money and government subsidies that are probably gone for good, “art and culture needs to find a way to make a living,” she says. “I’m here to find a new business model that takes [the Art Center] through the next 100 years.”
The Motawi showroom is one piece of that puzzle. She’s renamed the ground floor retail area the 117 Gallery, and, along with curator Nathan Rice, has downsized the number of exhibiting artists and overhauled the criteria for selecting them. Upstairs, she’s completed an expensive refurbishing of the old plaster walls to host gallery exhibits: “The walls were like cottage cheese from all the nails pounded in them,” she says crisply. Through October 12 the AAAC is hosting an exhibit, “Unseen,” by the Gallery Project, which since giving up its Fourth Ave. space has become a traveling gallery.
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From Nawal Motawi’s perspective, the showroom downtown is pretty big news in its own right.
Founder of the company that manufactures the art and architectural tile that arguably is Ann Arbor’s most famous artisanal product (perhaps second only to Zingerman’s bread), she has for some time longed for a showroom downtown. “I’d talked to a real estate broker but couldn’t figure out how to do it without risking an arm and a leg.
“So I knew there was a change in leadership at the AAAC. I had met Marie at a fundraiser. We had rapport. She was extroverted, engaging, and wanted to talk to everyone who was connected to the art world.” Motawi was already in the AAAC stable, and they worked it out.
It’s too early to tell how it’s going at the new showroom (the grand opening was September 10). But, Motawi says, “I know how much we sell here in the middle of nowhere” at her factory showroom on Enterprise Dr. “If we could just sell that much in addition to what we sell here, it would work. And then,” she says, her eyes lighting up, “if we could put showrooms like that in several other cities … Well, why not think big? I know my friends over at Zingerman’s wouldn’t do it that way,” she says. Her “friends at Zingerman’s” are her spiritual guides for running a humane business that puts employees before profits, and Zingerman’s believes that keeping it local is key to that. Motawi tile is made locally but is already in galleries and high-end tile showrooms across the country.
117 Gallery (Ann Arbor Art Center), 117 W. Liberty, 994-8004. Mon.-Fri. 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Sun. noon-5 p.m. annarborartcenter.or
Motawi Tileworks, 170 Enterprise Dr., 213-0017. motawi.com
