Thornton began her professional life as a co-founder of City Without Walls Gallery, Newark, N.J. Started by a small group of artist friends in 1975, this non-profit cultural organization has since served the community and artists living in metropolitan New York/New Jersey for three decades.
During its first decade, Thornton served as CWW's Board Secretary and President, stepping down to become its Executive Director in 1982. At that time, the Reagan Administration caused a funding crisis by terminating the Federal C.E.T.A. program, which provided most of CWW's operating budget. This made fundraising equal to curation in Thornton's management brief. The gallery's first National Endowment for the Arts grant and first significant corporate support were secured during her tenure.
A key achievement during this period was the 1988 exhibition "Moscow/Newark: Come Yesterday and You'll be First." Thornton, CWW's Board, and its core group of member artists orchestrated the smuggling of the entire contents of a secret gallery of dissident art out of Moscow. This was an unprecedented American artist-led effort to support the underground artists' community in the Soviet Union at a critical time prior to glasnost. The Russian art arrived in Newark just three days after the Soviets downed an American airliner, KAL Flight 007, over North Korea on August 29, 1988. CWW's first exhibition catalogue, designed by Thornton, was published for this landmark show.
Thornton designed and published Newark: A Study in Steel and Stone, CWW's photographic survey book of Newark's rich architectural heritage. After ten years of professional commitment and daily work on CWW's behalf, having achieving fiscal stability, an enhanced curatorial agenda, and a program of expanded membership services for the organization, Thornton moved on.
In October 1987, Thornton migrated to Europe in order to study western art history first-hand. She has subsequently earned the respect of her colleagues in both London and Copenhagen through her connoisseurship and dedicated scholarly investigation. The British Museum acquired her first collection of Danish fine prints in 1989. Her writings on Scandinavian art have been published in the UK and, most recently, in Denmark -- essays on photography and digital art in Katalog, one of Scandinavia's foremost art journals.
Thornton exhibited her own richly colored realist drawings, electrostatic collage prints, and SX-70 photos in the New York art world during the 1970s and '80s, prior to moving to Europe. In 1993, she took a hiatus from professional life to become a full-time mother, and resumed her career in 1999. She is now creating visual art in various digital media.
Photograph: "Self-portrait, Paris photo booth," Sept. 17, 2002. © Copyright 2002 by Colleen Thornton. All rights reserved.
