William Vareika Fine Arts, Ltd.

One of the largest art galleries in New England, William Vareika Fine Arts, Ltd. specializes in the purchase and sale of important 18th, 19th, and early 20th century American paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints. For twenty years the gallery has enjoyed a national reputation, numbering among its clients some of the leading museums, corporations and private collectors in the United States, as well as many beginning collectors. Recently doubled in exhibition space, William Vareika Fine Arts, Ltd. includes the renowned Newport Gallery of American Art, and Newport Gallery of World Art. The gallery inventory of American art includes over 500 artworks including Colonial and Federal portraits, Hudson River School landscapes, seascapes and marines, still-lifes and works of the American Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Realists. The gallery also handles Old Master works, 19th century European art and paintings of the French Impressionists. In November 2003, William and Alison Vareika were pleased to open The Newport Gallery of World Art. Precious art objects of beauty and virtue from all historic and contemporary periods and regions of the world, including post-World War II American art, can be found in the new gallery space. The prevailing theme is high quality, and the foremost goal is to educate, entertain, and inspire our visitors and patrons, who will find this new venture to be an interesting complement to our collections of historical American art. William Vareika Fine Arts is located in historic Newport, Rhode Island, on famous Bellevue Avenue, a few doors from the Newport Casino and the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and two blocks from the Newport Art Museum and the Redwood Library and Athenaeum. In February 2005, the neighborhood in which the gallery is located was declared an Arts District by the State of Rhode Island. Accordingly, sales of original artworks are exempt from Rhode Island Sales Tax. Prices range from around $250 to over $100,000. All major credit cards are accepted. William Vareika Fine Arts offers art appraisal services, framing and art conservation consultation, purchases art and also accepts artworks on consignment for sale. ABOUT WILLIAM VAREIKA Bill Vareika is an art gallery owner, specialist in 19th century American art, writer, lecturer, community activist, preservationist, and philanthropist. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from BC in 1974 with a degree in political science. One BC art history course and a work study job at the Boston Public Library altered Vareika’s public service career goal -- and his life. He abandoned law school plans to volunteer to direct a six-year legal battle to save a historic church in Newport, RI, which had been decorated by the important 19th century American artist John La Farge, whom he had discovered in his BC art history class. Later, because of economic circumstances, Vareika took a leave of absence from graduate studies in American Civilization at Brown University in order to begin a career as an art dealer, starting in very modest circumstances as a “picker” and later opening his Bellevue Avenue Newport gallery in 1987. For twenty years, Vareika has used his gallery to raise public awareness about a variety of charitable causes and to donate over one million dollars to support these non-profit organizations. His recent summer exhibition, “A Precious Muse: Art of the Narragansett Bay, Then and Now,” raised $200,000 for the environmental organization Save The Bay. In November2007 , Vareika will be honored as a “Partner in Philanthropy” by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Vareika has also donated dozens of artworks to museums and other charitable organizations including the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, the Newport Art Museum, and the Addison Gallery at Phillips Academy, Andover. The William Vareika Fine Arts gallery has been recognized as “Best of RI” by Rhode Island Monthly Magazine and “one of the outstanding reasons to visit New England” by Yankee Magazine. Bill Vareika has served on the boards of the Newport Art Museum, the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, the Newport Music Festival, and Save The Bay. He also serves on a number of advisory committees, including the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College; the Trinity Boston Preservation Trust, the Hope Funds for Cancer Research, and the Aquidneck Land Trust. He is a former Vice-Chairman of the RI State Council on the Arts. Bill and Alison Vareika have three children, three dogs, and live in an 1877 National Historic Register home in Newport, which they have been restoring for fifteen years.