"Heather and I are excited to expand Heather James into such an amazing space," explains Jim Carona. "We've been operating our antiquities gallery on El Paseo for the past 12 years and successfully incorporated fine art.

With the purchase of this new building, however, we increase our ability to mount several significant and wide-ranging exhibitions at one time. The new gallery also allows us to refocus our El Paseo location on antiquities and ethnographic art."

Joining the Heather James team is Los Angeles-based Chip Tom with 15 years of experience as an independent curator. After he graduated from Yale University, Tom organized primarily contemporary art shows in galleries and museums throughout America, Asia and Europe. He is the curator of two current exhibitions Chinaman's Chance: Views of the Chinese American Experience at Pasadena's Pacific Asia Museum and Nature Morte/Dead Nature at Laguna's Rohrer Fine Art.

"The gallery will introduce to the community blue chip and cutting-edge contemporary art while still maintaining a respect for the integrity of classic masterpieces," explains Tom. "Our philosophy is simple: great art is found worldwide. We want to expose people to the most thought provoking, technically interesting, significant artworks." Tom is organizing future gallery exhibitions that will include a wide spectrum of contemporary artists, such as Tseng Kwong Chi, Zhang Huan, Lawrence Lee, Rotraut, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, and Timothy Tompkins , which will hang next to masterpieces by Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Van Gogh, Rothko, Warhol, Frieda Kahlo, Rockwell and others. -- Furino/Greene Creative