An interview with Tim Reynolds

Transcription

1 An interview with Tim Reynolds One hundred percent of the expenses, construction costs and the endowment for the Ani Art Academies is financed by Ani Villas and the Tim Reynolds Foundation. Moreover, the Villas become a place where students sell their work. When the art sells, the artist gets 100% of the proceeds.

2 ANI VILLAS & ANI ART ACADEMIES Hotels in developing countries love to do great things for their communities. They dig wells. Clean beaches. On Earth Day, they ll shut off all their lights for an hour. CSR, or corporate social responsibility initiatives, are great. But they re usually a complement to the primary mission, which is making money. And there s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Makes the world go round, money does, and Tim Reynolds knows all about that. In 1999, he founded Jane Street Capital with two friends. By the time he retired in 2012, the trading house employed hundreds at offices in New York, London and Hong Kong and was doing billions of dollars in trades every day. Heady stuff, but there were other things Tim Reynolds wanted to do. Art, for one thing, especially after he read Irving Stone s biographical novels about Michelangelo and Vincent Van Gogh. And schools. As far back as he could remember, he d wanted to build schools in the developing world, and in 2012 he started doing just that. He also had this other idea that took root back in the 1990s when he worked as a bartender at a Club Med in the Caribbean: He wanted to spend a lot of time with friends and family in gorgeous places around the world. And so Tim Reynolds, entrepreneur that he is, imagined a virtuous circle that pulled into its vortex a lot of the things he loved, and produced a one-of-a-kind hospitality educational operation that builds art schools in far flung corners of the globe, and complementary, boutique resorts that are rented to one group at a time.

3 ANI VILLAS & ANI ART ACADEMIES Called the Ani Villas, the accommodation offers the exclusivity of a private estate rental with the amenities of a fully serviced resort, including a restaurant, bar, spa, pools, leisure coordinators and concierge services. Now in operation on Koh Yao Noi (near Phuket) in Thailand, on Anguilla in the Caribbean and on the central south coast of Sri Lanka, a fourth resort is opening in 2017 on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The schools are called Ani Art Academies, and offer a free, comprehensive drawing and painting program to the local communities in Anguilla, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Dominican Republic, and at two additional locations in the United States. The Ani Art Academy Waichulis in Bear Creek, Pennsylvania was built to train teachers for overseas assignments, and a handful of other American students. And the Ani Art Academy America, gearing up in the fall of 2016, was built as a resource for disabled veterans. The academies typically school 50 students in hyperrealistic art with a methodology devised by Anthony Waichulis. Apprentices work hard on repetition exercises, layering on one perfected skill after another until they achieve technical mastery. After three to four years of painstaking development, each school steers students out into communities that, hopefully, will be all the richer for having art in their mix. Here s what Tim had to say about what he does, where he does it and why he does it.

4 ANI VILLAS & ANI ART ACADEMIES How do you decide where to open an Academy and a Villa? I want to be in an incredibly gorgeous place that s still off the beaten path. If anything, I am looking for places that are in developing nations, and that are exotic tourist destinations. I don t think I would consider Bermuda. How did you happen upon the site for your first location? My wife Caroline and I were on vacation and were shopping for where to build a vacation house and ultimately retire. We found Anguilla and liked it very much. I was looking for a property that was under construction or at the very early stages, because I m in a wheelchair and need to make it accessible. Anguilla qualified because it s a gorgeous place? It does, and we need this kind of setting for all of the estates in order for there to be a virtuous circle. Take Koh Yao Noi, for example. It s a beautiful island, but there s not much going on in town. Every four years we graduate 50 more artists and most of them will stay local. You ll get remarkable galleries opening up, and a tourist destination acquires additional cachet as an island with a really strong arts community. How do the Villas factor into this circle? Every Villa we ve built has been the nicest property in the area, or perhaps even in the whole country, as with Sri Lanka. If there is land for sale on the beach, and another developer comes in and sees the magnitude of our investment, he or she might say This is going to be an amazing area, so they build something comparable. Inspiring other high caliber development happens as a result. It s all part of that circle. Maybe a chef comes on vacation, and decides to stay. Now we have a nice restaurant. A gallery owner likes the restaurant and visits the academy and decides to stay. And now here come more resorts. Isn t it possible that many Ani graduates will leave upon graduation? Some of the artists will. Some may hit it big and want to move to New York, let s say. But they will have family and send money back. Like baseball players out of the Dominican Republic. But others, after three or four year at work, will stay, enriching their communities with art. All of that art will create a need for galleries and ultimately more discerning tourists eager to bring home a valuable keepsake. Imagine the impact hundreds of exceptional artists can have on these small communities over the coming years.

5 ANI VILLAS & ANI ART ACADEMIES Is there any measurable impact yet -- anything to suggest that the concept, while already seeded and growing, is bearing fruit? Well, several prestigious US galleries have taken notice and are importing work to display in their galleries. In a few years, when we have hundreds of highly skilled graduates, we re going to host international art fairs and bring in paintings from around the world to New York. Excited collectors will marvel in the diversity of works from such culturally unique countries. When you think of Thai, Sri Lankan or say Dominican art, it s very different. What kind of relationship is there between the Villas and the Academies? When I was developing the idea for the Academies, I thought, Why not create a brand of villas, and use those villas as a way to showcase and gallery the art. People who come to stay in gorgeous, top-of-theline properties are the same people who have a lot of disposable income. Who doesn t want to bring back a really nice piece of art from the vacation of a lifetime? People really crave that kind of experience and take pride in discovering emerging talent in far flung places. They re proud to see the impact the proceeds have in these communities. So, the Villas fund the Academies? One hundred percent of the expenses, construction costs and the endowment for the Ani Art Academies is financed by Ani Villas and the Tim Reynolds Foundation. Moreover, the Villas become a place where students sell their work. When the art sells, the artist gets 100% of the proceeds. And that happens? Students are selling? One graduate sells paintings for as much as $25,000. That s our high-water mark at the moment, but within a year of beginning the program, apprentices sell their charcoal drawings at prestigious galleries in New York and elsewhere for $700 - $2000. Where does Ani come from as a name for the villas and the academies? It s a play on a Swahili word. Andjani means to be on a path or a journey. Think of a man from, say, Tanzania, who comes walking through a village on a journey of 200 miles to his ancestral burial ground. That s Andjani, and that seemed like an appropriate word for people who wanted more than just a vacation, and for artists just setting out on their journey. Why target groups, as opposed to individual travelers, or couples as the preferred base for the Villas? There are two answers to this question, and they re not mutually exclusive. When my wife and I bought the land in Anguilla, we decided to build a private estate that would be big enough to entertain friends and family. So we had this big place, and then we had the Academy under development, and we realized

6 this place, like Branson s place on Necker Island, would be the kind of place we could rent to help fund the Academies. That s the first answer. The second part is that there s a need out there. This buzzword, togethering, has been around a dozen years or so, but it s really gathering steam this desire that people have to get together for celebration vacations and all kinds of other reasons. Being on your own is over-rated. We don t thrive on our own; we thrive when we re with others. What kind of groups do you see being particularly drawn to Ani? Primarily groups of families or groups of friends. We are getting a lot of professional athletes who tend to travel with other athletes or other family. Corporate groups will definitely be part of it. We have facilities for people who want to work. We also get special interest groups - yoga is a big one. They will rent out the whole property, and then they will sell to their clients. And weddings? I can t think of a better venue for a destination wedding! The gorgeous natural settings. The exclusivity. The sophisticated designs. The luxury, the spa, the pools. And if it s a large wedding, there are nearby resorts of high caliber for extended family and friends. How do you see the market developing? We ll probably wind up with a few dozen very loyal clients that cycle between the properties. Cycling between the properties because they grow attached to the destinations? Attached to the destinations, and to the estates themselves. And to the people. If you get to know some of the staff, they are fun to be around. They really do a lot of work ahead of a guest s stay, to note a client s preferences. To figure whether the client wants to be left alone, or to be engaged. A lot of our clients have formed really strong relationships with the staff.

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