Features

City’s Art Community Honors Brenda Prager

Daily Planet staff
Friday July 25, 2003

The Berkeley art community will celebrate the life and work of artist and arts commissioner Brenda Prager at a party in her honor Sunday. 

“A Tribute to Brenda Prager & 15th Anniversary of the Addison Street Windows Party and Art Sale” is open to the public from 2 to 5 p.m. at 2324 Shattuck Avenue. 

Prager joined the Berkeley Civic Arts Commission in 1988 and within a few months she created the Addison Street Window Gallery, a free sidewalk art gallery in Downtown Berkeley. She has curated the gallery for the last 15 years. 

Last month Prager was diagnosed with terminal, end-stage cancer. 

Prager said she plans to attend Sunday’s show and party. 

“I'm not looking backward on my life, not one minute,” she said. “I don’t have yesterday, I only have tomorrow. . .I only have what’s now.” 

Arts commissioner Bonnie Hughes planned Sunday’s event for Prager. 

“Artwork is coming in not just from people who’ve shown in the windows but from people who know Brenda from all over the world,” Hughes said “It gives people a chance to do something. When one of your friends is dying you feel pretty useless and here’s something you can do to make it a little easier.” 

Prager has won national recognition for her photographic images of disabled persons expressing their sexuality. The Berkeley Art Center is currently negotiating to exhibit a career retrospective of Prager’s hand-worked photographs in September.  

—Daily Planet staff