The Weeks Gallery (originally the Forum Gallery) and its related exhibiton programs evolved from JCC’s Visual Arts Initiative (VAI), led by Dr. Robert Hagstrom, chair of the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Jamestown Community College. Hagstrom and the VAI committee envisioned opportunities to provide art leadership and to enrich cultural life through regional outreachs and services. In 1990, a temporary exhibiton space (The Forum Gallery) was created in the Forum building. The new service/outreach progams were immediatley acknowledged for excellence on the local, regional, and national scenes. These initial successes created enthusiastic community-wide support for a new museum exhibition space within a Community Cultural Center. In response, the VAI and Capital Campaign committee of 1994 added plans for the new gallery and arts endowment to sustain additional programing and staff. The JCC Foundation continues to work toward completing this endowment component with a new college-wide Arts Endowment, as part of its 2oo6 Funding Excellence Capital Campaign.

Dan Talley, the first full-time director for the Forum Gallery (serving from 1990-1996), was generously funded by the Sheldon Foundation. Talley was the former director of the Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, Georgia. He brought immediate national attention to the gallery with his first exhibition, Aging: The Process, the Perception and with the annual PhotoNominal exhibitions, a national juried series that drew artists from across the nation. Dan’s monumental successes, complimented by a visionary Gallery Development Committee (led by Lois Strickler and Reg Darling) led to the construction of the new state-of-the-art Weeks Gallery in 1996.

The current director of exhibitions and galleries, James Colby (serving 1997-present), is the founder of the Museum Without Walls educational outreach program, the annual Global Collection of Photography exhibition, and the permanent art collection which includes artists from across the nation and around the wolrld. He is the first to consistently exhibit global artists and has set numerous attendance records for cultural events. The Tibetan Monk’s from the Drepung Loseling Monastery drew over four thousand visitors in one week for lectures, performances, sand mandala ceremonies, and exhibition. Colin Shaffer, the Weeks Gallery Assistant has designed the gallery web site and is currently working towards building a digital database of JCC’s permanent art collection, to be used in future ArtReach education programs.