Fire ravages Kemmerer Farm

There’s a corner of YouTube populated by real-time footage of high-dollar art sales from prestigious New York and London auction houses like Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips. Hundreds of thousands of viewers routinely watch with rapt attention, popcorn and cocktails in hand, as recognizable pieces from art history make their way to the upper echelons of grossly unattainable hammer prices. Pieces can often start with opening bids of tens of thousands of dollars and work their way up to multiple millions. Bidding increments alone can grow to sums unattainable for the average American family in several lifetimes.

Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, Connecticut, wants to help make fine art more accessible. The 2026 version of the gallery’s annual “Cool and Collected” exhibition is subtitled “The Gift Edit” and features dozens of works by fine artists at prices that are much more in reach than an art-world outsider might expect. More than 30 artists contributed pieces to the show. Almost all available works are priced under $2,000, with many below $500. The collection features paintings, drawings, collage and ceramics.

“I think art is the thing that allows us to feel there’s something in the universe that loves us,” said painter Peter Cusack in his new studio, a mid-19th-century stone church on Main Street in North Canaan.

For Cusack, art has always been a way of reaching toward something beyond the physical world. That sensibility runs through “Eternal: New, Recent, and Near Distant Paintings,” his upcoming exhibition in the church, a setting that seems an improbably good fit.