Bill Vareika is an art gallery owner, specialist in 19^th century American art, writer, lecturer, community activist, preservationist, and philanthropist.

 

He graduated Magna Cum Laude from BC in 1974 with a degree in political science.  One BC art history course and a work study job at the Boston Public Library altered Vareika’s public service career goal -- and his life.  He abandoned law school plans to volunteer to direct a six-year legal battle to save a historic church in Newport, RI, which had been decorated by the important 19^th century American artist John La Farge, whom he had discovered in his BC art history class.  Later, because of economic circumstances, Vareika took a leave of absence from graduate studies in American Civilization at Brown University in order to begin a career as an art dealer, starting in very modest circumstances as a “picker” and later opening his Bellevue Avenue Newport gallery in 1987.

 

For twenty years, Vareika has used his gallery to raise public awareness about a variety of charitable causes and to donate over one million dollars to support these non-profit organizations.  His recent summer exhibition, “A Precious Muse: Art of the Narragansett Bay, Then and Now,” raised $200,000 for the environmental organization Save The Bay. In November2007 , Vareika will be honored as a “Partner in Philanthropy” by the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

 

Vareika has also donated dozens of artworks to museums and other charitable organizations including the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, the Newport Art Museum, and the Addison Gallery at Phillips Academy, Andover.

 

The William Vareika Fine Arts gallery has been recognized as “Best of RI” by Rhode Island Monthly Magazine and “one of the outstanding reasons to visit New England” by Yankee Magazine.

 

Bill Vareika has served on the boards of the Newport Art Museum, the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, the Newport Music Festival, and Save The Bay. He also serves on a number of advisory committees, including the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College; the Trinity Boston Preservation Trust, the Hope Funds for Cancer Research, and the Aquidneck Land Trust. He is a former Vice-Chairman of the RI State Council on the Arts. 

 

Bill and Alison Vareika have three children, three dogs, and live in an 1877 National Historic Register home in Newport, which they have been restoring for fifteen years.