The Rural We: Neal Rosenthal

Neal Rosenthal has created so many ventures that the companies all fall under The Neal Rosenthal Group. It includes Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Mad Rose Specialty Foods, Mad Rose Journeys, an art collection, philanthropic projects, and more. Rosenthal is also the author of “Reflections of a Wine Merchant: On a Lifetime in the Vineyards and Cellars of France and Italy,” published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2008. Last year, Rosenthal and Kerry Madigan, his partner and wife, opened Mad Rose Gallery in Millerton. Currently on exhibit is “Expo Fidjrossè — Exploring the Art of Benin,” which emerged from a personal project undertaken by Rosenthal and The Mad Rose Foundation. “Expo Fidjrossè” showcases photography, painting, mixed media and sculpture by seven young artists of the West African region. The exhibit runs through April 4.

I’ve been importing wine from family estates for the last 45 years, working with small, generation-to-generation farmers in western Europe. Our company is known to be the arbiter of tastes for those kinds of wines. From that experience, we branched off into other activities. I have a restaurant in the West Village with my daughter, and we opened the Mad Rose art gallery, primarily for my wife to show her photography. But we’ve expanded the gallery to present a rotating series of shows.

This show, “Expo Fidjrosse,” features artists from Benin in West Africa and a photographer from Togo. It came from an offshoot of a personal project in Africa. In gratitude for the wonderful education I received at Rutgers University, in 2019 our foundation instituted an exchange program at Rutgers, with the objective being to work in Haiti. Rutgers felt it was too dangerous to proceed there, so we moved the project to Benin, which is on the Atlantic just north of Nigeria. The program has been enlarged at Rutgers and was moved to the Center of African Studies in collaboration with the Rutgers Global Initiative.

Recently I spent a wonderful week in Nigeria and went to Benin to meet with this group of fine artists. I love these young people, and it was a natural for me to bring their art to the Mad Rose Gallery. I purchased works from 7 artists — 21 works in total — and have already sold 3 pieces. All of the artists maintain ateliers in the Fidjrossè district of Cotonou, the commercial capital of Benin. We have an “In Conversation” series with each new art installation, and while these artists are not able to make the trip to the U.S., we have invited Mallick Welli, a Senegalese photographer, to the gallery on Monday, March 24 at 3:30 p.m. for a public conversation about the artists and their work.