William Bartman, promoted artists

LOS ANGELES -- William S. Bartman, founder of Art Resources Transfer, a nonprofit organization that publishes books featuring conversations between artists and makes those and other art books available free to libraries in underserved communities, has died. He was 58.

Mr. Bartman, a former Los Angeles stage and film director, died Sept. 15 of multiple organ failure at a hospital in Manhattan, said Yael Meridan Schori, president of the Art Resources Transfer board of directors. Mr. Bartman, who required dialysis, had long-term health problems, including an HIV infection, she said.

Mr. Bartman, an art collector, founded Art Resources Transfer in Los Angeles in 1987. He later moved it to New York City, where he opened a nonprofit bookstore-gallery in 1996. The bookstore-gallery operated until 2004.

Over the years, ART has published 17 contemporary artist-interview books, which are sold in bookstores, museums, and galleries around the country.

''There was nobody who was more of a cheerleader for the artist and for art than Bill was," Schori said Thursday. ''He would go through hoops to promote art and artists. He thought the world of them and thought that art changes the world and basically touches us in ways that nothing else can do."

Schori praised Mr. Bartman for making art available and ''having this outlet for people to express their feelings."

The Chicago-born Mr. Bartman grew up in Los Angeles and earned a bachelor's degree from Trinity College in Hartford in 1968.

At the West Coast Theater Company in Los Angeles in the 1970s and early 1980s, he produced and directed numerous shows. He also founded an artist-in-the-schools program and a theater program at the federal prison in Lompoc.

Before launching ART, Mr. Bartman also worked as an associate producer and second-unit director on a number of films, and he directed and co-wrote the 1982 movie ''O'Hara's Wife," a comedy-drama starring Ed Asner, Mariette Hartley, and Jodie Foster.