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Good afternoon and welcome to the extension of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist
Art. I'm Elizabeth Sackler, and this is the second day of a weekend of celebrations, really
for the second anniversary. It's exactly two years since we opened the Center for Feminist
Art. And it has been a wonderful two years, we opened the Center not only to be our permanent
home for The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, which it is, but also to have educational
programming, such as this, to have an arts programming, and to have other exhibitions,
history exhibitions, herstory exhibitions, and the like, and we have had tremendous success
over the last two years, and are very much looking forward to our continued growth. There
is a quote, which I would like to read to you, which comes from the 1888 notebooks of
Nietzsche, it was one of the last, it's a little snippet, it was one of the last pieces
that he wrote, and he says, We possess art, lest we perish of the truth. I love that,
and I think it's sort of relevant for today's panel, and for those of you who are here who
are artists, who are involved in the art world, in the art market, in museums and so on. Art
plays such a deeply important part, role in our culture, in our lives, in the lives of
our children, our family, our health. And I think that, everything that all of us, each
of us can do to support art, to support artists is certainly in line. It's as important as
taking the best of care of our little ones, and our next generation. So, I welcome you.
And I'm delighted today to have The Market: Women Artists from Collection to Cultural
Record here. Last year, Kat Griefen came with a panelist of artists also co?sponsored by
AIR. And we had it in the forum, which is our presentation space in the Center. And
it was overflowing and many people didn't get in. A lot of people were really disgruntled.
So it's delightful this year that this auditorium has become available, and that we're able,
cause I can see looking out, that we would not have been able to have seated you all.
So this is absolutely terrific. The panel today is going to be looking at why women's
art is undervalued, in the art market, and how the current art market has evolved to
be what it is. And are there strategies for parity? And these are questions that are very
important to me. Parity, we look for men and women in all walks of life, be it professional,
be it salaried, be it employment opportunities, and as we know, women artists, feminist artists
do not fetch what male artists do, either living or dead. So it doesn't much matter
to look forward and say, Oh well, once I die my art's really going to be worth something.
Because if you're a woman, that's no guarantee. And my hope is, of course, not only will the
panelists shed some light on this, but maybe even come up with strategies that we can all
work towards. I'd be really happy for that, I think a lot of people would. Deborah Harris
is joining us, Claire Oliver, Sue Scott, Deepanjana Klein, and Ferris Olin is co?moderating with
Kat Griefen. And I'd like first to introduce Kat. Kat has been the director of AIR Gallery
since 1996. And AIR was founded, as most of you know and many of you are involved with,
I think in 1972, as the first artist run not for profit gallery for women. I think it was
really kind of a cooperative in its day. Kat's recent writings have centered on trans men's
visual culture, including a published essay entitled, The Boy and the Blue Dress, In Imago
the Drama of Self?Portraiture in Recent Photography, which was published by Rutgers University.
And Rutgers is here I think in full form, and Rutgers has been such a great sister,
I feel, with the Center, and that hopefully all of our works are paying off and spreading.
We have to spawn a lot more centers in Rutgers and all kinds of things. So Kat, in September
of 2007, curated Material Matter: American Abstract Artists, at Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn,
here, and most recently co-curated with Dena, and Carey Lovelace, both women that I'm sure
you all know well, a three part exhibition event series, AIR Gallery-The History, works
and archival material from 1972 to the present. And it opened at AIR and it's now at the Tracey-Barry
Gallery at NYU. So if you haven't had a chance to see it, by all means, try to do so. It's
very important, it's on view until April 15th, and hopefully spring will be with us by then.
I hope you enjoy this panel immensely and I will be back up here to sort of wrap up
and say adieu. But meanwhile, Kat Griefen, wonderful to welcome you, your panelists,
and thank you for celebrating the second anniversary of the Center with us here. Again, welcome.
And thank you all for joining us for The Market, Women Artists from Collection to Cultural
Record. This is the second in a two part panel series on women's art in the market place.
And it's part of a series, like Elizabeth said, that's organized by AIR Gallery, the
Feminist Art Project, and the Institute for Women and Art at Rutgers University. For the
second year, we're holding this panel series at the Brooklyn Museum and the Tribeca Performing
Arts Center. The panel series are designed to tackle topics that are critical to the
lives and work of women artists as part of our month long celebration of women in the
arts in March. I'd like to thank Doctor Elizabeth Sackler for your wonderful, warm welcome.
Also, thank Eleanor Whitney for helping us organize this and the artists who helped as
well and the Brooklyn Museum overall, the staff here. This month's events will accumulate
with Night AIR, this Thursday, March 26th, at AIR Gallery, which is also now a closer
neighbor located at 111 Front Street in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn. And the program
for Night AIR is going to include food and refreshments from local eateries and a wonderful
short program of video pieces by emerging women artists that was curated by Lilly Wei
in conjunction with our eighth biennial exhibition, which is currently up at the gallery through
March 29th. Now, I'd like to start by introducing our distinguished panelists. This will be
in the order of which they will speak. The longer bios for all of them can also be found
in the press releases that I think many people received as they were coming in. In 1993,
Claire Oliver founded her gallery in Florida, before moving to Philadelphia in 1997 and
relocating to New York in 2001. She represents both emerging and mid?career artists. They
have a commitment to physical process and intensity of detail, which is common to all
of her gallery artists. The gallery is committed to working with established, international
artists and collaboratives, producing large?scale thematic projects such as the Green Project,
which was at Miami Art Week in 2008. And they're also committed to showing multimedia work.
Claire Oliver Gallery artists are represented in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Tate Modern, the Smithsonian, and many other museums. Some of the gallery
artists include Julie Blackmon, Jennifer ***, Stephanie Lempert, Judas Schaechter, Janet
Biggs, and Phyllis Bramson. In November of 2008, Sue Scott opened Sue Scott Gallery on
the Lower East Side after having been an independent curator, collector, artist, I'm sorry, art
adviser, and writer for more than 20 years. Concurrently, she served as an adjunct curator
for the Orlando Museum of Art for 19 years where she organized numerous one person exhibitions
for artists including Jane Hammond, Lesley Dill, Alex Katz, and Jennifer Bartlett, as
well as numerous group shows. She's also organized exhibitions for the Corcoran Gallery of Art,
the Dorsky, and the Virginia Beach Museum. In 2007, she co-wrote After the Revolution,
Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art, with Eleanor Hartney, Nancey Princenthal, and Helaine
Posner. Deborah Harris was named the managing director of the Armory Show Modern in August
2008. Harris has over 20 years of experience in magazine publishing. She began her career
at Art and Auction in her early years and went on to become advertising manager of ARTnews
and advertising director of Art in America. Most recently, she oversaw all the art related
sales for LTB Media including Art and Auction, Modern Painters, artinfo.com, and Gallery
Guide. Deepanjana Klein is a specialist in the Modern and Contemporary Indian Art Department
at Christie's. She's been a curator in New York City since 2000 and has many exhibitions
to her credit. She has a PhD in Indian Art History from De Montfort University in England
and has taught art history, theory, and aesthetics at Leicester School of Architecture in England
and the KRVIA Mumbai. She is currently working on a set of books on sculpture and cave architecture
of Ellora. Her publications include contributions to an encyclopedia of sculpture and several
published essays on contemporary Indian art. She's the recipient of awards including a
grant from the Mellon Foundation, the JN Tata Endowment for the Higher Education of Indians,
and the Nehru Trust for Indian Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Now, I
also have the pleasure of introducing our co?moderator Ferris Olin. She will be speaking
a little bit about the topic today before the panelists give their presentations. Ferris
Olin is the co?director of the Institute for Women and Art, co?curator of the Mary H. Dana
Women Artists Series, founder and co?director of the Feminist Art Project, and project co?director
for WAAND, Women Artists Archives National Directory, all at Rutgers University. Doctor
Olin is a noted art historian, curator, women's studies scholar, as well as librarian. She
received the 2007 Annual Recognition Award from the College Art Association's Committee
on Women in Art. In 2008, she was awarded the Art to Life Award from AIR Gallery and
Art and Living Magazine, the Alice Paul Equity Award, and the Douglass Medal from Douglass
College. She has served on the board for College Art Association, the Women's Project of New
Jersey, and the Neighborhood Narratives Project. Ferris Olin. Thank you, Kat. Good afternoon.
On behalf of the Institute for Women and Art at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey,
also known as the IWA, I too want to thank you and welcome you to this afternoon's program
and thank the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and the Brooklyn Museum for
hosting this event, and I'm delighted to be here on its second anniversary. I direct the
Institute along with my colleague, Judith K. Brodsky. It is the only research center
in the United States focusing its activities on women and art. Our vision is to transform
values, policies, and institutions and to ensure that the intellectual and aesthetic
contributions of diverse communities of women in the visual arts are included in the cultural
mainstream and acknowledged in the historical record. The Institute's mission is to invent,
implement, and lead live and virtual education, research, documentation, public programs,
and exhibits focused on women artists and feminist art. The IWA strives to establish
equality and visibility for all women artists, who are underrepresented and unrecognized
in art history, the art market, and the contemporary art world, and to address their professional
development needs. We endeavor to serve all women in the visual arts and diverse, global,
national, regional, and state audiences. This afternoon's program in collaborations with
AIR Gallery and the Sackler Center exemplifies the partnerships and the programming that
we initiate. Currently, the Institute is engaged in three programmatic areas. Our exhibitions
and sponsored lectures primarily center on the Mary H. Dana Women Artist Series, which
was founded in 1971 by Joan Snyder and is the oldest continuous-running exhibition space
dedicated to making visible the work of emerging and established contemporary women artist.
Through the Getty?funded Women Artists Archives National Directory, WAAND, and innovative
web directory, scholars are able to locate primary documents about women artists active
in the US since 1945. There are now more than 13,000 women artists listed in WAAND, from
among 1,200 archival collections found in the directory. The National Collaborative
Feminist Art Project, of which AIR is a founding program partner, is administered by the Institute
and celebrates feminist art and women's aesthetic and intellectual impact on our culture. We
now have 32 regional coordinators working with institutions and individuals in their
geographical areas across the United States to promote our goals through programs, exhibitions,
and special projects. At this point, there are more than 1,000 events, such as this one,
that are listed on our website calendar through 2013. We also have been developing a kindergarten
through 12th grade feminist art education section on the site that will provide virtual
access to model curricular materials teaching about women artists. I would like to take
this opportunity to plug an event we will hold on May 17th, to which you are all invited.
We will honor the distinguished artist Faith Ringgold, who will receive an honorary degree
from Rutgers, her 21st. And we will open the major exhibition of her 50?year career, both
with a gala celebration, so please do come. This afternoon's program is the second in
our March series to examine women in the art market. Presentations by the panelists during
the first program led to a lively conversation which I have no doubt will be continued this
afternoon. Once all of today's panelists have spoken, we plan to engage in discussion amongst
the presenters and then we will take questions from you in the audience. Let me make some
introductory comments about women artists, collections, and the cultural record. Between
1989 and 1992, I interviewed a selected number of American women art collectors to ascertain
how the social upheavals of the 1950s and 60s had impacted their collecting practice.
I chose four women, then between the ages of 70 and 90, who determined the scope of
their collections in that time period, and in some cases in reactions of the civil rights,
anti?war, and feminist movements. Although they resided in Washington, Des Moines, near
the Nebraska border, and Los Angeles and represented various points of view along the political
spectrum, they shared some commonalities. Three collected art exclusively by women.
One collection focused on art of the avant?garde. One, on the artists of the nineteenth and
twentieth century from Europe and America, with an emphasis on the American West. And
one chose to amass a collection representing a survey of Western art from the Renaissance
through modern times. The fourth woman collected art from underrepresented populations, Native
American, Chinese, and the African diaspora. I can't say for sure if they had seen the
1986 Guerrilla Girls poster commenting on the activities of art collectors, but clearly
this specific group of collectors, on whom I focus my attention, consciously chose to
forge a path not taken by their male counterparts. Among the women artists who could be found
in these collectors homes were Kathe Kollwitz, Betye Saar, Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois,
Barbara Kruger, Judy Chicago, Natalia Goncharova, Clementine Hunter, Leonora Carrington, Paula
Modersohn-Becker, Sonia Delaunay, Isabel Bishop, Elizabeth Catlett, Agnes Martin, Suzanne Valadon,
Berthe Morisot, E.J. Montgomery, Helen Lundeberg, Lavinia Fontana, Clara Peters, Hannah Hoch,
Rosa Bonheur, Margo Humphrey, and the list could go on. Much of the works were acquired
during the same time period when the majority of other collectors sought out works by artists
who had already entered the art historical canon. Artworks by women artists and artists
of color sold at prices much lower than their white, male counterparts and were more readily
available. In two cases, the women began collecting in part to decorate new homes, but then began,
became so engrossed in the historical erasure of women artists, that they actively found
ways to contribute to the knowledge base of the new art history through publications and
institutional support. The two others had political agendas, focused on transforming
society. And this was illustrated by their curatorial and scholarly research and involvement
with social activist groups, and their leadership in establishing lasting institutional presence
for artists of color and women. More than two decades later, we are still seeing a pattern
of devaluing work by women artists, who remain invisible to the majority of collectors, such
as Eli Broad. In 2008, the Broad collection at the L.A. County Museum of Art was comprised
of 30 artists. 97 percent were white, 87 are male. 194 artists are held in the Broad Foundation
collection, of whom 96 are white and 83 percent are male. In a 1985 poster, the Guerrilla
Girls noted that only 10 percent of artists represented by New York City galleries were
women. While over 20 years later, the art collective Brainstormers, using data published
by Jerry Saltz, reported that 34 percent of Chelsea galleries represented women artists.
The 2008 Sotheby's Contemporary Art Sale included only 17 percent works by women. Among the
highest selling artists, only one was a woman, Louise Bourgeois. The art market is often
on our minds. Some in the art world, like Chuck Close, speculate that reputations and
market values are influenced by what other artists think. At a Rutgers conference just
this past Friday, organized by the Institute for Women and Art, more than 125 artists registered
to learn about planning for their artistic legacy. I mentioned then, that sociologists
Kurt and Gladys Engel Lang identified four factors that assured the future recognition
of an artist, even if they do not receive recognition in their lifetime. The cultural
record can be influenced by the artist's own efforts during her lifetime to project and
protect her reputation and the availability of others who can preserve and boost the artist's
reputation after her death. Her links to artistic, literary, or political networks and her symbolic
associations with emerging cultural and political identities will further facilitate entry into
cultural archives and thus, the cultural record. In the review of notable events of 2008, a
year characterized by Holland Cotter as a year that may go down into history books as
the first catastrophic fall, but also, as the first vital correction for art in a new
century, he noted that feminism lives and that the art emerging from the early feminist
movement of the 1970s is the source. Thank you. Can you go back one please? Bravery is
not a lack of fear, it is proceeding in spite of that. When I was a teenager growing up
in Southern California, I was offered a full scholarship to come here to New York City
to study at Parsons School of Design. I was absolutely thrilled at the prospect of starting
my life here in the big city and making a difference and doing something fabulous, but
my mother was terrified about me moving away from home and moving to the big city. And
she told me I'd be mugged and I would have no friends and I'd be all alone. And all of
my friends in Southern California told me, it's so mean in New York and everyone will
chew you up and spit you out. Well, I allowed those friends and my mother to dictate my
fate. And I never did come and study at Parsons. Instead, I allowed their fear of failure to
be projected onto me. As a young and impressionable girl, I didn't have the experience that I
have now. So I can tell you, feel the fear and do it anyway. I live my life by this.
What's the worst that can happen? You will survive it. I've survived it. Nothing that
is worth accomplishing is easily won. I began my gallery with just over 1,000 square feet
and just about as much money in the bank. I did have something that was far more important
than money or connections though, and that is a real passion for what I do every day
and a love for learning about new art. After 15 years of hard work and dedication, I'm
proud to have built a 5,000-square-foot ground floor space on one of the most prestigious
blocks in the country for contemporary art. Today, I'm going to talk to you about embracing
what comes naturally to us as women, what I do personally to help my community and my
gallery, and how to challenge yourself to create your own bright and successful future.
Women are by nature nurturers. We are family and community oriented. By translating our
ability to be good listeners and to be compassionate human beings into business terms, we are by
definition, great networkers. Use those skills to push your career ahead. When you find yourself
in a crowded room of strangers at a gallery opening, what do you do with that exciting
opportunity? Good networking is not about papering the room with your cards. It's about
finding that one person you have a personal connection with, and continuing the conversation
on, after that event is over. *** Allen once said, 90 percent of success is just showing
up. I'm sure he was joking when he said that, but I believe it's true. Keep on trucking.
Keep putting one foot in front of the other and you will build your friends and colleagues,
and you will be able to exchange knowledge and create new ideas together. Times change,
and we must change with them, or we will be left in the historical dust. Try to embrace
the new tools that technology makes available to you, and use those to further your craft.
This is the Russian collaborative AES+F. I've represented their work for over ten years
now, and they embody the ideal. Tatiana is A, she is the leader of the group. She's an
inspiration. She's always learning the latest techniques in computer animation. She's always
finding out who the hottest new artist is, and how they relate to art history. When this
cover came out, I had many people who commented to me about the age of the gang. Their work
is so sophisticated, yet it's so young and fresh, we thought they were in their 20s.
AES is always anticipating what will come next, and this is what keeps them on the forefront,
and an active body for discussion. Do you have a Facebook page? If you do, you should
friend me. If you don't, go home and make one for yourself. This is a wonderful and
easy way to spread the word on what you're doing and, of course, you'll get the word
on what everybody else is doing too. It keeps you connected with your community, and you
can make it as close, or as distant a relationship as you would like. My gallery has three artists
that are represented in this year's Venice Biennale. That's something we are very proud
about, and we want everybody who is interested in these works to know about it. I put this
up on our website, I sent a mass email to about 5,000 critics, curators, and collectors,
and I sent a mass mail message to all my Facebook friends. I am a female gallerist, that's a
fact. Since I've never been a male gallerist, I really have nothing to judge against in
terms of how hard it is to make new clients or to get work placed in public collections.
I am successful at what I do because I define myself as a gallerist, not as a female gallerist.
Which of these works were created by a female artist? Do you know? Is it hard for you to
tell? They're all female artists. When I'm looking at a new work of art, or a portfolio
of an artist's work, I do not judge that work by its gender, but rather by what I'll call
the three Cs, that is content, craft, and continuity. A great work of art must embody
all three. This doesn't mean that you need to like all these works, but you can respect
it for its validity. Content. What is the artist trying to tell us? Good art is both
personal and universal. The artist puts something of themselves into their work and yet the
viewer is not overwhelmed by that. The viewer is able to see, touch, taste, hear, smell
the work is such a way that they can internalize it and bring their own experiences to that
work of art. This creates the interaction with that work of art. One of my best compliments
I ever received was very early in my career, from an elderly and charming collector who
was the founder of the Village Voice. After spending a great deal of time studying the
work in the gallery, she plopped down in a chair across the desk from me and proclaimed,
Congratulations, my dear, I hate it. I can't remember my response, I'm sure I mumbled something
but Miss Hutchinson replied, As everything you do, Claire, I either love it or hate it
but I can't ignore it. The second thing is craft. This should be a given with a visual
artist, yet sloppy workmanship and inattention to detail are not uncommon. The difference
between a great idea and a great work of art is often how it is crafted. A fine attention
to detail can be seen in the works here of Kate Clark. Each small dressmaker's pin is
painstakingly pushed into the clay. Kate leaves visible the seams in her work however, reminding
the viewer that the exotic and wild has just been undone, hinting at an underlying violence
that's sheathed just beneath her beautiful portraiture. My third criteria in judging
an excellent work of art is continuity. This not only means the artists themselves have
personal traits of professionalism and ethics but also they have a long term career agenda
in which there is a logical progression of ideas and exploration for each new body of
work. I want to see an artist embrace the possibilities and continue to explore without
fear of failure. Janet Biggs wanted to get ground?up shots of the fastest woman in the
world for her latest video. So she built this chair that hung her off the back of the pace
car, just inches above the ground. She's crazy, but it was very effective. An excellent example
of these three Cs is Judith Schaechter's work. When Judith sets out to make a new piece of
art, it begins just as a doodle when she is sitting in front of the television set. These
doodles are little split second commentaries on what's going on in pop culture or mass
media. But for Schaechter it's not important to create a full narrative for each work.
The viewer will bring to that work his or her own emotional baggage and will see in
that work what they want to see. It can be as shallow as the beautiful color and patterning,
or as deep as Schaechter's commentary on the war in Iraq. Working to get my artists into
the public record is, in large part, what I do as a gallerist. I'm in contact with public
institutions for which my artists will be of interest. I send press releases to media.
I coordinate traveling exhibitions of my artists' work. The gallery hosts approximately eight
solo shows a year in our Chelsea exhibition space. And they're planned about a year and
half in advance. The work you're looking at here is Judith Schaechter's spectacular 12
foot Seeing is Believing, a permanent installation at the Museum of Art and Design at 2 Columbus
Circle. This work was two years in the planning and development between myself, the curator,
the director, their chief fundraiser, and the architect of their new building. Only
by investing and taking a long term approach and by relationship building were we able
to make such a significant contribution to both the artist's career and the collection
of the Museum of Art and Design. For me a blanket approach is ineffective. It's all
about specific relationships. By listening to those who have an interest and showing
them only those artists or works that I feel fulfill their specific needs, I become a valuable
asset to them and they become one for me. My challenge to you all for the future is
to set high goals for yourself. Be positive that you can make a difference in your community.
Every one of you here today has already expressed a personal commitment by spending your Sunday
afternoon with us, discussing a topic that you feel strongly about. There is no magic
bullet answer for writing women into the historical record. History itself will tell future generations
how we did it. We are too close now to know the correct answer, but let's start moving
forward today. Looking back and comparing your career path with others will not make
your path smoother or straighter. Focus on your own victories, and use them as small
stepping stones for larger victories for yourself and those you care about. Be upbeat, be positive.
People are attracted to those, and so you will become your own self?fulfilling prophecy.
Love and believe in what you do, and you will be successful at it. Thank you. In the book
I wrote with Eleanor, Nancy, and Helaine, one of the things we wanted to look at was
women in the gallery scene and museum scene. And what interested me about that was the
idea of women in the marketplace, translated also as the notion of women and power. And
so what we first looked at, the book looked at women in the art world post?mid 1970s,
the feminist revolution. We looked over 30 years of solo galleries between men and women,
and you can see here in the chart the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and then the total. And what
we came up with, I'm going to move over these quickly and we can talk about them later if
you'd like to, is that, though it did come up from the 70s, into the 90s and 2000s, you
can see, women roughly showed about just short of 20 percent of the time, solo shows to men's
solo shows. The percentage is about the same, a little bit better, in museums, and museums
have gotten better in this century with about 24 percent women showing to male solo shows.
A question that we didn't put into the book, but we want to put into our second book, is,
and this came out of questions from panel discussions that we did, How does this compare
with people coming out of MFA programs across the country? Well we're still gathering that
data, but Yale happens to have all of the information together, and they were able to
give it to us. And if you look at Yale maybe as symbolic of other major MFA programs across
the country, you can see that in the '70s there were about 12 women to let's say about
26 men, the men are in the blue, the women are in the pink. Women attending major schools
and graduating with MFAs has gone up considerably. The male, the blue, you can see is somewhere
between 25 and 30 almost all the way across. There was a spike in the 90s of women, which
is interesting if you think about the 90s, especially the early 90s as a downward spike
in the art market, which is a time when women actually do better in the art market. And
then it ends with the men in 2006 at about 25, and then the women at 32. So what we can
garner by this is the fact that more women are coming out of the MFA programs, and yet
they're going into the gallery and museum system with about 20 percent of the representation.
I just sort of throw this in for sort of points of discussion. How does this compare with
the rest of the world? This was in the New York Times magazine last year, I don't think
this takes in account the fall election, but look at the number of women who were in the
Senate, 16 percent, House of Representatives 16 percent, Governors 16 percent. State Legislatures
is higher at 24 percent. So really, it's about the same and when I've had these conversations
with people who say, scientists, who talk about the number of women getting their PhDs
and then going into the workforce and getting tenured positions, the percentage is about
the same, it's about 20 percent. So we know that, I think, I mean Ferris pointed out those
statistics. We all know those and we have sort of you know harangued around about those
for many years. But I wanted to just sort of use those to set the stage. How does that
translate into money and the marketplace and how much a woman can garner for her artwork?
This is sort of a favorite person of mine to talk about in the marketplace, because
I think really she represents the most unfair place and this is Elizabeth Murray, who died
a year and a half ago in her early 60s. And she was really one I think of the most important
artists to come out of the late 70s into the 80s, breaking down the whole strictures of
minimalism, and forging her own sort of place in the world, embracing figuration, I think,
and opening up the whole world for people like Eric Fischl for instance to come in to.
This work is from 1984 and it came up at auction a year and a half ago. At that time, her gallery
prices were at about 250,000 to 300,000 dollars. Extremely low, if you compare those with let's
say Chuck Close, maybe 2,000,000 dollars coming out of the studio, and you know, same age,
same sort of colleagues, as important in the whole sort of dialectic of art history, if
you ask me. This was up at auction for between 75,000 and 95,000 dollars. You might have
gathered from my introduction, that I've, I done a number of things and I'm from Oklahoma,
that I've done a number of things in my life, curating, writing, collecting art now with
my husband, and I have just opened a gallery at the prime time of last November. More about
that later. Anyway, so we bid on this because we already had one Elizabeth Murray and I
was just like, this is absolutely ridiculous, it can't go for, I know it won't go for that
price. And then I got the phone call that we were the proud owner of this painting,
which at the time I think had set her auction record, with hammer price and then 20 percent
on top of it at 91,000 dollars. I think she has now sold for 130,000 dollars, which I'm
going to show you some auction prices. But, let's just compare her with someone like Dana
Schutz, who is 30 years old, who also works large scale, I think is a terrific painter,
and whose auction prices, primary market are low six figures. Auction prices are 200,000
and 300,000 dollars. So you're looking at someone who's 30, and somebody who died when
they were 62 and would be probably 64 years old today, the comparisons in the market.
I had another slide in here, somehow it didn't transfer, it was one of Pat Steir. I am going
to show another one of hers, because she is another one I think who is a good slash poor
example of what happens to women in the marketplace. I have sold her work to clients and, when
I was in the Orlando Museum, we bought a large?scale piece. And I took her to lunch one day to
celebrate the sale of something, and we were talking, and she was excited because she had
in her purse a check for 100,000 dollars, which is a lot of money and was very exciting
and it shows that she is selling, and she was very excited. We walked around and looked
at some exhibitions and we went into the Brice Marden show, which I think is a great comparison
between the two because they do large abstractions, they do variations on a very similar theme.
And she said, How much are these works? I had already been and investigated and I said,
They're 1 million dollars. And her work at the time was selling for 100,000 dollars.
Again, it's that sort of one to 10 ratio, which I think, if women show 20 percent of
the time in galleries, I think their market value is one tenth. I was giving this presentation
to my husband he said, You better be able to back that up. I don't know that I can honestly
back it up. I mean, if somebody can give me better statistics, I think that would be great.
But my sense is that women, I'm talking about historically important in museums, blue chip
women artists, sell for about one tenth of their male colleagues, in the same galleries,
of the same generation. One of the things I did, and still do, is I've worked with this
one collector who has worked for about the last 10 years building a collection. Which,
as she looked at me couple years ago, she said, Do you realize that most of the people
in my collection are women? I said, Yeah. It's not by design. It's not, Like, let's
go out and only collect feminist art, or only collect women artists of the 80s who do particular
things. What it was is, she had worked with me at the museum and she knew that she wanted
to collect artists at the very highest level, again, as I said, historically important,
blue chip desires. She had a limited budget. Now, when I say limited budget, I mean, let's
say, 1 million dollars, as opposed to 10 million or 100 million dollars that we've seen thrown
around in the last eight years. So you want to do that, what do you buy? The answer is,
you buy women. Why do you buy women? Because they're not priced. Did I miss somebody, before
this? No, I guess not. Okay. They're not priced as high as their male counterparts. We only
have five minutes, so I'm going to move quickly through these just to show you some of the
things that she was able to buy, or that we bought together. Jane Hammond, Marilyn Minter,
Judy Pfaff. This is a piece called Yongel from 1992. It's one of the very few domestic-scale
sculptures that Judy did. A more recent drawing by Judy Pfaff. Pat Steir, Kiki Smith, Betty
Woodman, two Betty Woodmans, actually. This was a challenge that we had for a house. There
was a long hallway, and this is in Florida, with glass coming through it. And Betty had
had her show at the Metropolitan, and had done these canvas pieces with pottery on them.
But the paint's done in slip, which won't fade in the light. April Gornik. I'm sorry.
This picture somehow didn't translate. Laurie Simmons. I assume most of you are very familiar
with the artwork, so you see that we are moving across medium, sculpture, photography, painting.
And then Kristin Baker, a younger artist. This is one of those stories I have about
being a sort of shameless art consultant. I was down in Miami in the Jeffrey Deitch
booth, being totally ignored and shoved aside. And my client wanted this painting. They said,
Well somebody has it on hold. I said, I'll wait here until they come back. And I waited
there like 25 minutes, and there were other people lining up behind me, and I was like,
No, you're not getting it. I was elbowing them out of the way, but my client ended up
getting this, which represents her ability to buy something of a younger generation that
has a whole continuity, she has an Elizabeth Murray as well, to some of the older artists.
Now this is not to say that she doesn't have other people in her collection like Bryan
Hunt, James Rosenquist, Chamberlain, Serra, that I'm just not showing you. So it's a whole
mix. Which I actually really like the idea, because it's a slice of the art historical
pie, and not just of women. I threw a Mary Heilman in because, if we're going to talk
about the market later, Mary had her first retrospective in New York, it just closed
a couple months ago at the New Museum, at the age of 68. And what's interesting is that
if you look at the work, and some of the work of the younger artists that I'll show you
in a minute, it's this riff or take on minimalism. And it's not as easy in a way to understand
the figurative work of the younger artists who have been embraced by the market. I just
throw that out as maybe a discussion point for later, the difference between abstraction
and figuration in the market. Dana Schutz. So now I'm going to talk about some younger
women artists in their 30s who have made a big splash in the marketplace. Dana Schutz.
This is from a show that is up right now at Zach Feuer. I happen to think it's her strongest
show. It's a fantastic show and a really fantastic piece. It's figurative but it also is playing
on what she's done in the past. Instead of the huge buildup of the paint on front, she
stained this from the back. I think you can see it at the top. A lot of those, like the
striped shirt. This is called A Speech. So I think it's from a revolutionary time. Somebody's
giving a speech in the middle, and people are gathered around and listening. And then
the stripes are actually painted heavily in pastel on the surface. It's a totally brilliant
painting. Marlene Dumas holds the record, I think, we were talking about this earlier,
right now, as a female artist who has sold for the most money her work, 6,336,000 dollars.
What I would like to point out about this are a couple of things. One is, it's called
The Visitor, it's five prostitutes lined up, watching who's going to come in the door and
presumably choose one of them. She's sort of flipped the tables and put us in the role
of the visitor too. Not the visitor but one of the girls that's going to be looked at
by the visitor. It's a figurative work, it deals with taboo. Elizabeth Peyton, I don't
know if this sets her record but it's a very high record for her considering this piece
is probably the size of a piece of paper, sold for 741,000 dollars a year ago. Again,
popular subject matter, representation. I happen to love all these artists by the way.
Cecily Brown, The Pyjama Game, sold for 1.6 million dollars, two years ago. You can see
the figure in the middle, a lot of abstraction. Draws, as her source, ***. Again,
we have taboo subject, ***, women, probably nude women. And then, Lisa Yuskavage,
whose show is up right now at David Zwirner in Chelsea. And what was interesting about
Marlene Dumas, again I want to just throw this out as a point of discussion, is that
Roberta Smith in the New York Times, I think, basically crucified this show. She said, Some
people see it and say it's hot or really cold and I was just left lukewarm. Interesting.
I have in the back of my mind, is she coming down on her because she has a strong place
in the market place? Is it sort of this backhanded thing that people do to women, the women that
do succeed, somehow when they have their chance at criticism they try to cut them off at the
knees? This is a show that I have up, currently, at my gallery. Suzanne McClelland, who was
the Dana Schutz of her time in her 20s, is an absolutely exceptional painter and really,
in a very odd, interesting way, sort of sat out the art boom of the last eight years.
That didn't mean she didn't show, she did projects and drawing projects and installation
projects that were very well, critically, received. But what I find interesting, I kind
of bookended those, the figurative works by Mary Heilman and Suzanne McClelland because,
if you see, there is a figure there, a reclining figure of sort of an animal. And it was done
as a blind contour painting, meaning she looked at a book like this, and at first drew it
like this and then painted over it. It's very rich. Conceptually it has a lot of ideas in
it. One of which is the idea of the artist as performer. But it is not a one take thing,
just like Mary Heilman is and just like Elizabeth Murray is, and I wonder, I kind of throw this
out for discussion later, is that again possibly a detriment in the market if the work is slow
work, in a way? Or something that takes a lot of work on the part of the viewer. I just
want to end with this quote by Marlene Dumas because here you are, the woman artist who
holds the record of 6 million dollars, I don't know that that would be met today. But what
she says about it is, It doesn't change my attitude to the problems of the work, I still
have the same problem, how to make a painting that will stand up to time. And I think, when
we talk about cultural record, that's what we're talking about is the way that, where
these women stand now, where they're thought of, and where they're eventually, my bias
is make their way into museums where they'll be preserved forever. Unless they're at the
Rose Art Museum, just had to throw that in. Anyway, thank you. There are satellite fairs
also being held during Armory Arts Week, including Pulse on Pier 40, Scope in a tent in Lincoln
Center, and the Volta show at 7 West 34th Street across from the Empire State Building.
243 galleries participated from 22 countries. And despite the uncertainty and challenges
of the art market, there were more than 56,000 visitors to the fair, over five days, up from
52,000 last year. The fair was started by four young New York art dealers in 1994. I
keep skipping, can I go back? The next one. Okay, that's it. This is at the Gramercy Park
Hotel. It was called the Gramercy International Contemporary Art Fair, and it was conceived
in response to a period of recession, not unlike what we have today, and a severe downturn
in the art market. There was no business going on in the galleries, so the founders, Pat
Hearn, Colin de Land, Matthew Marks, and Paul Morris, realized they had to do something,
that in difficult times, the best solution was to band together and pool their resources.
So that year, 30 dealers exhibited in the rooms of the Gramercy Hotel. And here's a
few of them. 5,000 people jammed the elevators and halls. There was artwork everywhere, on
the beds, in the bathrooms, in the hallways. And for the next four years, the Gramercy
International Art Fair was held in hotels in Los Angeles, at the Chateau Marmont, in
Miami, as well as the New York location. It was such a great success, and quickly outgrew
its initial form as a hotel fair. The fair was re?introduced in 1999 as The Armory Show,
the International Fair of New Art, moving to the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington in
the 20s, which was the site of the legendary Armory Show of 1913 that introduced modern
art to America. It was there that Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase caused quite a
stir in the art world. In 2007, the Armory Show became part of the Merchandised Mart
Properties art?fair group, which includes Volta, Volta Basel, Art Chicago, Next, and
Art Toronto. This year, we expanded the fair to include a new section called The Armory
Show Modern. 67 international galleries and dealers, specializing in modern and contemporary
masters, really blue chip works, provided an expansion that gave us a historical perspective.
And you could move between the two piers, Pier 94 for contemporary art, and Pier 92
for modern art, and be able to access and see works from the 20th and the 21st centuries.
This is a picture actually of Pier 92 this year. During the press conference on opening
day, Kate Levin, Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of New York,
gave the opening remarks to 50 members of the international press. She emphasized the
importance of the visual arts to the vibrancy of the city and recognized that the art fairs
during Armory Arts Week contribute to the status and prestige of New York as an international
arts capital, and helps boost the city's economy. We worked closely with her office this year
to expand the public programs during Armory Arts Week. We partnered with museums and arts
organizations, as well as galleries and artists, for studio visits and tours. And each night
during the Armory Fair, a different neighborhood art scene was highlighted, including Williamsburg,
the Lower East Side, Harlem, and Long Island City. I put just a few slides together to
give you an overview of the fair and its selection of works by different artists, particularly
women artists. This is a view of Rhona Hoffman's gallery's booth, and this is a painting by
Mickalene Thomas, which was featured actually in the New York Times review of the show.
This is a picture of the installation and performance piece called Apothecary, by Christine
Hill. This is a Rachel Whiteread piece that was offered by Lorcan O'Neill from Rome. And
this is just a picture of some of the visitors walking through the fair. As you can see,
there were a lot of women collectors and advisers and curators. Every year, we ask for submissions
of large-scale works and special installations from participating galleries for the public
areas of the fair. This ten foot high work by Louise Nevelson was chosen for the entrance
to Pier 92, the modern section. It was such a spectacular piece and we felt the embodiment
of modernism. It was the first thing you encountered upon entering the fair. Here's a later work,
actually, by Elizabeth Murray that was offered by Locks Gallery. And here is a wall installation
by Jennifer Bartlett. Among some of the other women artists that were represented on the
modern pier this year were Meret Oppenheim, Alice Neel, Geigo, Judy Pfaff, Kusama, Nell
Blaine, Diane Arbus, Yvonne Jacquette, etcetera, etcetera. Here's a picture of a Joan Mitchell
that was offered. In our efforts to expand the educational component of the fair, we
introduced a docent program this year. We invited art advisers, independent curators,
and educators to give visitors and groups guided tours. We even published a children's
guide to the fair and offered children's tours during the weekend hours. As a special project,
each year since 2002, the Armory Show has commissioned an artist to create the visual
identity for the fair. And since 2006, in addition, they've been asked to produce special
limited edition prints to benefit the Pat Hearn and Colin de Land Cancer Foundation,
which is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide medical expenses to those members
of the visual arts community who are suffering from cancer. This year, Ewan Gibbs was the
recipient of the commission. Here, I've highlighted a few of the women who have received the award.
The Armory Show introduced the annual artist commission with, as you can see on the upper
left, Karen Kilimnik in 2002. She was followed by Barnaby Furnas in 2003. Lisa Ruyter is
represented on the upper right hand corner, and she was the artist commissioned in 2004.
Jockum Nordstrom was in 2005. We began publishing a series of editions with John Wesley in 2006,
followed by Pipilotti Rist, and she's on the bottom left hand corner. And then last year,
Mary Heilman and John Waters shared the award and each created a print. So I think this
year we'll probably have another woman, although it's not really something that we discuss
but it is something that we do consider. We've already begun to work on the next edition
of the fair and are planning several new initiatives, including an expansion of our public programming
and education activities. Thank you. Good afternoon. When Kat approached me about this
panel, being from Christie's, I dabbled with the idea of either talking about women at
auction, or the art that we represent at auction, from South Asia, and I decided probably many
of you are already familiar with South Asian art, but it doesn't hurt to show women artists
from South Asia and where we began and where we are today in a very small period of time.
And it didn't happen accidentally. I think we all put our efforts together for where
we are today. So I am starting with actually a billboard, a film poster from Madras from
the 1980s, where it speaks of how women in India were represented. Even today, if you
see a Bollywood poster, we are not very far from there. But, this particular poster I
chose, because it has three parts. On the extreme left, you have the seductress. The
center speaks of the Indian beauty as voluptuous women, also represented in sculptures of Indian
temple. And on the right, it's the goddess. There is nothing in between. Either you're
a seductress or you're a goddess. And of course, you are beautiful. So I thought it would be
interesting to start with that. However, going back in time, in 1880s, women were allowed
to participate in exhibitions but, not until 1920 were they allowed to go to art schools.
And one of the earliest professional women artists from India was Sunayani Devi, who
was tutored at home, also because she came from the Tagore family, which many of you
are familiar with. Rabindranath Tagore was her uncle. So it was only in the affluent
families or cultured families that women were allowed to take classes in art. Amrita Shergil,
an artist of Hungarian and Indian descent, her mother was Hungarian and father an Indian
scholar, grew up in Budapest and India and studied in Paris but only lived till 28 years
of age, but made significant contribution to contemporary Indian art. She moved from
Paris to live in India in the 1930s and began to paint Indian women and represent the cause
of Indian women at that very young age, when she was in her 20s. She died in 1941. However,
her contribution to contemporary Indian artists who are women has been extremely significant.
She's been an inspiration and we cannot talk about feminism or women artists from this
region, without making a note of her. Most of the Indian women artists paint women, interestingly,
and most of them actually paint themselves. I have picked some of the most well-known
Indian artists and I am going to show a few examples of each of these women and their
works. This is B. Prabha from 1960s, painting women and the daily chores that you see in
India with her family, a caregiver. Arpita Singh, inspired by Amrita Shergil, began painting
in the 50s and continues to paint. And those of you who follow auctions, I am sure are
familiar. She has been selling very well. She, again, paints herself as the woman and
the body. And this particular work, of course, is called of course Security Check. And it's
interesting how she shows the inside and the outside, and also her whole idea of how a
woman is being at all times scrutinized in Indian culture, as what is inside and outside,
how she represents herself inside, in the house and outside, to the people. A lot of
her works also speak of different ideas of what a woman should be doing in an Indian
culture. Nalini Malani, a contemporary of Arpita Singh, has been shown extensively in
various museums all over the world, including the New Museum here in New York. This particular
work is called Remembering Toba Tek Singh. It's a village in Pakistan now. And this speaks
of immigration. A lot of these artists began work pre?independence, when Pakistan and India
was one, and a lot of their works relate to how people migrated. And this particular work
speaks of the role of women, also in migration. There were 10 trunks laid out all over the
installation, with monitors inside the trunks speaking of the dilemmas, and the pains, and
the anxieties of people moving back and forth from India to Pakistan and vice versa. But
it is interesting, she is one of the earliest artists from India to have started using video
installations and performance, so again, has shown and opened up a path for a lot of younger
artists, which I will show a few of today. Again, this is Nalini Milani, also was shown
at the Asia Society here and the Queens Museum. She makes these large-scale installations.
Again, most of her subjects are either myths related to women and how it's mostly the fallen
women, the witch or the vamp in every story. This is one more of Nalini Milani's work.
Rekha Rodwittiya is again, known as one of the very outspoken feminist artists from India,
this is one of her works called Sharing Secrets and the Cowrie Shell. She uses a lot of symbols
in her works, and again the cowrie shell represents the woman. Coming to the 1960s, artists, much
younger artists, Anju Dodiya is one of the leading women artists of India today. And,
again, most of these artists, like I said, represent themselves in their paintings, including
Anju Dodiya herself here, shown on the throne, and it is called The Throne of Frost. This
was an installation she did at the Palace of Baroda and I'll show you some of the pictures
of this installation. It is situated in the palace, and the reason I brought this up is
because, not just the artist, but also galleries and dealers and collectors in India have made
the effort to promote women artists, and have made space for them and encouraged them in
every way possible to give these large shows to these artists. Bharti Kher, a British artist,
now based in India, of Indian extract left London to settle in India in the 1990s. Again,
works with women bodies and this is called Arione, she made this in 2004. And it has
a sister sculpture. This is called Arione's Sister in 2006, which is like the Venus of
the mall, where a shopper went berserk. So it's interesting how the subjects vary. On
the one hand, these women artists are talking about feminism and, on the other hand, they
are also making fun of this idea of the woman shopper who cannot control herself. Again,
Bharti Kher working off of, this is called Mrs. Hera Moon, a model seated on a chair
and having, if you take a closer look at her, she has the same designs on the chair actually
engraved into her skin around her neck and a tarantula on her hand. Shilpa Gupta. I've
put them sequentially even in terms of how young these artists are. Shilpa Gupta is in
her early 30s, works with video installations and site specific installations, again, working
with her own images. This particular one is an interactive video installation where you
get a sense that you are in control of these women because you, as a viewer, gets to come
and play around with the mouse and make the women do different things. But what is said
on the screen is what she thinks women are said at all times. Shut up and eat. Hey, hey.
Her entire video is all about how women are being told to do certain things. They are
in these camouflage uniforms, they are expected to do certain things in India and follow the
norm and there is someone with the mouse trying to dictate what they should be doing. A site
specific installation of Shilpa Gupta. This is called The Blame, where she has a whole
room in red with bottles labeled as blame, and she went around all over Mumbai trains
trying to hawk these little bottles and selling them and trying to tell people, "I like to
blame you, I like to blame you for what you are not responsible, your nationality, your
religion, your color." And a very, very serious work by this very young artist. Hema Upadhyay,
again, an artist based in Mumbai, works with her own body and her own photographs and she
situates herself in every painting with these little photographs of herself cut out. She
looks at herself as an immigrant in Mumbai and talks about all the immigrants in the
slums of Bombay, which are actually producing most of our designer wear clothes and basically
the patterns are from, in her painting, are from those designer wear items. Chitra Ganesh
is more closer to home. She is from the Indian diaspora based in Brooklyn, who works off
of the comic strips of Indian myths called Amar Chitra Katha, where all women are represented,
all have fair skin and they always garbed in these extremely sensuous clothing. And
Chitra Ganesh takes a stance and says, I will show what you want to show but you don't show.
So most of her women are with exposed *** and her works are pretty direct and sometimes
can be quite difficult to live with on the walls. Anyway, these were a few things I have
put together just to give an idea of where Indian art has moved from the 1920s to where
we are today. And interestingly, in India or even South Asia including Pakistan, Bangladesh,
and Sri Lanka, most of the dealers and collectors are women, and even more interesting even
at auction houses most of the specialists are women. So we all are making every effort
possible to make sure we put our strengths and forces together to stand up for all these
women artists who are very seriously being artists, mothers, and sisters and everything
it takes to be a full person. And also, I would like to still stay that even though
in the primary market, where the galleries and dealers are concerned, though prices might
be same but at auction, which is the public price of an art work, there is still a huge
gap and we are all very aware of it. For example, Bharti Kher is probably one of the highest
selling artists at auction from South Asia, selling for about 500,000, whereas her husband
Subodh Gupta sells for over millions of dollars and her works are definitely at par, if not
even stronger and better. It is a concern and we are all putting our efforts together
to see how we can bridge the gap, and hopefully you all will have some questions which I can
answer. Okay, we're going to start with some questions for myself and Ferris, and then
we definitely will open it up to the audience, if you have questions, just hold on to those.
When we get to that portion, if you could just proceed to one of the microphones on
either side, so that everybody can hear your questions. So I'm just going to start with
something really basic, which is, I think Sue mentioned a little bit about, and talked
about some reasons. How do you see collecting practices changing now in a time of economic
downturn, especially in the different areas that you're working in and how do you see
this affecting the prices for work by women artists? Anybody who'd like to start, really.
Go ahead, Sue. I'll start. I just read this review by Jerry Saltz in New York magazine,
where he said, The art market may be dying, but now maybe art can live again. And I think
that that is something that all of us are looking forward to. I sort of frame it in
the last eight years. I don't know why I say eight years, because I look at the rise of
the art fairs, and the prosperity of, global prosperity, where a lot of people invaded
the art world and the art market, taking advantage of the possibility that art had become an
asset class and was also openly spoken about. I taught a class about that time in 2002,
called, Art as an Investment, Taboo Topic or Smart Strategy? As little as eight or ten
years ago you couldn't, you shouldn't have really even spoken about the art market, and
that's all sort of been blown away. So what I think will happen is, I showed the works
by the women artists because I think we, as everybody, especially women, should celebrate
that women have broken through certain ceilings, and are fetching a certain amount of money.
I think what will happen now, there will be a complete re?evaluation, and it's very difficult,
I think, in the gallery scene, when you know there's not that much money out there. Do
you lower an artist's price? What do you do? What is somebody like Cecily Brown, who's
sold at 1.7 million dollars, and sells in the high six figures? What do you do? You
have to re?look at those prices. I think those people are in a tough spot. Otherwise, I hope
that what happens is it becomes a time when people really get back to the galleries and
the museums, and even I love the fact that you guys are expanding the educational part
of the art fairs because it is a chance to see a lot of art from around the world. And
that people will get back and start really looking at the art, and slowing down in a
way. And I think that it's going to be a very difficult transition back because we have
forgotten how to talk about the art as the work on the wall. We have gotten so excited
about, This show's sold out, This piece sold for that. We don't even know how to speak
I think in terms of art, you know, critically speaking. So I don't know if this is really
answering your question. But what I think will happen is that we'll get back, people
will get back looking in the galleries, looking at the art, and talking about it, and getting
back a community that was here, prior to the rise of the art market, and I feel, I hope
will come back. Anybody else like to comment? I'd actually like to speak to that because
I think I'm on the opposite, or the other side of the gallery scene than Sue is, in
that I represent young and emerging artists. So I have always talked about my art in terms
of loving the art, and it's never been a commodity. And if we have a sold out show, we have a
sold out show because it's great work, and people are excited about it. And our work
is not expensive to begin with, so I do think for a gallery who is showing emerging talents,
it's a great time. I'm actually doing better. And I hesitate to say that when people are
having such a bad time. But I'm doing better than I ever have done, because a lot of collectors
that were perhaps spending 500,000 dollars on a work, even if they have the money, they
no longer feel comfortable spending that, because they're not certain what is going
to happen in the market. However, they still are jonesing to buy something, so they do
come and look at artists who are having their first gallery show. We just had a show of
Kate Clark's work in October. It was her first gallery show ever, and it sold out opening
night. Having said that, the prices are much, much lower than you would have for an artist
who has a long and storied career. So those people who were maybe spending 500,000, now,
they can spend 10,000 or 20,000, and get their art fix and have something really fabulous,
and maybe buy it for the right reasons and not buy it as speculation. What are the right
reasons? Great question. I ask that question because we're making universal assumptions
that people buy art as an investment, solely. And certainly, the women with whom I have
spoken and researched, their motivation was not about the bottom line. And I told the
story at our last program and I'll say it again.One of the collectors, who was one of
the top one hundred collectors in 1992, had a beautiful Frida Kahlo, which she only paid
10,000 dollars for, only 10,000 dollars, in the 70s. And she divested herself of it in
the late 80s because, by that point, it was worth a million six, and every time she looked
at it all she could see was a dollar sign. Because anyone who came to visit her, and
many curators did come to visit her, said, Oh, how valuable it is. They didn't look at
the art, they only saw it in terms of consumption. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I do think
that there's a lot of different reasons that people buy art, and I think the right reasons
are anything that is fulfilling to them. It can be because they have an emotional attachment.
It's food for their soul. They feel happy or glad or content when they look at the work.
It could be that they're buying it as a status symbol because they feel that it's a prestigious
thing to have. They could be buying it because it makes other people in their life happy.
Or they could be buying it, I have a lot of clients that are very philanthropic, and they
buy things to donate them. So there's absolutely a lot of reasons. I'm not saying that there's
an incorrect reason. I do think, however, if people think of it as a purely business.
One of my favorite stories is, I had a collector who came in, this was years ago, and they
were looking at a very early AES+F work, and, they said, Well, what will it be worth next
year? Will it double in price by next year? And I looked at them and I said, Well, if
it was going to double in price by next year, why would I sell it to you this year? So I
think that people, they have to look at it, if they really love the work, they should
buy it, and if they don't love the work, they should pass. I'm going to say something, because
we just came out of a week of a lot of art activity, and this year at the fair, there
definitely was not the frenzy that we had in the past years. And it started really in
the fall, because I also attended Frieze, and FIAC, and then most recently the art show.
So clearly, there wasn't that frenzy of buying, but the fact we had over 50,000 people at
the fair, I think the dealer's expectations were already lowered, but they were so pleasantly
surprised by how people were genuinely interested in work, and talking about it, and considering
it. It was clearly a much slower process to sell work, but that there was definitely interest.
And a lot of collectors who may have been kind of shut out by the frenzy, I'll call
it, because there were so many other people lined up for work, some of those people, and
you would consider them serious collectors, are now you know feeling taken care of. They
feel like people are paying attention to them. It's a completely different world. It's kind
of reverted back to where it was, even eight, ten, let's say, eight years ago. And I think
it's just a friendlier art world. Even people said to us at the fair, Gee, everyone is so
friendly and helpful. I don't know what it was. I had never done an art fair before,
so I have no idea what it was like before, but clearly it was a different feeling. I'm
sure it's the same way in the galleries. There's just time to talk to people about the work,
instead of, How much is it? My friend has it. I want one too. And what about the situation
at the auction houses? Well, we came out of a sale last week, and it is very clear, our
last sale of Asia Week was in September, the night after Lehman Brothers fell, but it didn't
give us an idea. We couldn't gauge how far the market had gone because the sale did really
well still, so we survived. However, this last week's sale gave us a very good indication
of all the speculators have moved away. It's all the collectors who were collecting in
2004, 2005 and were priced out, are back. And these are the serious collectors who are
actually looking at auctions to fill the holes in their collection. And this is the time
that they can actually collect. So my recommendation would be, from what we saw last week, is put
out the best works you have that are at mid-level prices, not the highest level. And I think
we have phenomenal women artists. And this is our chance actually to promote them and
bring them into really serious collections because people are willing to look at them,
people are willing to buy them. And they also want to not invest the entire amount of money
in one work, but spread it out, so it's our best opportunity we have. I just want to say
one thing about why people collect. When I was a curator, I organized a number of shows
from collections. This was in Orlando, and it was a couple of years ago. I had two collectors
who had moved from more sort of blue chip older artists to younger emerging artists.
The reason that they did it is that they loved the idea of getting involved in the artists'
lives, and knowing them, and helping them, and knowing that by buying something, this
artist could live for three more months, or call them up and say, you know, I've got your
painting on my screensaver. So I think there's a couple of very excited, younger collectors
that really want to connect with the creative process and be a part of it. All of you actually
brought up the difference in different types of collectors, and the fact that the people
that are purchasing work, whether it's at Christie's or at the gallery, are different
now. Obviously, the life of an artwork and the life of an artist, whether they end up
in the cultural record, has some relationship to who's purchasing their work. Would anybody
like to comment on that? I was just going to say that I do take into consideration,
obviously, we want to have the work in the best collection possible. That doesn't necessarily
mean the largest name. It can mean the most generous person. I do have a lot of collectors
that aren't maybe world famous collectors, but they're incredibly generous with loaning
the work. They can buy it, pay the artist for it, and then not see it for two years,
and be perfectly happy to have it go around on a museum tour. I do find that, depending
on the work, I will tap specific people that I know perhaps don't have a big name, but
are incredibly generous of heart and soul. As an auction house, we don't have the liberty
or the choice of who we want to sell the works to, unfortunately. However, we do make sure
that when they're all works that have been selected for museums for different exhibitions,
we alert every interested party that this work is being sold based on the fact that
they would allow it to travel. So we do help in making it happen, but since it's a bidding
situation, we cannot really choose our collectors. I'd like to ask all of you, as women professionals
in the visual arts, I know Sue has said that she's a collector, if you yourselves collect
art, and how you come to choose the art that you collect, because that might also provide
some information for people in the audience. I think, at last count, we had about 300 artworks
my husband and I have bought. We're passionate collectors. If we love it, we buy it. I don't
put my head in it at all. It all comes from my heart. And I've learned from those that
I let get away that if I have a real visceral reaction to it, and I need to possess it,
I'll find a way. I think it's sort of the same thing for me. It's just I've for so long
collected for a museum, and not for myself, I would get things because somebody couldn't
afford to pay someone to write their catalogue, so I would get a piece in exchange. Most of
those were by women artists. My husband and I have been collecting actively for about
the last two or three years. And I think one of my favorite times as a consultant was when
I was with this collector that I showed you, and we were at Pace, and it was during Art
Basel in Europe, so nobody was around. And we went there and they just happened to have
gotten these Kiki Smith's in and it was one of those things and I just died. I could see
that she was hesitating a little bit, and I was like, If you don't buy it, I'm buying
it. We ended up, you know, each buying one. And I think that's kind of a thing, as a consultant
and an art dealer, putting your money where your mouth is, and really showing somebody
that you're buying something that you believe in. And you particularly collect art exclusively
by women, is that correct? Me? Yes. No, I don't. I collect, if I had to say I had any
bias, it would be towards painting. I love paintings, so I have an Elizabeth Murray,
Susan McClelland, but I also have Tom McGrath and Christopher Benedict, and you know, Amy
Sillman, some really terrific painters. Deborah, are you a collector? Yes, I collect things.
I've been collecting one piece a year for the last thirty years, ever since I started
working in publishing. Usually, it's either I've become friendly with an artist and I
just fall in love with their work, or kind of like Claire, you know, you just have a
visceral response to something and say, Oh, I have to have it. And then you put down a
hundred dollars, and you pay it off for the rest of your life. But I've bought lots of
different things. The oldest piece I have is an Isabel Bishop drawing, and it's so odd
because it's the only piece like it in my whole collection. I have drawings, but most
of them are younger artists. I just fell in love with it, sort of like, that's the highlight
of my collection. I had a little Eva Hesse, but I actually just gave that to my daughter.
If I looked at my collection, and I'm thinking about it now, it's probably more women artists
than male artists, but they were never chosen that way. I started collecting at a very shoestring
budget as a student. And the best outlet used to be at school art fairs, where you could
buy art from your faculty members, who were all reasonably established artists. You could
barter and exchange with your fellow colleagues, who were artists and art historians. And then
I went on to become a curator. My husband, who's in the audience here, would always joke
and say, You end up buying everything that you try to sell. So my collection pretty much
began from a very emotional response of artists that I like, I show, and I end up buying.
One more question, then we'll open up to the audience. On the last panel, Mimi Smith was
on the panel, and she was speaking about the WACK exhibition, and actually this would apply
to many other, larger exhibitions that are exclusively women artists. And said that she
was kind of shocked walking through, that some of these works that were considered so
important, almost all of them, or the vast majority of them, were noted that they were
still the collection of the artist. She was suggesting also, that of course, if this was
an exhibition about a movement, say, minimalism, that might not be the case. So, with that
in mind, and with the future in mind, can you suggest strategies or new ways that galleries
and auction houses and other outlets might approach their practices differently to work
towards a level of parity? I don't know that you can consciously do something different.
I have to say that I think it's coming. And the reason I say that is if you think about
politically where we are, two years ago the pundits and everyone said we'd never elect
an African American president and that we could never elect a woman president. And we
have an African American president and we had a woman who made a very viable run. What
I say is that a lot of the art that I showed are women in their 30s, but I think they've
broken through. And I think as times goes on, I don't think it's going to make a difference
as much. I also think there is a difference in feeling of expectation of women in their
20s and in their early 30s. If you're sort of my generation, I was happy to get a job
in a museum. It's like, Yay, I get to work. But their generation? They expect it. And
I think along with that expectation will come change. I think, actually, they say women
always do better in down markets, so I think the change will come faster than we think.
You know, I just went to a breakfast the other morning, and Susan Rothenberg spoke. And it
was really interesting to talk to her because she was an artist that really was painting
kind of with a group of other painters but getting a lot of recognition. She said at
one point she was in a show and she was the only woman in the show. And from that point
on, she vowed that she would never be in a show again where she was the only woman artist.
I think things like that and peoples' general awareness. For example, I showed those four
artists who, the four women, who were chosen for this artist award for the Armory Show.
We've already started thinking about who's the next one, and one of the considerations
right away is, Maybe we should be looking at a woman artist or young female artist.
I don't know if people would have thought that a few years ago. When I worked in magazines
and we were always trying to figure out the next cover. It's kind of like insider trading,
who's going to be on the next cover of the magazine. I was on the business side so I
wasn't always privy to all of the conversations, but there was, it always came up, Oh, we had
a woman last month, maybe we should wait. Or, This person is having a big show at the
L.A. County or that's traveling, I don't think we can wait, so let's do two women in a row.
So it was a consideration? Was it something that was quantifiable? I don't think so, it
was always a question of quality and value and what was the worth of the work. But if
you go back and quantify it, you probably would see that, many more than 20 percent
of the covers of the art magazines have been women artists in the last few years, so yeah.
That's an interesting statistic to look at. And when I went through, here's the catalogue
from the Armory Show, so I kind of figured, Uh oh, you're going to ask me some questions
about it. But, I went through the lists of artists, and this is not all of the artists
that were actually represented at the show, but the list of artists that were listed by
every single gallery. So there were, like I said, 243 galleries. There's probably over
3,000 artists that are represented in the stables of those galleries, but it's approximately
20, 25 percent are women in here, so. Deepanjana? I would just like to add and say that I think
every effort we make is important, how small, however small it is. And I'll give you an
example. Since most of our specialists in our department are women, we were shown the
Shilpa Gupta work The Blame. Someone wanted to consign and were totally shot down because
it's an installation piece, no one sells it at auctions, especially in the salvation market.
All the women got together and put their foot down and said, We will do everything to make
it possible that this work is included. Because a lot of works get rejected even as they start
getting offered to the specialists. So I think it does make a difference. It does make a
statement when you have a young woman artist being represented for works that she has chosen
a different medium. She has chosen to take a path which is not very common, and I think
we need to encourage that and I think that's one way of doing it. I think we are going
to go right ahead and open up to the audience now, I think there is a question on this side.
Can you hear me? A little bit louder. I'm not the sure the mic is on just yet, wait
a second Linda. Okay, go ahead. I am Linda Stein. This is wonderful. I would like to
ask your response. Speaking of parity and strategies, it seems that the women's liberation
in the 70s scared the powers that be, to a certain extent, because they're not going
to move without being little bit scared. And now we have an opening with the Obama administration,
we really have a big opening, I think. And I'm wondering if we could go back to a thought
I had and moderated some panel discussions on, just around 2000, where any institution
that receives government money, a museum, or any nonprofit gallery, has to have or move
toward parity. They're getting taxpayer money. Shouldn't, couldn't we do something to demand
this? Anybody like to respond? That's a really interesting idea. I mean my first thought
is then there is a lot of red tape and bureaucracy and I wish that it could come from a different
place, of maybe even professionals demanding it. Like, can't we demand it of the curator
of the Guggenheim that she shows more women artists, you know we curators or members of
ArtTable or whatever. I mean it could come from a different way. If there are any lawyers
in the audience who would like to take part in this. I mean, I could think of a couple
of sex and race discrimination lawyers I know, but we need a team. And if you want to be
part of it, you can definitely talk to Linda. I'd love to be a part of it. Anybody else
like to respond to that question? I'd like to make a comment about that. I guess coming
from, what Sue said earlier about the next generation expecting it and being sort of,
myself being in between maybe the next and the past. And I am actually good friends with
Judy Chicago, who, she and I go around and around, because she's so militant and I, god
bless her for it, but I always say the next generation does not need to be so militant.
We need to realize that they do expect it. Women who are in their 20s and 30s who are
artists expect to be treated in the same way as men artists do. Perhaps it's that expectation
that will garner them the support and the museum shows and so forth. I guess that's
why I always work and work my gallery not in a way that will offend or ostracize any
particular group, but just in a way that, If it is good, it should be shown. And I do
think that women's art is as good as, if not better than, a lot of men's art. We talked
about that. And so I do think that if we continue on in the path of just working with the expectation
that we will get equality, it will come. Thank you. Yes. I'm part of the women artists in
the 80s. There were so many that very much felt they were very strong, they were moving
after the 70s feminism. That did not seem to be the issue. What I found is there is
probably a lost generation of women artists that are from this period that did not. They
were either in the gallery scene shortly, they never even went into it, they went into
their own life. They continued to create art over the last 20, 30 years. What happened,
what I see is as these women are dying and things are, their estates are getting lost.
Their brilliant art, it's almost like outsider artists never discovered, and what can be
done for the collectors or people to discover these women? Because, it's happening, people
continue to create, but they don't want to go into a gallery scene today at a certain
age. They just continue to create out of necessity and they have incredible art that has not
been seen at all. It's completely invisible. And I'd say there's hundreds to thousands
of these women artists. They have not given up, but they have not been discovered. How
can that happen? I can respond to that a little bit since on Friday, the Institute for Women
and Art ran this conference just for this purpose, to present to artists planning ahead,
even if they have not yet been recognized. You have to be an advocate for yourself. You
have to keep good records. You have to plan for where those records, those archives will
be deposited for future generations to see. If you can, you should make sure that you
assign an executor, for when you pass on, who's particularly interested in keeping your
name out there, and putting your work in places where it might be seen down the road. There
are many different ways to handle this. I'm talking about after the fact, but it's your
responsibility as an artist to take care of your own career and presenting yourself, even
if you haven't done it to date, to make the plans for the future. I speak as someone who
is an art historian, who has spent the last 40 years mining archives trying to find information
about artists lost to history, who were not, many of them, like many of the nineteenth-century
women authors, were top authors at the time, in the nineteenth century, but they've disappeared
from the forefront of our knowledge of at this point. And you have to go back and look
and see, are there records about them? Were there reviews? Where can you find the information?
Where's their art work now located? And so forth. Really, you must be your own advocate
and I strongly suggest to many of the artists out there, I know your position. Believe me,
every day I talk to artists who want to know what to do with their body of work and what
to do with their papers, if they're even organized. You really have to be your own advocate and
be proactive. Anybody else want to respond to this? I think we will take one more question.
Okay, Elizabeth. Yeah, Claire. I was curious to know and am assuming that because of your
approach in terms of the art that you are selling, whether or not you price male and
female art equally. Absolutely. So then my next question is, aside from saying brava,
how can you then influence other gallery owners to appreciate what they are holding and showing
and selling as you do? Elizabeth, My work is selling. That should be the influence.
You could sell that to other galleries. Absolutely. Again, as I said in my talk, I do, I get the
word out there. I'm not shy about that. We have had three women shows this year, two
of the three have sold out, the other one we have a very high hope will end up in a
public institution. Yeah, the question here has more to do with the value of the art work.
I'm sorry. The monetary value, if you place the same monetary value. The same exact. Thank
you. Okay, please. Yeah, I'd like address my comment to something that you had said
earlier. With all due respect, I'm not really concerned about what will happen to my art
after I die. I'm really concerned about what's going to happen here and now. And I look around
the room here, and I don't know how many are artists, but do you want to raise your hands?
A lot of you look like you're in my age group. And I know it's very sexy and marketable to
talk about the 30?somethings, but what about us? And I'd like all of you to address this.
That's an excellent question. Would anybody like to respond? I'm not really sure what
you're asking when you say what about us. I think the question is, though there were
definitely many people talked about emerging women artists. I think we're talking about
the question of ageism, in addition to sexism. Is there, which there really is, ageism, and
how does a woman who is maybe not an emerging artist, not somebody just coming out of an
MFA program, go about representing themselves and showing their work and so forth? The reason
I brought up Elizabeth Murray and Pat Steir, is that I see their prices in the market,
and I see them in the group of like, What about us, too? Because they don't have the
market presence that these younger artists do. What I was trying to show is that there
is a progression towards equality, hopefully, and I think it's moving slowly. The What about
us? I think it's a constant daily fight, in a way. I mean, I have many, many female artist
friends. And I think you get up and do your art and try to get it shown, and I don't know
the answer. The thing is, it is unfair out there. And it's people like us, I hope, who
are trying to work our hardest to make it equal. Let me also say, that I recognize exactly
what you're saying, and for that reason AIR has, as far as I know, the only program like
this in the United States. We have a program called the AIR Fellowship program. It involves
a solo show, a membership, and involvement in the gallery for 18 months, 18 months of
professional development, studio visits with our professionals and a mentorship from one
of our gallery artist. This program has a very unique criteria. It is open to all women
artists living in or around New York City, who have not yet had a solo show at a commercial
space, or have not had one in 10 years. Actually this year we do have one artist in her 20s,
and I think she is the only of the six in the program that is in her 20s. Different
years, it's been people of different ages. I just would encourage, and I said this at
another panel I did recently, the other nonprofit organizations out there who often can create
programs that have a system and have a goal towards them in a different way than a commercial
gallery can, necessarily, to open up some of these emerging artists programs to underrepresented
women artists as well. And I'd like to put in my two cents because I served on the fellowship
panel this year for AIR Fellowships, and I found it particularly disturbing the number
of artists who submitted materials for review which were impossible to read. Please, if
you're going to go to the effort of applying for fellowships or working with gallerists,
make an effort to make your images large enough to read, that they are focused, and they are
presented in a professional manner. I could not believe the numbers of applicants who
either made no effort, or didn't know how to use technology. But I think, work with
others, for those of you who may not be as comfortable, to get your materials to the
point where they are much more professional. And find the resources, because we offer consultation,
as do most not for profits. If you didn't learn this in school because they didn't give
it when you were in school, we have those resources for you. So, I think we have time
for one more question. Am I correct? We have time for one more question? Yes. Okay. Hi,
my name is Siona Benjamin and I am represented by Flomenhaft Gallery in Chelsea. The first
thing I want to say is that it was a wonderful panel and so informative, as have been the
other panels. I also wanted to especially thank Claire Oliver, because I persuaded my
13 year old daughter to come, on this sunny day, come and sit and hear the panel. And
she said, Oh, God. You know. What you said could not have been better.