Valise Reading Roundup 01

We will occasionally present stories we’ve come across that seem relevant to Valise users—and to others who like to think about making a life and career in the art world, keeping themselves organized, and using software to do one or both. Here’s the first batch.

Dean Kissick, “The Painted Protest”

I sympathize, to some extent, with the impulse that gave rise to an essay that the editors of Harper’s have given the subtitle “how politics destroyed contemporary art.” But I disagree with the certitude of the argument presented here and the generalizations that underpin it. Nonetheless, a lot of people in the art world will talk about this one, and it’s useful for clarifying your own thinking about (identity) politics, curating, the biennial circuit, and related subjects.

Henrik Karlsson, “Six Lessons I Learned Working at an Art Gallery”

Karlsson, one the (extremely online) tech community’s favorite writers on non-tech subjects, discusses his experience working for a regional nonprofit art gallery in Denmark. Valise users will be interested in the passages about the traits of artists who are good to work with and those characterizing artists who, well, are not.

Francesca Billington with Claire Bishop, “Looking at Art Will Never Be the Same Again”

I wrote briefly about art historian Claire Bishop’s new book, Disordered Attention, in early September. Now The Nation has published an interview with her about technology’s influence on museums: “The book is primarily an argument against people … who still believe in fully focused attention.”

Sarah Hromack, “How to Navigate Through the Wilderness of the Internet in 2024”

Hromack, a friend and longtime digital strategist for museums and other cultural-sector organizations, reviews Metalabel’s Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet and finds, in some of its contributions, “genuinely exciting” ideas about art, commerce, and social and cultural institutions. “What is notable about these future-forward thinkers … is their deep-seated and thoroughly articulated distrust of institutions, including Big Tech.”

Janelle Zara, “Two Art Dealers on How to Emerge From a Market Downturn Smarter, Stronger, and Smaller”

An interview with Laurel Gitlen and Candace Madey, both of whom opened galleries on New York’s Lower East Side in 2008, closed them in the mid-2010s, and have reopened them. “Could we have kept going? Yes,” says Gitlen. “But the financial pressures were getting really stressful, and it just wasn’t pleasurable anymore.” Read on to find out why they reopened, and what today’s market feels like to them.

Dalya Alberge, “‘My work sells for millions but only a fraction of that came to me,’ says Scottish painter”

Even Peter Doig, whose paintings cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars each, still has trouble keeping control over the information about his works. Here’s something we agree with: “Doig believes that, as with any business relationship, galleries have a duty to share information about sales with the artists who created the works.” And we’d be delighted for you to store that information in Valise.

Jessamyn West, “Be Organized from the Very Beginning”

West, a Vermont librarian, writes in a short blog post about how “disorganization is self-propagating” and how the US lags behind the UK on understanding the concept of “admin”: “Doing admin is part of the work of being alive.” She argues, in a way that’s convincing to my cofounder’s ears, that “helping people get and stay organized is, in fact, the main part of helping people with technology in 2024.”