Reading Roundup 04

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 fourth batch.

Artists’ estates and legacy planning

In our last roundup, we mentioned articles about new approaches to artists’ legacy planning. It’s a subject we continue to think about, not least as several senior artists have begun using our platform—alongside the dealers, curators, and assistants who support them. So we appreciated this ArtNews interview with Solana Chehtman, of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and Chris Sharp, a friend and gallery owner in Los Angeles. It touches on “the challenges and opportunities related to artists’ estates, how living artists can start thinking about their legacy, and other issues related to the prospects of finite life and infinite futures.”

Studio space and making a living

Two advice columns we read in recent months attend to the other end of the career spectrum. Writing last November, Paddy Johnson, a blogger turned artist consultant, wrote a column in response to someone asking if they need a studio to share their art. TL;DR: No, anywhere is OK. “Probably 50% of all studio-related anxiety I witness has less to do with the studio itself, but a lack of confidence around the work itself.” But Johnson does go on to make some good suggestions for people who feel limited by the space they can dedicate to art-making, and how to prepare for visits. Separately, I like how concisely the person who wrote in to Sophie Haigney’s advice column articulated a common predicament: “In a strange way I feel downwardly mobile economically but perhaps upwardly mobile socially, through the art world I inhabit. I enjoy my life and the work I’m doing, but it often means accepting a level of financial precarity.”

Power, institutions, and new models

Lastly, two stories about the art world and power. Yancey Strickler, the cofounder of Kickstarter, has been working for the past few years on a concept, community, and company called Metalabel. Its goal is to rethink how artists can earn a living, and last month Metalabel took a meaningful step forward when Colorado legislators tabled a bill that would create Artist Companies, or A-Corps, a new kind of business entity Strickler and his colleagues designed and advocated for. You can read more about the process in this Metalabel blog post. Elsewhere, Kate Taylor, an arts journalist for our hometown paper, opened a column by observing: “Imagine how awful it is to run an art museum these days. […] And heaven forbid you’re a woman.” Her piece is about “the rapidity with which museum boards have ended the honeymoon with new hires who represent diversity—second guessing the directors’ decisions—and often replaced them with white men.”