Hand in Glove

We just wrapped up the Hand in Glove conference at threewalls in October - a meeting that gathered approx. 180 ppl together from across the United States, including a few visitors from Canada and Australia. The conference was inspired by a few trips to other conferences - The CAA conferece, Alliance for Artists' Communities, Res Artis General Meeting and the Andy Warhol Foundation's convening for their Initiative organizations - where my colleague, Abby Satinsky, and I found there to be a lack of content for small "organizations."

So I put organizations in quotes because arts administration isn't specifically a gallery with an office space any more. Nor is it every organizers goal to sustain themselves past 5 or even 2 years. Practices range from residencies where artists go tenting, to subscription programs, to micro-grants, to publishing, to roving curatorial projects, to online content and back to space. The variety of platforms for presenting artists' work, means for working as a collaborative, or forums for discussion, advocacy and self-support are numerous and they are changing the face of visual arts.

We got excited this summer when we found about Common Practice in London. An organization that is working for "the recognition and fostering of the small-scale contemporary visual arts sector in London." Their position paper "Size Matters" (downloadable from their website), is an excellent overview of the what and how to value small-scale projects. It starts with not requiring them think and act like large-scale projects. I forwarded this article immediately to all of the foundations threewalls works with. Not because our main supporters are overly concerned with our behaving like the museum, but they circulate within the field of philanthropy and they have the potential to change the conversation with fellow funders who are still looking for small to be modeled on large.

One of the main suspicions of small-organizations or potential organizers is that the 501c3 status requires organizations to bend to the will of foundations in order to receive funding. This suspicion and the paperwork that comes with it keep many away from organizing themselves as a not-for-profit when there are notable benefits to doing so. threewalls is quite lucky. When we opened in 2004 we had the support of three local funders who supported our vision even though we had just begun to program. As we grew we attracted a few more funders who were comfortable investing in visual arts organizations that were in no way producing on the scale of or with the finesse of a museum, university gallery or art center. The problem is, that we reach a ceiling. A ceiling where the "next step" foundations are less likely to jump into the pool with us. Their goals have the power to shape how we continue to build our organization or the language we chose to frame it with (an emphasis on education is often the case, and although we would argue that our many public programs are educational, funders are often looking for those programs to reach specific demographics, and very infrequently do they consider adult education as crucial as youth education). Another hazard of growing to a scale that attracts the "big guys" is a reconsideration of your administration. The fluidity so many small organizers are interested in adopting is usually thwarted by funders who are looking for key organizational structures in place that mirror business administration. It can be difficult to express your unconventional adminsitrative practices to funders who are looking for a familiar structure, and in certain cases, will work to enforce those structures as a means to a end.

threewalls is for the most part a very traditionally organized and structured art space. We are not reinventing the wheel in our administrative policies. But I am conscious of how our traditional structure might have influenced our funders from the beginning. That bodes well for our success, but it leaves me wondering about how producers who are actively working to reinvent administrative practice as much as they are programming models, can be heard and supported by foundations. Art has long been the laboratory for new models, and it should be place where new business practices can be explored in the "office" just as readily as conceptual ideas worked out in the gallery. I'd like to see foundations and patrons be as interested in supporting the process of organizing and structure of unique platforms as much as they are interested in the actual programming (artists, talks, etc.) happening on those platforms.

I still see much to be gained by organizing as a 501c3 and I recognize in small family foundations a real passion for the projects they fund. These relationships can be rewarding and fun. We recently hosted the Art Matters Foundation in Chicago while they visited for their annual board meeting and were able to expose them to a few of the artists The Propeller Fund has helped to support. These kind of events keep the doors open between those producing work, those presenting work, and those funding work to have an active dialog about what is really happening on the ground in the arts - a ground that inevitably shapes the future of visual arts practice.