REDISTRIBUTION

DISCUSSION 2

In order to address structural inequities, must we maintain categories that were used to create them? Are we willing to categorize and be categorized in order to enact redistribution? Can tools and strategies that have perpetuated inequity be reimagined for different ends? What can we do with the tools that we have, and what are their limits?

“A kind of step in a flawed system.”

Part 1

Alex Strada, visual artist, filmmaker, and educator based in New York City whose work “Artist Contract” is an artwork sales agreement that requires any collector to reinvest all accrued value in new artwork by an emerging female-identifying artist.

“The more regulation you want, that is precisely what art is not about.”

Part 2

Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, artist and art lawyer, and founder of the Art & Law Program. Sergio provided legal assistance for artist Alex Strada’s work titled Artist Contract, which we discuss with Alex in part 1.

REFERENCES, PART 1:

Alex Strada, Artist Contract-, 2017 

Seth Siegelaub and Robert Projansky, The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, 1971

Doug Henwood, “Unemployment Benefits Have Saved the US From Economic Calamity. They Expire at the End of the Month,” Jacobin, July 21 2020

Hrag Vartanian, “Study Claims 80.5% of Artists Represented by NYC’s Top 45 Galleries Are White,” Hyperallergic, June 1, 2017, on study by James Case-Leal and CUNY Guttman students on race and gender representation in New York City Galleries.

Raia Small, “In the Kitchens of the Metropolis: An Interview with Silvia Federici,” Toward Freedom, October 18, 2018, Sylvia Federici on Wages for Housework

Julia Halperin & Charlotte Burns, “Museums Claim They’re Paying More Attention to Female Artists. That’s an Illusion,” Artnet News, September 19, 2019

Fabian Y.R.P. Bocart, Marina Gertsberg, Rachel Pownall, “Glass Ceilings in the Art Market,” August 27, 2018 

Paul Sullivan, “How the Tax Code Rewrite Favors Real Estate Over Art,” The New York Times, January 12, 2018, on 1031 ‘like-kind’ exchanges

REFERENCES, PART 2:

“Rethinking Artists’ Rights Roundtable: The Visual Artists’ Rights Act,” Pioneer Works, May 15, 2018

Katya Kazakina, “Top Galleries, Famous Artists Got Millions in U.S. Bailout Loans,” Bloomberg News, July 8, 2020

Guggenheim Panza Collection Initiative 

Cass R. Sunstein, “Gorsuch Paves Way for Attack on Affirmative Action,” June 17 2020 

Chris Bodenner, “The Most Consequential Comma in U.S. History?,” The Atlantic, January 25, 2016 

Nikole Hannah-Jones, “What Abigail Fisher’s Affirmative Action Case Was Really About,” June 23, 2016

Mostafa Heddaya, “Artist Collective Withdraws from Whitney Biennial,” May 14, 2014, on the Yams Collective protest concerning Joe Scanlan’s “Donelle Woolford” work

GUEST BIOS:

Alex Strada (she/her/hers) is a visual artist, filmmaker, and educator based in New York City. Strada's work has been shown at the Anthology Film Archives, NY; Museum of Moving Image, NY; Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; UnionDocs, NY; Goethe-Institut, NY; The Jewish Museum, NY; National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavik; MuseumsQuartier, Vienna; the Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania; and on the screens of Times Square with Times Square Arts' Midnight Moment. Her projects have been written about in The New Yorker, Artsy, Vice, and the Kentucky Law Journal. Strada received a B.A. from Bates College in 2010, an M.F.A. in Visual Art from Columbia University in 2016, and she was a 2018-2019 studio participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program. She has taught at Columbia University, Fordham University, The Cooper Union, and in public schools throughout New York City with Studio in a School. Currently, she is a 2020-2021 recipient of the NYFA Women's Fund for Media Artists and an Assistant Professor in Residence at the Rhode Island School of Design. 

Sergio Munoz Sarmiento is an art lawyer and founder of the Art & Law Program.

Discussion 2 was released on Wednesday, August 5, 2020.