ROXANE GAY — “MORE THAN EVER IT MIGHT BE ART THAT SAVES THE WORLD.”
On Saturday, November 4th the Black Art Consortium (BAC) at Northwestern sponsored “On Contours of Collecting Black Art Now”, Roxane Gay in conversation with Eric McKissack and Valerie Carberry.
Gay is a noted author, columnist and cultural critic and most of all Black art collector, and the Chicago based McKissack, along with his wife Cheryl, are among the country’s preeminent Black art collectors.
The overarching sentiment of the panel expressed by Gay was that “more than ever it’s not that art is going to save the world, but at the same time it might be art that actually saves the world.” She offers that everything in her collecting journey is to make sure that artists continue to make the kinds of work that she loves to see in the world. “Sometimes it’s political, sometimes it’s just weird, sometimes confounding, sometimes it’s all inspiring but always it’s made by creators who have a very distinct vision, and they just happen to be Black.”
Some nuggets the speakers dropped.
When did they first feel like collectors and the piece of art that got away?
Roxane Gay — An Edward Ruscha that came to auction was the one that got away. Acquiring works by Alison Saar and April Bey made her feel like a collector.
Eric McKissack — Acquiring a Kerry James Marshall in 1999 which is one of the most important pieces in his collection today made him feel like a collector. His advice always buy the best piece of art you can afford.
On giving artists time to grow and incubate their practices
Gay — The market is demanding young artists rush to the market with works in ways that sometimes don’t actually serve the artists. I think it would be great to stop rushing the artists and give them space to recover from those opportunities because a lot of them aren’t getting that time and space to create and the work suffers. Then the artist starts to feel like they’re doing more to support the market than their actual creative practice. And should the works fail to garner that $1M price tag it will be looked upon as a failure by the artist. For example, Jordan Casteel has five questions and must be able to answer yes to three of them to say yes to a project.
Five years from now will Black art still be hot?
Gay — we’re in a great moment and I think that Black art will continue to be hot for a while. I do think that interest is going to wane within the majority art community, it’s going to choose something else to be interested in. I think that’s probably going to be a good thing, not because the interest is going to go away, but because the actual interest in terms of who’s actually buying the work isn’t going to change. It will be great that the art can once more be put in the hands of people who want to live with the art and learn more about the artist’s practice and support that practice in ways that are feasible. Black artists deserve our time and attention.
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