The first painting I received was a portrait my grandmother painted of the two of us. I had a mullet and wore overalls. I looked directly at the viewer while my grandmother’s eyes were fixed on me. The most recent painting I received came in exchange for photography work from my studio mate at the time. Neither passed through a gallery or auction house. No dealer negotiated the terms, and their value to me has little to do with what either might fetch on the market. Instead, each came through a relationship, carrying with it the circumstances of how and why it was given.
These informal exchanges are at the center of The Steward Shop, an exhibition of art and objects gathered from the personal collections of artists, curators, writers, and art workers. Paintings traded for laptops, artworks exchanged between studio mates, and gifts passed between artists and curators trace an economy built not around market value, but around labor, generosity, and reciprocity.
I spoke with Lucia Arbery Simek, who co-curated The Steward Shop with Abby Bryant, about the provenance created through these exchanges, art as currency, and what the objects reveal about the ecosystem that produced them.
Anthony Falcon (AF): How does knowing the story of an exchange change the way we understand the object itself?
Lucia Arbery Simek (LAS): So much in the art world is centered on the transit of an object through very pedigreed and vetted monetary exchanges–purchase from a blue-chip gallery or major auction house in one of the major art cities, like New York or London, and often with the intention of the work gaining in value over time. These purchases are often made with deep appreciation for the artist and their work, of course, but they can also be investments made by collectors; by nature of the high price point of so much art, these acquisitions are only for a few. In artist economies, things have always been different because objects or services are often traded for other objects and services, so the art works themselves act as a kind of currency, one limited to people of the same ilk. As such, almost all of these exchanges carry sentimental value and the legacy of shared labor.
AF: Was there a particular object or story that first made you realize these informal exchanges could constitute an exhibition?
LAS: It’s something I had been thinking about for years, as my family’s own collection grew from such artists-economy exchanges. One particular exchange with my husband, who is also a curator, was a jewel, however. He had organized a show with the Icelandic artist Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir at the art center he was running in Eastern Iceland, and Ingibjörg’s husband came along for the installation and opening. She happens to be married to maybe the second-most famous person from Iceland after Bjork, our friend, the artist Ragnar Kjartansson. Ragnar really liked the laundry basket in the room he and the family were staying in at the art center, and so he traded my husband three small drawings of his for it, which are now some of our most prized possessions (and will be included in this show).
AF: What kind of provenance is created through friendship, generosity, and personal history?
LAS: The provenance is a special one, akin to that of family heirlooms and the storytelling that surrounds them. The map of these objects’ provenance is something like the Dadaist game of exquisite corpse, wherein the shared work of drawing creates a collaborative composition, a kind of fable about how lending our talents generously yields a whole new identity for things.
AF: Looking at the exhibition anthropologically, what did assembling these objects reveal to you about the Dallas art ecosystem?
LAS: I see a lot of work that defines certain eras and the influence of mentors on students, or studio mates, or artists that came onto the scene together and stayed close. I also see a lot of stories about departures, as many works are by artists that were only briefly part of this ecosystem before moving on to cities that are more accommodating and supportive of their native art scenes. The work also tells the story of connection to wider art worlds outside of Dallas/Fort Worth, indicating the broad networks of this community. Overall, anthropologically, this show makes evident the great care and generosity of people beating the same, difficult path in life – people who have stuck together and made a raft.
AF: A painting traded for a laptop or work exchanged between studio mates, these transactions attach very different kinds of labor to art. Did organizing the exhibition change the way you think about how artists and art workers assign value to one another’s work?
LAS: No, I’ve long participated in these economies, because I am also an artist, so I think I’ve always understood the scales at play. For example, because I am also a writer, I have a skill a lot of other artists don’t, and it’s good to be able to help out friends and colleagues by using it. I’ve found it to be a very ‘high-value’ skill within artist ecosystems because it allows for the spreading of information about an artist outside of the gallery or museum space, through the press and in exhibition essays. Other friends have really amazing skills that I do not, like installing work with an exacting precision or using tools that freak me out, like table saws. In most cases, no one expects anything in return for this sort of help, but a spirit of generosity moves through everyone, and gifts are often given as a way of reciprocating the good will, because artists are really good at knowing the value of what they have to offer and respecting the value of what someone else brings. Artists look out for each other. Like cultural critic Lewis Hyde says in his book The Gift: “So long as the gift is not withheld, the creative spirit will remain a stranger to the economics of scarcity.”
AF: Do you see these exchanges as resistance to the market, a necessity within an underfunded creative community, or simply something more fundamental about how artists have always lived together?
LAS: I think it’s the latter–just something fundamental to how artists move through the world and have agency. It’s a secret currency in a small community, when making work and getting it seen depends on the generosity and know-how of so many peers and mentors.
AF: Why was it important that the now-defunct laptop received in the exchange appear alongside the painting or artwork it helped acquire?
LAS: This was actually just a happy coincidence that both artists–the one who gave the laptop and the one who gave the painting–noted this trade to me and Abby as something meaningful. Hearing the two discuss the trade in the gallery during install, trying to remember the details of the exchange, was so special, as they each described their respective needs at the time and how they fulfilled them for each other. This occurred more than once in this project, as we heard both sides of several trades/exchanges and we will have those artworks on view as well.
AF: Why is it important to let visitors participate in this system of circulation rather than simply observe it?
LAS: We were interested in extending the idea of humble provenance into new exchanges, and so it made sense to include some objects–a rusty oil can, a wonky toy frog, a crocheted cowboy on horseback, a bowl of forgotten Easter cascarones–which may or may not have any real value, and have them for sale in the space. They serve as tokens of this exhibition, this experience, and enter back into the world with this new mark of ‘value’ on them. It really just underscores how context is everything, and how in this arena of artistic exchange, these odd, nothing objects become something precious.