Welcome to Business School!
Hello!
My name is Adelaide (or Heidi for those who know me in the real world) Blair, and I am an MFA candidate in the low-residency program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. As I’ve gotten further into the program, I’ve become more interested in the business side of the contemporary art market, especially the use of art as a financial rather than cultural resource. (This is not particularly surprising since I also have an MBA from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington). As my research for fun became research for school, I started thinking of it as a possible area for my thesis project. But how do I do that without 1) being boring and 2) not just taping essays to a gallery wall to explain everything? Well, why not use business strategies to talk about business things? When I was getting my MBA, we did a lot of simulations, case studies, and business plan writing. Why not use those tools to frame what’s happening in the art market right now? I am at the beginning of this project, so I am not 100% sure what is going to happen, but I do know there will be newsletters (2ish a month) explaining how all of this works and why you should care. There will be art! Because I go to art school! And there will be opportunities for you to participate in simulations etc. if you are so inclined. (There will also be tons of opportunities to not get involved because not everybody is that kind of person. Believe me, I get it.)
I am not in the contemporary art world, and I don’t know anything about it. Why should I care? Am I even the audience for this? Yes, you are the best audience! It’s easy to assume that rich people just love art and buy it to support artists, and while that might be true for some people, there are a lot of other reasons that aren’t so noble. The use of art as an instrument to store money contributes to wealth inequality, loss of cultural resources, institutional money laundering, dealer and collector control of what we see in museums, loss of tax revenue, and a whole host of other not-so-great things. A few people benefit, and a whole lot of other people lose out. (When discussing the contemporary art market, I am referencing a very specific thing that has nothing to do with the art that most of us buy and make. I will explain this further in the next newsletter.)
Is this going to be super boring to everyone but you? NOPE! Did you read the part about money laundering? THERE IS SO MUCH GOSSIP AND SCANDAL. SO MUCH. Accounting class was my favorite part of getting an MBA. Basically, we just read case studies of business scandals so we could learn not to be bad. I graduated in 2008 at the beginning of the financial crisis. Lemme tell you, I was primed to follow along in the news.
How can I participate? If you would like to enroll, please subscribe to this newsletter. (It’s free.) I hear that google sometimes puts Substack newsletters in the promo section of your inbox, so if you sign up and never hear from me, check there. (Or come look on the website.) Whenever there is an opportunity for you to join in, you will be given clear instructions. Nothing will be too onerous or mandatory; it will be like business school with no homework and less beer. (I am assuming. I don’t know how you live your life.) There will also probably be additional things happening on my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/adelaide_blair/ if you want to follow along there. (I will also be posting about pickles and night skies, so be forewarned.)
What do you (Adelaide) want to get out of this? I have two things going on with this project. One is that I find the subject matter fascinating, and creating a business school simulation piece seemed like a way to experiment with art as education. How do I convey this information while having it still be art and not a lecture series or whatever? The other, less obvious thing is that I am really interested in networks. Whenever you hear the word “market,” it really just refers to people. The contemporary art market is a network of individuals who work together to sell and buy art. I am also interested in creating and using networks as a way to make art outside of any monetary exchange. So, how do I create a network (we’ll call it Business School) to make art about another network concerned with making money? I do have some anxiety about this because what if no one wants to participate at all and my entire thesis project goes down in flames and my defense becomes a moving speech about dealing with failure? But, a lot of the ideas I have for things to do after graduation require working within a network, so I might as well start sooner rather than later. So thanks for hanging out with me! See you soon.