Blurred Lines

breaking the art world's conventional system of value.

Over time, the art world has become a private space - one that turns its back to the greater public.  Art, however, has the ability to promote and engage public participation.  A new type of collector has emerged within the art world, one  blurring the line between collector, curator, and dealer.  This new figure appears to hold the most power in breaking the public/private barrier and challenging the existing value system.

Through the design of archival spaces for two such collectors, Bernardo Paz and Stefan Simchowitz, architecture facilitates a connection on site, while also providing ample conditioned archival space and abundant public space.  The vastly different locations of the archives, as well as each collectors various future goals prompt two projects: one in Inhotim, Brazil and the other in Harlem, NYC.  

Hold up...

How is the value of art determined? 

Since the pre-19th century Academy in Paris, the divide between the private art world and the greater public has grown exponentially. As a result, artists are blindly traversing an intricate maze of valuation -- spatial mechanisms with minimal transparency and even less consistency. A hybrid dealer-collector-curator, many times with little-to-no prior art affiliation, embarks on a venture to break this system for the benefit of him or herself, the artist and/or the public.  As an example of this misalignment of value that the collectors are trying to break, in the comparison of two art ranking websites - artprice.com which deals with the economy of turnover at auction and artfacts.com which deals with the economy of attention - sixty living artists were ranked on each site, only fifteen held the highest rankings on both sites. The disparity in auction and attention reveals the varying value appeal of different artists to collectors. The new breed of collector warrants a new type of space. The traditional white cube no longer applies.  Art critic Brian O’Doherty states in an essay “Inside the White Cube”:  “The ideal gallery subtracts from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is “art”.  The work is isolated from everything that would detract from its own evaluation of itself. This gives the space a presence possessed by other spaces where conventions are preserved through the repetition of a closed system of values.”