Happy New Year!
We made it! It’s been a whirlwind of a year marked by sweeping event cancellations, travel restrictions, online viewing rooms and job losses in the art world. But with so much loss shines an opportunity to evolve and be innovative with our available resources and connections. Below I’m sharing our highlights from the 2020 year.
Thank you for your support. We wish you peace and success in the new year.
Photograph by Hadassi
W1 Curates x Amplifier
When quarantine hit and we were at our lowest, it was our goal to ignite the people of London with artwork that promoted public safety, well-being and visions for the future. In response to Covid-19, we collaborated with W1 Curates and Amplifier to hold a global call for artists to create a digital public art installation on the facade of Flannels flagship store located on London’s iconic Oxford Street. There were tens of thousands of entries, and we raised over £100,000 that went back to the winning artists.
Pascal Sender with Maximillian Siegenbruk
House of Togetherness
House of Togetherness, a collaborative exhibition with Harlesden High Street in central London, brought together four emerging artists, Pascal Sender, Sally Kindberg, Maximillian Siegenbruk and Emmanuel Awuni, who utilize painting and sculpture to address the contemporary notion of new materials to emphasize different contexts and establish a new language of complexities in a world where it’s every man for itself, a reflection of the contemporary art world. Unfortunately due to the Covid-19 lockdown, after working months to bring the show together, we were only permitted to have one opening night before shutting the exhibition down the next day.
Sally Kindberg with Maximillian Siegenbruk
COLLECTING 101 with
Beth Redmond
With a desire to reach out when it felt like the world just needed more communication and inspiration, we started a new series collaboration with The Art Gorgeous titled Collecting 101. We found the most knowledgeable and inspiring female collectors in the art world to educate art lovers and future collectors on the cryptic art of collecting. Interviewees have included inspiring women like Alejandra Castro Rioseco, founder of MIA, a private art collection with a global footprint aimed at promoting women artists and their work, and board member of the eagerly anticipated Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, as well as Aloisia Leopardi, a young collector who started her own new residency program in southern Italy called the Castello San Basilio in Basilicata.
Christopher Hartmann
HerStory
Together with the nonprofit Beauty for Freedom, we organized HERSTORY, an exhibition to benefit Beauty for Freedom, along with three additional Black-led, women-led grassroots initiatives who empower women and girls of color, battle human trafficking, and support victims of sexual violence. HERSTORY was a chance to support grassroots movements led by women of color who are making real positive change throughout the world, starting in local communities. This critical narrative speaks to the possibilities of creating lasting change during this global movement currently fighting oppressive forces in our troubling era of worldwide health crisis, escalating poverty, ongoing state-sanctioned murders, and mounting authoritarian rule across the globe. Through their community, Beauty for Freedom donated over $350,000 in supplies for the arts, facilitated over 20,000 hours of volunteerism in anti-trafficking movements and created workshops for over 3,000 survivors of human trafficking. Profits from the sales were split between the artists and the organizations.
Art She Says
This summer, I spent my time reconnecting with nature in the English countryside where my attention was drawn to one particular animal — sheep! In one of my favorite interviews of the year, I curated a selection for Art She Says that highlights sheep as they are featured in works of art from old masters to the present day.
“Sheep have been a popular motif from Raphael paintings to the latest cover of Vogue. Who would have thought that sheep could be so interesting?”