In this edition of the APN Wire:
Happy Early Thanksgiving Everyone! I hope this issue finds you all headed toward a week of friends, family, food, and things to be grateful for. I am personally grateful for a lot this year including the opportunity to connect with everyone at the PACCIN picnic last weekend. Thanks to Julia Latane for putting it all together. I met new friends, saw some colleagues from exhibitions past, and learned about all sorts of fun initiatives and projects that are going on. I am psyched to bring them to this group in the new year. It was an awesome day and it was especially wonderful to just hang out with people again. It has been too long.
This week I have also heard from many of you that are struggled over the last year. Thank you to everyone who has shared their stories with me. I am going to work on finding ways to bring some of the community’s struggles to light and find resources to help. My latest podcast goes into some of the challenges I see happening in the job seeking/hiring equation today, and advice I hope will give some perspective on ways we can improve on both sides. I have also added resources to this issue to give guidance on how to work against implicit bias and utilize government resources like the EEOC. There is a right way to hire and we need to all try to do better.
Speaking of striving for improvement, the articles in this edition are all about people managing ways to make things right in the art world. Returning cultural property has become a priority again for many, and there are some successes to celebrate. There are also some longstanding challenges that are frustratingly obstinate, but understanding the history and context is important. We should all find a stance on this issue, and an informed opinion is the strongest type.
The art pro community is changing rapidly in many ways that we need it to but is unconscionably redundant in others. From racism to ageism to sexism to classism, we seem to miss the overall context of inclusion. I hope this edition will get you thinking, and I hope you will reach out with your stories and perspectives. While many of these subjects are delicate and sometimes frightening to share, we need to bring them into the out into the light. I hope that we can find more reasons to be thankful for our roles in the future.
APN is working to help art pros! Let us know what we can do for you – connect@artpronet.com.