Unlock Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, editor-in-chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Five years ago, creating an art collection seemed intimidating and unattainable for Miami native Chris Menendez. “I was raised by a single Cuban mother,” he says. “Art wasn’t on the agenda growing up.” Today he is editor-in-chief of LoHi Magazine, a new publication focused on the Florida city’s cultural offerings, and throughout his career he has interviewed artists and attended White Cube events. Yet he still feels like an outsider to the art market. “At the end of the day, it’s about economics,” he says.
Today, however, her home is filled with contemporary works by Miami-based artists: a sculpture painted gold and encrusted with treasures from the work of Loni Johnson. Visceral Pod Series (2024); a luminous textile piece by Michelle Lisa Polissaint (2022); an ink and gouache depiction of a ship by Beatriz Monteavaro (2023). All were purchased through Commissioner, a membership program co-founded by Dejha Carrington in 2017 that offers art lovers the opportunity to acquire works by local creators at a reasonable price, opening the collection to a wider audience.
Members pay an annual fee, with different tiers to choose from. Entrance Patronage Membership ($90) supports scholarships for arts educators and artists, and also includes Art Week passes and invitations to events and workshops. But it’s undoubtedly with the collector membership that the fun really begins. Each year, up to 40 members, each paying $1,800 (or $550 per quarter), collectively commission four Miami artists, strategically selected at critical points in their careers. In exchange, they each receive four works of art, created in limited editions or part of a series, and unveiled at events throughout the year.
When registering, members do not know who the artists featured will be or what the works will look like. “You’re working with 39 other people to access and acquire work, and you have to have confidence,” Carrington says. “You also give artists the time and space to create and explore new ideas. It’s part of the contract.
So far, the curator has worked with more than 30 artists and commissioned $325,000 worth of new works. “In some art worlds, fewer than 10 people in a room on a sunny afternoon could raise $325,000,” Carrington says. “But the art world is a multiverse, and our intention is to do it differently.”
Recent art market reports focus on the situation of the ultra-rich buy less artbut creative strategies could help attract new groups as future collectors. “Inclusion and community-driven cultural engagement could help bridge the gap between artists and collectors,” says art historian and economist Charles Moore, author of The brilliance of the color black through the eyes of art collectors.
The commissioner took inspiration from African, Caribbean and women-led collective savings clubs, known as above and is one of many initiatives aimed at democratizing art collecting. Other models include Los Angeles interdisciplinary artist April Bey’s Equity in Collecting program, which gives potential collectors from marginalized groups direct access to artists, and online collecting communities such as Salon, a fundraising fund. decentralized and blockchain-oriented art through which people can collectively invest in major works. .
Born in Montreal, Carrington has held various positions in Miami’s arts sector. In addition to being a curator, she is a board director of the MAP Fund (originally known as the Multi-Arts Production Fund) and a member of the professional advisory board of Miami-Dade Art in Public Places and the Center for Global Black Studies from New York University. Her goal, she says, is to “support artists and create models for access to the arts.”
When Miami artist Anastasia Samoylova – the first female photographer in 33 years to headline an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – was approached to collaborate with the curator in 2022, she didn’t hesitate. “All I want to do is continue to be a full-time artist until I die, and you need support for that,” she says. His exclusive photographic print, “Looking” (2022), a poetically structured image of a local storefront displaying traditional Sunday dresses, was unveiled to an intimate group of Miamians, many of whom remain friends and supporters. “It was like attending the cool kids club; it’s so exciting,” she says.
For architect and designer Germane Barnes, whose work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, creating signature pieces for the curator allowed her to experiment on smaller scales and meet new supporters. “This experience took me out of my comfort zone,” he says.
At member events, collectors can ask the artist questions and connect with the work in a way that goes beyond traditional art purchasing transactions. “When I think of the curator, the first word that comes to mind is community,” says Cuban-American multidisciplinary artist Antonia Wright, whose sound installation “State of Labor” (2022) was recently acquired by the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and who will create the first series of curatorially commissioned pieces for this year’s iteration. “It adds a new layer to the artistic ecosystem,” she adds.
For Menendez, attending a “Collecting 101” curatorial event taught by David Castillo at his Design District gallery changed his mindset. “After that, I stopped being afraid of the art market,” he says. “We loved the last piece (“Voyager” by Beatriz Monteavaro) so much that we contacted the artist for another commission.”
commissioner.us
Check out our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram And Xand subscribe to our podcast Life and art wherever you listen
