The Matronage Salons!
How we start a movement
Last Wednesday, Less Than Half hosted the first in person Matronage Salon, an event to bring together culturally curious women keen on finding meaning in art by becoming supporters and collectors of women artists.
We had a grand old time— we were hosted in the same space Peggy Guggenheim had her gallery in the 1940s (gasp, how cool is that?), we drank and ate food donated by women-owned brands, and we connected over our favorite pieces of art by women artists.
At the center of the event was a conversation between me and Victoria Rogers, a collector and supporter of Black artists and board member of the Brooklyn Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
As many conversations and panels about the art market gloss over the mechanics of art collecting, I was determined to make this one different. After all, the whole idea of the Matronage Salons is to inspire other women to start buying art (at whatever price point!)— and alienating the audience isn’t a great way to do that.
Most discussions about collecting art start from a point where panelists already knew what they’re doing. But what about the part before that, where they found it intimidating to talk to an artist? What about the part where they were unsure what their taste was? Discussions like that create a fundamental divide between the people speaking and the people listening— “I want to buy art, but how do I get from here (not collecting art) to there (collecting it)?”
Well, not this conversation. We covered all that— and more.
But the point of the evening wasn’t only to show the audience that they too could collect as an individual, but also to show every person there that in order for this to work— “this” being the Matronage movement, which will change the status quo for women artists— we have to do it collectively.
I hope everyone there felt a collective sense of inspiration in looking at the other women in the room. Whether you are already a collector or are about to buy your first piece of art— we’re all in this together.
Me and Victoria Rogers
Happily, I’ll be having more of these events in the future and will be introducing the model of the Matronage Salon at Future Fair this May 1-4. I hope to see you there.
And if you’d like to be invited to the next Matronage Salon, become a member of the Less Than Half Collectors Circle here!
Congratulations on realizing this vision, Hall. It sounds wonderful.
Encourage them to be bold! Follow their hearts! Dare to be different. For every out on a limb painter — please, let there be an out on a limb collector!