Projects
The census counts artists. Our projects widen the record: they find the artists it misses and bring their work into public view.
Widening the record
The permanent record admits an artist at three moments: a sale, an acquisition, or a death. Everything before those moments leaves almost no trace.
Our projects work on everything before those moments. They look for the artists the record passes over, publish them on their own terms, and make their work easy to find for curators, writers, researchers and the public.
Who the record misses
- Artists who fund the studio with a second jobThey fall out of every count built on occupation.
- Self-taught artistsThey fall out of every count built on degrees.
- Artists outside the countries that collect the dataThey were never in it.
- Artists without a dealer or a sales historyThe market records an artist only once it has priced them.
Latin American art
Latin America is one of our focuses: a region where the distance between art-historical weight and market value is wide and the record thin.
The project brings together the three things we do: counting the artists working there now, researching how the market values their work, and putting that work in front of a wider public.
Count
Artists living and working across Latin America are counted in the census on their own terms, whether or not the work sells.
Be countedResearch
Instrument 01 of the Global Art Index examines the persistent discount at which Latin American art trades relative to its art-historical weight.
Read Instrument 01Visibility
Artists who choose to be listed appear in the open census, free to find and cite. Researchers present work in progress at salons with the artists in the room, and supporters visit studios in the countries where we work.
Support the projectUnderwriting a project
Patrons can underwrite one region or instrument, named or anonymous at their election.
Support buys the work's existence and nothing else: no advance sight, no review, no influence on findings.