Events
In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee: a documentary
Thursday, March 12, 7pm
$5 admission
In conjunction with the Trade Routes exhibition, this documentary film explores a troubling side of the international adoption trade involving a Korean child. Her passport said she was Cha Jung Hee. She knew she was not. So began a 40-year deception for this Korean adoptee who came to the US in 1966. Told to keep her true identity a secret from her new American family, this eight-year-old girl quickly forgot she was ever anyone else. But why had her identity been switched? And who was the real Cha Jung Hee? This documentary is the search to find the answers about this troubling aspect of the international adoption trade. It follows acclaimed filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem as she returns to her native Korea to find her “double,” the mysterious girl whose place she took in America.
Trailer and more info: http://www.mufilms.org/
Opening Reception for Trade Routes
Saturday, February 28, 6-8pm
Please join us for wine and conversation at the opening reception for Trade Routes, the third exhibition of our COMMERCE year. Trade Routes focuses on the infrastructures and pathways of commerce, from the winds and tides that were the first determinants of inter-cultural trade to the technological breakthroughs that fuel global trade today. Sociologist-artist team David Schleifer and Tracy Gilman explore Navajo trading rug styles using weather-resistant electric cables. The works of Shari Mendelson and Venetia Dale address the impact of product innovation, specifically the invention of plastic, on the movement of objects and commodities from their countries of origin to their point of consumption. [continue reading…]
Zapatista Coffee, Portraits and Advice for the Alienated
Saturday, February 21, 3-6pm
As part of our yearlong engagement with the elements of Commerce, we present a gathering of projects creating alternative paths within our current economic system. The Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op will sell Autonomous Zapatista Coffee with the goal of building a partnership between ‘Brooklyn Torches’, a Brooklyn alternative currency that builds community and another alternative currency, Digital Material Sunflower. Mary Jeys will be selling Brooklyn Torches. In addition, the Coffee Co-op’s artist-in-residence Gabriela Ceja will draw portraits of visitors while offering coffee and conversation about work and alienation as part of her Workers Utopia project. Lastly, the Arts & Labor’s Alternative Economies Working Group will make available its 2015 edition of the NYC Alternative Resource Guide listing alternatives for education, housing, childcare and more. Join us for an afternoon of radical fun, radical coffee and radical ideas! [continue reading…]
Labor of Love: True Stories by Real People
Thursday, February 12, 7pm
$5 admission
When Labor Was Capital: the Slave-Breeding Industry
Thursday, January 22, 7:30pm
$5 admission
When Labor Was Capital: The Slave-Breeding Industry looks at how US slavery differed from the other slaveries of the hemisphere in having a domestically supplied slave trade, with Virginia, “the mother of slavery,” as the largest supplier of native-born human beings for market. Ned Sublette, author of The World That Made New Orleans and the co-author (with Constance Sublette) of the forthcoming The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry (Chicago Review Press, October 2015), will talk about how labor was capital in the making of the United States. [continue reading…]
Labor: the New Gold Standard with Paul Glover
Saturday, January 10, 7-9 pm
Admission: $5
Paul Glover, social activist and social entrepreneur, believes that real money is measured in hours of labor, steady as the clock. In conjunction with the Proteus exhibit, Labor, he will describe the benefits and processes for creating, growing, and managing labor currencies. The Ithaca HOURS program he created in 1991 has traded millions of dollars value, among thousands of residents and 500 businesses. HOURS have sparked an international movement to stimulate grassroots control of money.http://www.paulglover.
TimeDebt Services
Sundays, December 21 – February 15, 3 – 6 pm
Free – App’t suggested but not required
- Work Evaluations: Confused about the value of your labor? TimeDebt Services will evaluate your past, present, and future work including the uncompensated and unrecognized transactions in your life.
- Letters to Creditors: Want to write to Sallie Mae and/or Chase Bank but don’t know how? TimeDebt Services will help you write the perfect barter and/or timebank letter to your creditor offering alternatives to paying off your debt.
- Education Resources: Want to learn for free? TimeDebt Services will map alternative education models and resources in the city to help you learn what you want to learn without breaking the bank.
Eliza Martin consults with the Work Intern (Meredith Degyansky, right)
Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North
Tuesday, December 16, 7pm
Free
New Art + Finance + Commerce = Enriching!
Saturday, November 22, 6 – 8pm
As we approach the end of the Currency exhibition, join us for a new show within the show. Commerce: The Greens, Water Wheel, and Bosco Mall exhibits work by RISD artists developed in dialogue with the Currency show. At 6pm, Leigh Claire La Berge presents a short talk on The Work of Finance in the Corporate University in conversation with BFAMFAPhD and visitors.
During the course of the afternoon and evening, we will drink wine, consider the value of things, attempt to barter using leaves from the Money Tree, explore the fate of uncompensated work and learn about water wheels, sour dough and the Gowanus. [continue reading…]
Art Market Speculating
Friday, Nov. 14, 8pm
Admission Fee: $5
Sometimes a painting isn’t purchased just for love. Are you shocked? Find out more about this area of COMMERCE with attorney and art world insider Franklin Boyd. She will help us all – but artists especially – to better understand the art market for what it is, an infamous niche sector of high finance with a uniquely irrational character.
While there have always been speculators in the art market, greater access to market data has caused more traditional investors to reconsider the investment possibilities of so-called “treasure” assets. For investors and institutions who are active in traditional capital markets, what benefits or risks does the more loosely regulated art market offer? Why would an international bank want to be associated with an art fair? Should we worry about market manipulation? Is the whole market “overpriced” and ready to pop?
Franklin Boyd works at the intersections of contemporary art, finance and law. Following her presentation, she will take questions and conduct a conversation. Priority for questions or comments will be given to artists and art world professionals.
Franklin Boyd is the founder of Xipsy, Level Rights and Boyd Level and is the creator of the Negotiated Resale Right for Artists. Franklin also maintains a general commercial law practice with a concentration on matters related to contemporary art and is a venture capital investor in socially conscious businesses. She teaches art finance, market and law courses at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art and is a current or former board member of Art in General and SmartSpaces, both located in New York, and Zer01, headquartered in Silicon Valley. Franklin holds a BSFS from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, a juris doctorate from NYU Law School and began her legal career at Cravath, Swaine & Moore after having worked in the General Counsel’s office of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and for the State Attorney General of New York.
teaches art market law at Sotheby’s.
