Matthew higgs1/28/2024 ![]() ![]() The strength of Independent comes from the mix of galleries and the works that they present. Even when we did Independent Projects in November, where a lot of the galleries were more established, they still brought quite maverick work. Over the subsequent years it’s been nice to be able to watch it expand and change. From the outset, for me, it was very interesting to have more ‘maverick’ dealers included in the mix. I don’t think one could necessarily say that it’s a curated exhibition, but it’s definitely a curated forum or curated platform. For me, it was an interesting opportunity to create space for all kinds of art, a marketplace for all kinds of art, where you’d see things alongside one another that you perhaps wouldn’t typically encounter elsewhere. We also wanted to break down some of those hierarchies that exist in the art world between the blue-chip galleries-the galleries that do resale, the more established commercial galleries-and the emerging young galleries, and then also the galleries that are outside of those narratives. The idea was to really create something of a hybrid- something that wasn’t exactly a fair, although there was a commercial aspect, and wasn’t exactly an exhibition, though it perhaps resembled one. There's a reluctance of many galleries to take part in fairs, but it’s like a catch-22- they’re obliged to take part, but they find them unsatisfactory in terms of a place to see art, or a place for artists to present their work. The initial idea was very appealing to me, too-that we were trying to find a solution to this narrow, persistent problems of fairs and how they assist galleries in terms of their economies and how they function. When Elizabeth Dee and Darren Flook created the fair and I was brought in as creative advisor, I immediately liked the idea because of X Initiative, Elizabeth Dee’s previous event at the former Dia building, which is an incredibly iconic space that every artist aspires to. ![]() Generally speaking, what is Independent, and what is the fair "independent" of, exactly? This year marks the fifth anniversary of Independent, the art fair that you’ve helped guide from its inception as creative director. We spoke to the White Columns director about how to make an art fair an artist’s idyll, why he is so intent on broadening the discourse beyond the confines of the professionalized art world, and how his curatorial approach arose from his early years in the gritty Manchester music scene. Opening a new White Columns show this week to present “Margret: Chronicle of an Affair – May 1969 to December 1970,” a seductively unusual archive of documents related to a clandestine affair between a German businessman and his secretary, Higgs is also thinking through the future of Independent, which will have to abandon its serendipitous home in Chelsea’s former Dia Art Foundation building after this year’s edition-at the same time that the fair continues to expand, with its second edition of the November-sited Independent Projects and the first edition of a new Brussels fair both in the works. Jerry Saltz has called him “a national treasure.” Sometimes these incursions involve young artists still a few years away from stardom more often they probe the more interstitial zones of art-making, such as with his indispensable shows of work by artists with developmental disorders-frequently working with organizations like Oakland’s Creative Growth Art Center or New York’s Healing Arts Initiative-or who otherwise operate outside of the traditional gallery context.Īn artist himself as well as a DJ, curator, writer, publisher, and former Turner Prize judge (in 2007), he has also for the past five years served as the creative advisor of the Independent art fair, using that platform as an opportunity to introduce a broad range of creativity into the traditionally staid, too-often straitjacketed art-fair format. Since assuming the directorship of the New York nonprofit White Columns in 2004, Matthew Higgs has functioned as something of a one-man corrective to the more venal, less fun strains of the city’s art scene, using the venerable space to launch offbeat alternatives into the artistic conversation.
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