You ll know an economic and social justice plan is serious if it includes money for the arts
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Editors Picks: 10 Events for Your Art Calendar This Week, From a Panel on Michelle Obama s Style to a Show of Frog-Themed Art
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Ford Wheeler first went to Every Thing Goes in 1997. He was working as the production designer for James Grey’s first film,
Little Odessa, and had heard from someone he can’t remember who that there was this vintage furniture store on Staten Island that had
everything and for cheap
. This proved true. “They had all kinds of stuff, and not just furniture,” he says. “Things anyone else would throw away. Curtains, sheets, dishes, old phones. They’d sell anything they got their hands on. But, you know, it was odd.” That oddness manifested in a variety of ways. Though the place was overflowing, it was exceptionally, unusually organized. “Every item was measured, placed in a plastic bag, and tagged,” he says. “They had a system to track the customers, too every time you’d go upstairs, you’d hear ‘customer moving to floor two’ over a walkie-talkie.’” And the employees “had this policy about truth or straight
What has prompted this movement towards collectivism?
Part of it, of course, is the coronavirus pandemic. As work grows increasingly less stable and government aid remains unreliable, those in the arts have recognized the importance of community over competition: museum workers pushing to unionize in Philadelphia; performers mobilizing to strengthen contracts in LA and New York; and entertainers in Santa Fe considering unionization after layoffs or pay cuts. While art has often been framed as an individualistic practice, collectivization could be critical to its survival.
But at the same time, Linares says, artists’ relationship to and reliance on collectives isn’t new.