Episode 019: Bridget Donahue

Show Notes

This week on the show we sit down with gallerist and curator Bridget Donahue. If you know Bridget it’s likely through her gallery’s sharp programming and the impactful work she has done over the years to help steward the careers of time-based media artists like Sondra Perry, Martine Syms, and Lynn Hershman Leeson – but did you know that Bridget got her start in the gallery world as an archivist? Tune in for a real behind-the-scenes glimpse into the important work that Bridget has been doing over the years.

Links from the conversation with Bridget
> https://www.bridgetdonahue.nyc/
> http://www.cleopatras.us/#/contact

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ben: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host, Ben Fino-Radin. And on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past present and future of art and technology. 

Well friends happy 2022 I hope your year is off to a great start. Today on the show we're sitting down with the founder of a gallery that has really been cultivating and nurturing the careers of some very important time-based media artists. 

[00:00:26] Bridget: I am Bridget Donahue and I run an art gallery on the Bowery in downtown Manhattan. 

[00:00:32] Ben: I'm so excited to share this chat with you this week as it is the small or medium-sized galleries, like Bridget's that are just so crucial in the broader art world ecosystem. If you want to know what artists everyone's going to be talking about in a few years, it's really often the middle-market galleries, like Bridget's that shape the conversation and blaze the trail for the larger galleries and museums. We'll get an inside glimpse into the immense amount of work that Bridget puts into giving her artists a platform, resources and stewarding them and their careers through the somewhat unpredictable and unforgiving art market. Now if you haven't already listened to my interview with Lynn Hershman Leeson on episode two of the show, it's not exactly a prerequisite, but a highly recommended pairing as in today's chat with Bridget Lynn's name and work will come up several times. 

Before we get started though, just a quick reminder, that Art and Obsolescence is listener supported. I rely on listeners like you in order to support artists that come on the show. It seems like there's about four or 500 or so of us that hang out here every week. So if everyone pitched in $10, that would be immensely impactful. So if you are in a place to help out, I would deeply appreciate it. You can make your tax deductible donation to the show at artandobsolescence.com/donate, where you'll be redirected to the New York Foundation for the Arts who handles all the money stuff for us. Thanks as always for considering friends. I deeply appreciate it. And now let's dive into this week's conversation with Bridget Donahue. 

[00:02:00] Bridget: I grew up in Iowa city, Iowa, which is a college town in the Midwest. I find many college towns are sort of their own context, you know, so I would go on to meet other people from Iowa, but if you weren't from a college town in Iowa, it's a real different experience politically and socially, I think. And so I feel pretty lucky to have been in a really diverse, active, youthful ever-changing community that responded to a lot of, you know, the academic schedule or priorities of the town. Cause that was sort of the way that most people made a living. Although my parents who I'm like fifth generation Iowan, they were not directly involved with the university. So whereas a lot of my friends, family were you know, and I would Babysit for people the university, or that would be the customers of, you know, certain jobs, high school jobs. Looking back on it I have a very strong memory of visiting the University of Iowa art museum, various times, you know, as a kid, the prized piece, there was always the Jackson Pollock painting that was in the news years ago when, you know, Iowa flooded, they wanted to maybe sell that to just make money back and people I think fought against it and they won. But another video that's wild to think about was Semiotics of the Kitchen by Martha Rosler and seeing just this black and white, she's like dressed in an apron you know it's this is kind of iconic video work, but that was pretty bold for me as a kid to think. What is art or what art can be in this kind of irreverence and kind of zaniness of that, but also sort of stern, tone too. I didn't see that video and think, yes, this is going to shape my life, but it's just absolutely stuck in there. I didn't understand how big of a you know an artist, Martha Rosler was at the time. 

I studied journalism and anthropology at Boston university. And the story later was that I would just go backpacking and kind of stay in touch with certain friends of mine, a couple who were doing the Fulbright scholarship. So I was kind of investigating and exploring that. And while doing that focusing kind of an undergrad, paper I'd written on the tailoring industry in Dakar Senegal, which is where I studied abroad, I sort of had this textile focus. I was trying to conjure a Fulbright application and in so doing found a one-year master's program in England called textile culture. And that just put me in an art school for a year. And of course I didn't really understand I was going to art school. I kind of submitted all these. Writing examples from undergrad, knowing that I just wanted to bring a more artistic kind of context at that point. You know, if you were an anthropology underground, your future would be, um, maybe, you know, becoming an anthropologist where I thought maybe I would just go back into teaching or I'd be able to work at an institution that, um, collected textiles or, you know, I was kind of didn't know, and that.

My application, I guess, was well received by the woman who ran the program, who her background was in world arts. So she was more of a social scientist and she kind of worked with me through these ideas. I really learned about contemporary art because her project was to sort of show us how textiles are really sort of from the Dawn of, you know, humans turning fibers into stuffs into a contemporary art context and how they import all this kind of ancient meaning. So it was in that school where I learned about some of my favorite artists today, like Rosemarie Trockel or Alighiero e Boetti, and Thomas Hirshhorn. When I would move to New York in 2006 a friend of mine kind of set me up with a job at a clothing store in Brooklyn and I was looking for jobs. I think honestly, I think monster.com still existed, and , you know, various Craigslist posts, I did an internship at a shoe archive, and then I would find a job as an archivist at Gladstone gallery through NYFA and sort of ended up getting to work at a big blue chip Chelsea gallery, through kind of sliding in as an archivist. At that time, I was 26 years old, so I was a bit probably older than other entry level applicants and I sort of just expressed my love for those certain artists I mentioned before, which, I think, charmed them because of course bigger stars of the day were like Sharina Shaw and Matthew Barney, Richard Prince. And so then I was working as the archivist there and became a total sponge and would read every magazine. So my art education is largely through like Frieze magazine Artforum magazine, just reading them cover to cover. And then soon becoming a total expert, you know, compared to a lot of my colleagues on everything that was happening now because who reads every single page of Artforum cover to cover, you know, not too many people. So then I really knew all the galleries and all the artists and what was happening sort of now.

And I was very content to maybe do that forever. Of course there's a cap for a salary of a gallery archivist, you know, that that position really is worth. And then I would learn that the way to sort of move up in the world would be to be working with sales or the outside world more. So as much as I tried to stay kind of in that role, Barbara Gladstone then she added the 21st street gallery. She added a gallery in Brussels. She hired a bunch of new sales directors, you know, sort of on top of me, just about the hierarchy and I thought, okay, I could have definitely hedged my own row I'm sure. But I found it too exciting to then kind of jump over to a younger artist list and get more involved with emerging art, which was the big term back then. From 2006 to 2008, of course there was this huge boom, a lot of the hedge fund guys, you know, were buying art and art became another kind of huge boom moment for investments and people that didn't really know much about art were spending a lot of money on art and at a gallery like Gladstone it was bananas how much action was happening there and it was very impressive and I think that meant the education was really kind of fast and furious. On all sides of that and it was a little overwhelming too, because it felt so out of, you know, this stratosphere of just the money being spent.

There were other incredible experiences, you know, on the other side of the same coin. So for example, an artist like Richard Prince, we would see huge interest in so many bodies of work that hadn't been seen or hadn't been appreciated when they first were had come out in the eighties and nineties. And at the same time, Nancy Spector and Katherine Brinson, were preparing a major career survey of his show. And so I got to work pretty closely with Katherine Brinson on that show, preparing the catalog raisonné and really sort of educating myself on this kind of granular level of the work of Richard Prince. And so that was like an invaluable experience that I, you know, treasure from that time. And then of course, Making a really great friendship in that with Katherine and sort of being at a similar age and she had been working longer in the art world than I had, but that's been a really exciting to, to think about my peer group, from those early days seeing so many of them advance in their lanes as well. 

[00:09:16] Ben: Do you think that those early experiences in, especially, you know, entering the gallery world as an archivist, did that play a role in kind of, I don't know if you feel this way, but it seems like, in a lot of the work that you do, you kind of like bring things to the surface for folks. Do you think that has anything to do with those early experiences? Like, you know, you are pretty responsible for the resurgence in the interest in Lynn's work, for example.

[00:09:41] Bridget: Maybe I think it that's really generous. I think the bigger, story behind Lynn is one that she would say the same, which is connecting her with a younger audience. And I think I have a total deep passion that I wish I could shake sometimes is to the first person I want to impress is like a young art student or you know, someone who is so, kind of raw in their own opinions and feelings and tells you what they really think is interesting or not. And if you can connect with somebody that is looking at art for all of those reasons, I think it just buoys the whole experience. And so Lynn jokes that she just had to wait for her audience to be born, decades later. And I find that's true. I mean, I find it a lot of the curators that would have been receiving her work, you know, gallery exhibitions or museum exhibitions, those of them that, you know, really well Ben, that would, champion her as a pioneer of new media and somebody always working and experimenting with new technology, those curators, of course, she's on the map and known and appreciated. There's a certain other institutional, curatorial kind of, group or trend and shows that weren't so interested in that and probably found a lot of that media clunky or too techie or that didn't make for some kind of graceful sculpture. Whereas now it's absolutely just these other tools or mediums. And so I think the next generations of curators and artists and collectors and viewers alike are just not hung up on certain terms like that. And so I think I sort of came in at the right amount where I could sort of see both, I could sort of see a certain amount of respect she's always had since day one and a level of rigor and seriousness and commitment to what she was doing. And then I could also see by doing studio visits at tons of MFA programs and residency programs, and I ran a storefront gallery in Brooklyn that also had me and my three collaborators there going to studio visits all the time. So, then that was really this other arm I had reaching out, in this other direction, like away from this blue chip Chelsea gallery experience to a lot of people living and working hard in Brooklyn to maintain studios. And all of a sudden I started seeing a real, kind of synergy of what artists were thinking about and talking about, which was in Lynn's work, specifically around like, early science fiction and ideas of cyborg, and then literally our society, you know, humans merging with technology. It's what is in the news every day. And then when I would ask certain people about Lynn, it was pretty clear too, that, you know, people 20 years younger than me, hadn't heard of her and then even my peers that had learned about Lynn's work in video art classes, or even taught her work had never seen certain works, that they really felt they knew through textbooks. So it was great because people were genuinely moved and I think that would be the same experience I had with the next show that I did Susan Cianciolo. It was just about finding a blind spot and just connecting this kind of next generation of people with sort of a, I always like to use this term, like an ancestor they didn't know they had. I always feel like it's like, you meet your aunt. You're a little auntie. And you're just like, wait, I look like her. I'm more like her, you know, just kind of this kindred spirit.

[00:13:03] Ben: There was a little nugget you threw out there that was a surprise to me, the Brooklyn gallery. When did that happen? 

[00:13:08] Bridget: So Cleopatra's, it was at the time, me and a couple other people, my age, a real connector was Anton Kern, who has a gallery now uptown. I had sat next to him at a dinner for Kai Altoff at Gladstone. And he had said, oh, you know, I work with a Bridget who I think you would get along with. So that was the introduction. And then we would kind of keep in touch. I was also friends with a recent Bard CCS grad named Kate McNamara, who we would kind of meet and talk about ideas. So I brought around Kate and Bridget Finn brought around a girl, Erin Somerville, who was working at Andrew Kreps gallery. Another colleague Coleen Grennan, who also had just moved to New York after doing the Royal college curatorial program, we all hatched this plan to do it and we signed a 10 year lease, which was crazy, in Greenpoint, but at that point we thought, well, no harm, no foul. And we had taken over a studio lease of somebody who had a five-year lease. So we took over that and said, can we get a 10 year lease? And we just decided at that moment, let's try and do a 10 year project. And so from 2008 to 2018, we organized non-commercial shows collaboratively. We sold a few things over the years, graciously through artists who were having kind of a good moment but we didn't really use the curatorial platform as like a sales platform. Also because I think we're pretty mindful of our day jobs, which were all in these Chelsea galleries. And so it was from our paychecks where we paid rent together, like an artist would do, you know, to maintain the studio and it kind of became a curatorial studio or a lab. And that project is still online, cleopatras.us. You can see the archive 10 years of projects and a lot of names that you'll know and not know. Actually I'm happy to say too, just in the past couple months, Jacob Proctor, who's a curator we followed for a long time is now working for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art and he's taking the Cleopatra's archive, which is a beautiful, full circle for my archiving career. We're preparing those files, which are pretty, you know, minimal, but, it was an interesting time to work because as another friend pointed out, this was also kind of the dawn of social media and connecting through hashtags and finding other art communities that way. Although it was a very localized project in Greenpoint, on Meserole between Manhattan and Leonard. It's a nail salon now. Cleopatra's the name came from an awning. You could see the sign, I think it was called like Cleopatra's delicatessen or something before. So we inherited the name and a kind of the tradition of that. So that was definitely a huge factor in my current life now. I'd kind of sought out working in closer proximity with artists directly realizing shows. And I guess then looking back on thinking about a creative practice being building a program, which would take me a long time to sort of understand that that's what that could be too. 

We still have our text thread to this day where we ask each other for certain contacts or insights or opinions. It's still that support network that it was. And what was beautiful about it was because there was always this kind of mutual understanding for you know, priorities, people's work coming first and all really relating to that. So as far as relationships it's probably one of the most beautiful kind of like work wife relationships, because everyone really felt for each other could, help in certain areas and more than your peers could at work. It was really, really helpful for that. Also kind of understanding confidentiality and understanding just the climate of those environments. And helping each other navigate through certain positions at those galleries and like then between jobs and moving on from jobs, it's that part is totally like invaluable. It's like a second family.

[00:16:57] Ben: So after Gladstone, there was a gallery that you had started to mention before.

[00:17:02] Bridget: Yeah, D'Amelio Terras gallery, which was owned and operated by Christopher D'Amelio and Lucien Terras for about 16 years I want to say in Chelsea on 22nd street. Kind of an early adopter there and a great group of young artists. And well kind of two generations of artists, half more senior and then half younger. And actually Rachel Uffner was the director there before me. So she had brought in a lot of the younger artists and then the two directors had previously worked for Paula Cooper gallery, and they sort of left, and so the other artists were kind of also interestingly connected to maybe the spirit of Paula Cooper through like minimalism so that was a really rich experience of just kind of having a more public facing role and definitely talking to the artists, doing studio visits, selling art for the first time and going to art fairs. I would be there for another two and a half years. And sadly the kind of demise there came in time with the recession, where it wasn't bad, but it was sort of, we all were kind of operating on slimmer pay, but also with a chance to make more for sales. So honestly it was still the same compensation and the gallery was okay. Looking back on it I think the partnership was maybe dissolving then more than we knew. So I had through another artist who had kind of connected me with the staff at Gavin Brown, namely, the director Corina Durland at the time, I'd spoken to her briefly when I was at Gladstone, about the gallery and when they were looking to expand the staff that didn't happen then years later it did and so I would start working there in 2010, right around the time when he expanded the Greenwich street gallery all the way down to Washington street. So it became that sort of took over the entire Pat LaFrieda meat market and expanded the artists list, which I got to sort of help bring on some people there. And again, thinking this is my career for life. I sort of wanted to work there forever. I think again, it would just sort of end five years later with a little bit of that where do we go from here? Which I think is a real situation with galleries, we're seeing a lot of inventive things happening with partnerships and mergers now, in the art world. But I think it's really hard when there's one sort of principle how to share ideas, directions, profit sharing. It's a pretty unique industry in that way. And you know, like the ego kind of attached to the person that's running it and how, if something feels like that person, I mean, that's why it's been, you know, you've never really seen that many people's galleries continue in their own name, beyond their lifespan, you know? So I'm really curious how that's going to play out in the next decade or so. 

[00:19:50] Ben: I'm curious, you know, Gavin Brown is just, specifically that time period that you were there. It's just a place that I've heard so many people speak glowingly about as something that was kind of special and unique. So I'm curious, what was that for you? What did you get out of being there?

[00:20:06] Bridget: Definitely sort of bold exhibition making I think that was what took me there to those shows for sure. Of course there was always this kind of cool party crowd. I think I didn't fully understand, the cool party crowd as much as, you know, maybe a generation before me did. And then of course, you get to know these people and then understand how and why there was that energy. And I think Gavin really prioritizing that kind of event of like audience meeting the art. And so what that ended up being was often like a great party, but I think that the pure idea under there was, you know, that moment when a show opens and if you get the right people in the room, that is kind of what can change the course of things, meaning the conversation around art and what is interesting and what is important and, shows that were hugely commercially successful and shows that weren't. So finding that balance between things that make money and things that don't and how those two kind of facets really lend themselves to one another. I think to build a really interesting context for things and so everything sort of helps the other I think, you know, of course. That's a really pretty way to tie that up in a bow. I don't think it's that easy for as long as he did it, which is really impressive to me. And I think that's probably what caught that up in the end is you need that pendulum to swing back, to make money for things that don't. And if it doesn't, you're just kind of stuck. But for sure, vision led, I think artist led I mean Gavin himself was an artist and really attaching himself at the hip to whatever artists we were working with and kind of looking forward to that. I'm not as much in that mode. I think I really let the artists lead the conversation. I try to meet them there. So I want to always follow their vision and not really intervene as much as he would be able to do or eager to do. 

[00:21:58] Ben: So when you left there, did you know that you were going out on your own and you were going to start your own gallery or were you just like ready for a change? 

[00:22:05] Bridget: It was more like, oh gosh, what do we do? You know, can I get a raise? Can I do this? And you just kind of meet, I think, in every job, sort of a moment where you hit the curb, you hit some sort of barrier and in, so doing, I just thought, well, a job is meant to just kind of increase on those terms, you know, and if it can't, then it was up to me. You know, I could either stay there and say, okay, I agree that this works, but if it doesn't, then I probably could use my, you know, 80 hours a week or 60 hours a week, whatever it is somewhere else and just look out for number one. So it was kind of bittersweet because I sorta had to have that tough chat with myself. Like, well, if this is about, you know me just, you know, getting on that capitalist treadmill of making more, doing more, you know, I felt like I was sort of bummed that I had to probably go farm myself out to just make more money or get myself a better deal in the world if I saw my peers doing so. So it was sort of in that kind of bummed out state of mind that my parents said who were entrepreneurs, why don't you just try it? And they couldn't believe that, you know, essentially a gallery is a retail business and its structure, and yet don't buy our inventory. They were like, what? Because of course they were entrepreneurs in their own right. One sold women's clothes and children's clothes, the other one sold medical supplies. And both of those industries, you buy all your inventory and you sell it at a markup, you know? So they couldn't believe that in our world artists give us things without paying them up front. So they said, why don't you just try it, just see how it goes. And so, you know, that was, that was an encouragement where I thought, you know, maybe that is a good idea. Just like, see how it goes and if it really doesn't work. That was so scary, you know, I'd had a job since I was 13 years old. I always had money from a little paycheck. And so the idea of not having a paycheck was horrifying and so scary. And thankfully the end of days at Gavin, you know, I just like a single woman living in you know, a cheap apartment so I'd kind of saved up a little bit and just took the leap and yeah, I guess it worked out. 

[00:24:10] Ben: The moment you had made the decision, you saved up some money and then you were like, okay, let's do this. What were the next steps? Did you just like start looking around for space? 

[00:24:18] Bridget: Yes, exactly. Oh my God. I looked at so many spaces. 

[00:24:21] Ben: I mean it's New York. I can't even imagine. That must've been really hard and you somehow wound up like the perfect space.

[00:24:28] Bridget: I mean, Honestly it was the biggest cheapest space is essentially how it kind of won. I looked at maybe 40 spaces and also because I would not have had any kind of income documentation that showed that I made, you know, 40% or whatever those crazy rules are. I was a really fortunate that Michele Maccarone in the building and sort of called the owner and said, you know, this is a great tenant and sorta co-signed for me, verbally, for the landlord. Michele Maccarone ran a gallery next to Gavin brown called macaroon gallery. Which was an incredible gallery probably 15 years. I want to say, maybe not quite as long as Gavin's 20 some, but she was just someone who had known and worked next to, you know, for five years. And so I think there was enough collegial trust and camaraderie that I'm really grateful to her for helping me kind of secure this space and honestly it was through that and doing those tricks where you borrow money and put it in the account to show people, you know, to get through the gate. That was incredible. And that was a five-year lease on the space. Which, by the way, it felt so far west at the time, I felt really out of reach of the lower east side scene. You know, I kind of felt farther from that. And now I feel lucky because with Tribeca and the ever expansion of Broadway, et cetera, I'm sort of more central geographically.

[00:25:45] Ben: So, I guess now digging into what you're doing at your gallery and your programming and your legacy that you're building there. It's not like, we've been showing digital art for 30 years and that's all we do. It's just contemporary art period. Yet you seem to get some of the most fascinating and brilliant artists working in time-based media and. I guess I'm just curious, like how that came to pass. Thinking about Lynn, thinking about Martine, thinking about Sondra and I'm sure there are others that are less within my wheelhouse that I'm not thinking of. Why is that? Is this something that you've been drawn to, or have they been drawn to you?

[00:26:24] Bridget: I do think it took me a long time to think I maybe have some sort of interest in these kind of inter-genre artists. And just that being kind of a space for you know, kind of avant-garde practice, like really the newest of the new. And they really kind of stand out on their own, as far as the way that they work in present media. That could also be, you know, clothing and fashion and textile, and the other programs. And I sort of at one point thought, oh, they're all such a world builders. You sort of fall into these worlds that they have and that, that almost always felt to be led by a narrative somebody that was writing a script for a film, like a total immersive sort of Headspace that you can get into pretty quickly. So it absolutely wasn't through the hardware, media technology that my interests came in. It was more of the storytelling, I think, behind those and whatever means necessary. And of course with a lot of the artists, those decisions of media and technology are very meaningful. And I think in a career way, I had been working with Francis Stark at Gavin Brown's Enterprise. And that was a really poignant experience for me on many levels and working with her, past her archive at that point, when we began working with a lot of paper in like collage, a little bit of painting and kind of constructing these images, but then at some point during the, kind of early days of things like chat roulette, and that was around the time she was working naturally in her studio and just actually kind of having a fun forray of like flirting within those Chatroulette programs and kind of online interfaces, but then also in meaningful ways, saving some of the text exchanges, you know, talking to just guys around the world about what her job is, and then she would kind of save that and then make these video animations.

Most importantly those videos debuted at the Venice Biennale and totally began this practice where she kind of turned a lot of her lectures into PowerPoints that were just really beautifully edited. And so seeing someone who, I argue any of artists are the exact same, who would have an approach to art-making and then just see that through any of these other medias, if it's technology that's at our hand, because we are in fact, faddishly all on chat roulette, or faddishly on Instagram or whatever it is, if that becomes the kind of portal, the message has always sort of stayed the same and, or evolved like any other artist, writer, musician would, you know, so in a way, this really amazing craft of storytelling, or writing it was involving in time with available media. Lynn would argue that's what she always did from day one. She wasn't ahead of her time. All of the technology she was using was available, she was just maybe using it or bringing into the gallery or bringing it into image-making or storytelling, maybe first in the gallery, but certainly, these things are available in society. So anyways, that was a nice experience to think, working with Francis through that time and then sort of seeing an identifying practices like other artists at Gavin Brown's Enterprises, like Jonathan Horowitz, Mark Leckey, at those moments that had been, you know, it wasn't really a studio practice per se. There was a lot of conceptualizing and then producing, or fabricating certain scenarios or setups of video and performance and prints. So just learning that a studio practice doesn't have to look the same and yet just being moved by the message or the sort of core essay that someone is working on and seeing that realized in a gallery didn't feel so strange to me, but I think in a certain couple of those instances, like Martine Syms it was really like the first kind of four walled solo show commercial gallery presentation. She had shows before in different contexts, within a university galleries, she was in the triennial before that, but in the education section, you know, so a little bit just off the white cube of the gallery. I mean she was a total known quantity and many curators were excited to see that show happen, but that really, I think sort of lit the gas, you know, to like what would follow as far as a real gallery career. Also just really being kind of obsessed with contributing something that I didn't see somewhere else. And so I think when the gallery opened in 2015, you know it was off a few years of me really knowing the landscape and really seeing everything that was on all the time. And one of the sort of hardships of having my own project is you have to, at some point, you know, your blinders go up a little bit on what's going on so that you can focus and do the best job for your projects that you're working on. So. There was a bit of growing pains of not, you know, realizing that at some point, I don't know everything that's going on. I haven't seen all shows, which I used to feel like I really did. But that was very important in the foundation because I think those first years of the gallery were like, you know, people hadn't seen stuff like that. So it was exciting for a lot of people to see early shows by those artists or their first show, not to say the artist first show, but you know, the audience that we had kind of brought here, it was a lot of really electric introductions, or like I said, finding these blind spots of people that knew Susan Cianciolo's, kind of start in the New York in the nineties. Then the next generation wasn't maybe either born yet or again, or wasn't around. 

[00:31:46] Ben: It's interesting you bring that up again, this idea of audience you know, you were speaking to like, when you were answering the question of, what was it that was special about Gavin Brown and you were basically like bold exhibitions, good parties. 

[00:31:56] Bridget: Yeah! 

[00:31:57] Ben: And you're bringing up this idea of bringing the audience to the art again and, it's funny, like that is something that I remember distinctly about your first show with Lynn. I remember showing up and I was flabbergasted at the audience. It was packed and it was a really hip, cool audience and you know, I'm a nerd, I knew Lynn's work really well, and I was used to seeing it in textbooks and, you know, obviously it's a gallery opening so you're expecting a certain crowd, but, it was a party and that was so wild for me to see. 

[00:32:30] Bridget: Well, that I think was the culmination too, of, you know, at that time, maybe like 15 years of working in the art world. So that's just the sort of collegial gift economy of knowing that many people and them showing up for you when you ask them to, you know, cause you'd been showing up for a lot of stuff they had been doing over the years and it was really the first kind of step on my own. Just imagine all those years of working in galleries, those decades of coworkers that were younger than me and students and studio visits and grad schools, I had gone to, you know, it was really that all led to that in a really wild way. And just, I think at that time, the lower east side gallery expansion, you know, everything was exciting. You know we were out more, just a lot of things were packed in those days compared to our lives now. But yeah, it was really just awesome and overwhelming. And I think back cause to think about my head space during that time, you know, people will show me pictures. It was just like shoulder to shoulder wall to wall. And it was also the coldest night of the year. Like it was record breaking cold temperature, if you can remember that part. So I think also people didn't want to go outside, you know, then we didn't have the like flow through they were like, oh my God, I'm in a warm, cozy place. But my inner thought was just so nervous. Like, is it good enough? You know, cause I'd always worked in such really nice big spaces, you know? So I think that was another thing I really brought a kind of unwittingly, like a pressure that the walls have to be perfect and certain things have to be really clean and proper, you know, which I'm really envious of a lot of my friends who are like, that's not important, this, that, or the other, you know, like a little bit more of a scrappiness, but I put a lot of that pressure on myself but that was really fun and overwhelmingly supportive. Yeah. I felt really well supported and proud and yeah it was cool. 

[00:34:14] Ben: As a gallery owner that shows all kinds of stuff, you know, you show painting, you show textiles, you show installation, art, you show video art, you show software based art, kind of all of the above. Working with such challenging time-based media has that changed your approach to things at all? Has that influenced your practice?

[00:34:36] Bridget: I mean, sometimes I think, wow, life would be easier if I had less of that. There are so many moments for things to go wrong or bad, and I just look at some peers where I'm like, oh my God, really? Like you know, the old classic example: a painting, you know, you just hang it on the wall, your wrap it up and you send it and the work that we all do as you know, I mean, this is why one of the reasons why we really formalized our relationship is because I need more support on all those things that can continue to come up with these files, and when they come back to me, I don't know the answers to a lot of things. And I think a good part of my background was treating these kinds of media support in the same way that I'd be like, I know I'm not a framer, I'm not an art handler, you know, I'm not a graphic designer. I do do a lot of tasks, you know, like I'm kind of a Jack of all trades, but when it comes to certain trades within the art or the gallery like I want to 100% respect a framer's guidance, view. A graphic designer is the same a media professional. I sort of want that person professionally in my realm and it can't always go back to the artists too much, either. So that's what we try and kind of ultimately help to protect is that some of these issues aren't going back to the artists and I learned so much of that from Lynn, you know, really establishing early on sort of a plug-and-play dream reality, where you provide for someone a kit. Or even Jesse Reeves, someone who was working with kind of functional furniture. She often had said in the beginning, you know, if you rip a hole in your sofa, you don't take it back to the person who designed that couch. You take it to an upholster and they help you repair that. You know? So thinking on those terms, the artist makes the artwork and then they kind of pass the baton to me and then I need to sort of pass that baton onto a collector or an institution and make sure all the people are in the right place and we've answered these questionnaires that this thing can be tended to, you know, if anything happens to the artist or myself as the intermediary. So I just try and keep a really formal relationship to those terms. Like I said, with framing or, you know, documentation of artwork and you know, treat it like that and try not get too bogged down in the technology. And my artists don't either, you know, it's really about the storytelling of what that art is doing. And so I just preserve that. I think that's why you leave yourself a bit ignorant on some terms, I think, because it preserves the other way that, you know, you treat it like anything else, which I think is the goal for the artists making it you know?

[00:36:54] Ben: I think just by virtue of telling your story you've painted such a rich picture of the cultivation that you do, as somebody that runs a gallery, but you could summarize it, like in your own words, what is the job of a gallery in working with an artist?

[00:37:09] Bridget: Really it's a lot, it's not very glamorous most of the time and I think it's really a direct line of why is the artists making this? What do they need to help do that? A lot of times for the best art, it's very little what they need, in my opinion, because there's some kind of well honed idea and they are kind of a master of certain things. Or when they do need help, it's like I said, these kind of straightforward fabrication things, printing, mounting, framing, stuff like that, that I think a gallery would lend to sort of bring an idea towards a presentation within a gallery. So I always think of being that bridge between artists kind of impulse and presentation. And lending one's expertise to talking about pricing, certain things and editioning and how things would, you know, compare on the marketplace. So lending my knowledge of everything else that I know that's is going. I really just see myself as an advocate for their work, trying to constantly bring and build a context for them and introduce them to curators who I know to be working in those fields. Of course, after a while you just try and create a dynamic program, so that active curators or collectors in the world are tuned in to what you're doing by being at certain expositions that you make through fairs, museum shows having your name around. So all of this, right? It's just building and lending context and this kind of ever ending like whirlpool. I also sometimes think of the job, like a publisher and any of us can publish our own thoughts and ideas and now we have so many tools to do that. But I think there is something that other people look for in an intermediary, maybe a trusted source as someone that is co-signing on this kind of artist practice is saying like, you know, I've seen a lot in my day and I think this is good or interesting based on these terms of, I don't know, dependability, reliability of ideas, kind of, a mature voice or approach to these made objects or presentations in the world. And so a kind of professionalism is maybe more assumed in those places. Even if it's just someone that's holding the artist's hand to help make sure that we get across the finish line together. So certain things like that, that I think, yeah, more and more in this kind of kiosk style interfaces, we're doing a lot, no matter if we're shopping at the grocery store for what we know, we're kind of left alone on our own with, to, in technology to kind of get the job done. And sometimes I just prefer to go with the clerk over there or to work with you know a sales person or a professional that, you know, just like I said, leaning on other people's experience. 

[00:39:39] Ben: As somebody who's been working in the gallery world for as long as you have, and you've been doing your own thing and you've really helped cultivate and really nourish the careers of so many artists and especially artists working in time-based media. Is there any advice that you would have for artists listening to the podcast?

[00:39:58] Bridget: Just keep going. I always think the easiest thing for people to do is quit and that is very attractive to a lot of people. I mean, myself included, you know, so I think that the thing that I feel like I've really connected with other practices and admire, is just people that continue to do what they're doing as, you know, trends around them change. Just really you know, proverbially, closing one's eyes and listening to your gut. There's kinda some mission you're on there and just sticking with that. Like a lot of flattering things you're saying to me, you know, that's probably the result of me learning from my artists to just kind of keep going with what your gut is telling you. And not getting too hung up on what you need to get something done. I mean, that can be a huge mental block. I think the biggest mental blocks are in our own minds, and sometimes we use things like, oh, if I had more money, if I had more of this and it's just finding ways to continue to do that and then you can meet whomever, you know, you sit down to whether that's a curator or another artist and you want to do something together. You know, self-organizing is such a great way and more and more, we're getting encouraged to do that in total isolation, but kind of getting together with people and using that to just still create togetherness. I think that is so encouraging. Like what I said about the opening, you do that, and then those kinds of webs just connect more people and that is really like towards this goal that we're all trying to do, which is share the message and connect with other people. And so I think, yeah, connecting with people, staying focused, listening to that thing in your gut, that'd be my tips.

[00:41:27] Ben: That's that's a really, really solid advice. Bridget Donahue, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate hearing your story.

[00:41:35] Bridget: Thank you, Ben. 

[00:41:36] Ben: And thank you, dear listener for joining us for this week's conversation. If you liked what you heard today, I hope you'll consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. It really does help other people discover the show. And if you want to keep the conversation going, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram @artobsolescence. Thanks again so much for joining me this week, friends. My name is Ben Fino-Radin and this has been Art and Obsolescence.