Episode 023: Farris Wahbeh

 

Show Notes

This week on the show we take our first foray into an incredibly important pillar of the long term care of art: how we document, catalog, and care for archives. Our guest Farris Wahbeh is the Benjamin and Irma Weiss Director of Research Resources at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Farris’ role is quite unique in the sense that he oversees and serves as a central hub for all of the various teams that manage information at the Whitney: the archives, library, collections documentation – it is a rather unique and interdisciplinary role for a museum. In our chat we’ll explore Farris’ decades of experience working in incredibly interesting art archives, and how the Whitney integrates archives and documentation into their care of their collection of over 800 highly complex time-based media artworks.

Links from the conversation with Farris
> The Whitney Museum of American Art: https://whitney.org
> David Tudor's archives at the Getty: https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/guides_bibliographies/david_tudor/index.html
> The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art: https://www.art.org/

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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. 

Welcome back everyone, this week on the show, we have a bit of a first. So far, we've really only spoken to artists, art, collectors, curators, and conservators, but in the longterm stewardship of art, especially with art that uses technology, documentation and the material that lives within archives is crucial and how it works of art art cataloged, what gets written about them, both for the public and also in the databases of museums and collections, all of this not only frames, how the artwork is perceived and experienced, but can also influence how the work will be cared for by conservators in the future and how it might shift and change and evolve over time. So on today's show, we're talking to somebody who plays a huge role in shaping how the Whitney museum in particular creates this kind of documentation. 

[00:00:59] Farris: My name is Farris Wahbeh and my job title is Benjamin and Irma Weiss Director of Research Resources. 

[00:01:06] Ben: Farris' role at the Whitney is very unique. Oftentimes at a large museum, you'll have maybe a central team that oversees databases and systems from a tech standpoint. But then all of the various people across the museum that use these systems are sort of in silos doing their own thing. Archives libraries, curatorial, conservation, registrars, et cetera. At the Whitney Farris sits sort of in between these overseeing the library, the archives, the special collections, visual resources and the collections documentation. I know we're getting super in the weeds here already, but as you'll hear this has given the Whitney the unique ability to do some pretty cool stuff when it comes to the care for time-based media in their collection.

Before we get any further though, I wanted to remind you all that now is a very good time to support the show and our mission to equitably compensate artists that come on the show. As currently we have a matching offer from a very generous donor, the Bates-Gosset Family Fund. So any donations that you make right now artandobsolescence.com/donate will be matched. Thank you so much to everyone that generously contributed last week. I am talking to you: Florian, Lisa, Mark, Molly, Marius, and Deena thank you all so much for your generosity. I deeply appreciate your support. And just so you all know I'm putting in the legwork right now to find a major funder so that I can stop bothering you all with fundraising, but in meantime, any sport helps. And if you're not in a place to donate sharing the show with a friend or on social media is also very, very impactful. Now without further delay, let's dive into this week's conversation with Ferris Wahbeh. 

[00:02:40] Farris: With art, for me, it's always tied in with art history I was always fascinated by history and history books and so once I understood there was a discipline called art history, it really kind of shifted my mind cause you can really start understanding culture and society in a way that's totally based on material culture, which I found fascinating. That's what I knew I just really wanted to do art history. I just took the class and I was like, okay, this is I'm in it. Absorbed all of the classic Renaissance, Byzantine staff, and decided to really focus on Byzantine art and Renaissance art. And then I minored in Italian and I got really into a lot of Italian things, but I really then got into this weird notion of like how art is represented, so I really started looking at, representations of medieval and Renaissance art in the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini cause it was interesting to see how he transposed that period of art into film and how he would translate that into cinema for me. At that time I was in LA, I got my undergrad at UCLA. The Getty was building its building up on the hill in Brentwood. J. Paul was not really into modern and contemporary art. He collected antiquities and Renaissance and I think the latest things he bought was like Rococo, but there was a period in the nineties where they started really having a interest in a push for acquiring modern and contemporary materials and materials that were really important, but really buttressed, a lot of like scholarly thinking on know, what they could collect. I learned everything about archives really just hands-on working on material there in particular, the David Tudor archives that they acquired at that point. So I actually went through the collection to sort of, sort it out and get some sort of understanding of the materials. And so I learned a lot of archival processing and understanding like that at the Getty working on that David Tudor was one of those figures that worked in the sort of intersections of a lot of things, like from avant-garde music in his early career as he premiered a lot of material, I think Morton Feldman and Stockhausen and then he became friends with John Cage and got involved into electronics. He did a lot of electronic scores, and then he started doing a lot of the Cunningham soundscapes and then he did like this Pepsi pavilion in Japan that was really kooky and great with a lot of Fluxus people, he was a part of EAT as well. So he was kind of one of those players that kind of did a lot of great work, but isn't, as well known. It was interesting, but MoMA reopened their doors, I think two or three years ago now they acquired a lot of the Rainforest sound sculptures, which I thought was really nice to see in person. So it was like, you would sift through a lot of this really great stuff. Some of it was great correspondence mixed with ConEd bills so you know, you had to wade through and it was really kind of lovely that way. Cause you get to know a person really well and understand what processing archival materials of that nature can be and look like really. It was like my first deep exposure to that world. I had heard about Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and Merce Cunningham and that whole circle, but like not into the level that I went into with this collection, especially through the lens of David Tudor who was a particular individual, his background was music. You know, he was a performer too. One of my favorite David Tudor works that I always wanted to like have recreated. he did a work called Bandoneon and he played the Bandoneon equipped with all these electronic elements and it would create all these different noises in a room. 

As a side note, I do play the accordion. It was interesting cause my teacher in LA, you know, she moved there like in the thirties from Kansas and her and her husband started this accordion symphony. Which I was a part of for a little bit, but all the entire symphony were accordions and you would transposed different musical pieces to the accordion. Cause the accordion is a wind instrument and you can make so many different noises and really modulate through the reeds different noises. So you can go from a Piccolo to an oboe through an accordion. So they would like really write these symphonies for the accordion and it was quite beautiful actually. And so they would do Pizzolatto pieces in this like really 360 immersive accordion sound. But yeah, so, and really thinking about Electronics and music and even physicality of spaces and, you know, especially with David tutor, who would do these really cool environmental installations with sound and sculpture, and then of course with Cunningham movement and body and performance, but it was really, I got to learn not only archival processing, but also the, sort of nuances of complex sort of installation understanding that sort of at the, documentation level, which was really fascinating to me to see sort of like how these things functioned through David Tudor's records and archives and it was really amazing to me cause you get to see like really all these things coalescing together, but how important, sketches are and like, notations and how things that are seemingly, spontaneous, which sometimes they are, but in some cases really designed in a way to afford spontaneity, which is kind of interesting too, to think about in terms of how that can be structured. It felt like tangible, it felt like something that I could really wrap my head around especially in the arts, because, when you think about the arts, it's something that you could really put your mind on and really be like, oh, so we can describe things this way and make it accessible that way. So it really felt like a tangible way of enjoying art. So it was really fascinating to get that sort of glimpse behind that world of EAT and Cunningham and John Cage and David Tudor. 

 At that moment in time, it never crossed my mind to get a library and archives degree. I don't know why in retrospect, because UCLA has a really great library school, school of information, but I don't know. I think because the archive world was different back in the nineties. It wasn't as professionalized as it is now. I could be totally just speaking out of turn, I was very young and my perspective then was, it was a lot of historians who took on sort of archival roles and positions because you needed the sort of art historical background. Which is interesting because when you're working with archival collections, close to art, it is helpful to have that. But I got my master's degree in art history. Um, but I still kind of always wanted to work with Art and archival collections. I went to grad school in Chicago, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and so there was a lot of nonprofit arts organizations who were starting to create collections. That's how I started working in that area working with really great material. So, I was at Intuit, the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art and they had acquired Henry Darger's sort of home because they were in the process of selling that building. And so Intuit came in and basically did this amazing job of diagramming the whole room and taking it down and cataloging it. And so working on Darger's materials was really interesting. You know, Chicago is a great place. I love it there's a lot of really great gems, in Chicago. 

[00:10:14] Ben: So what was it that eventually led you to New York?

[00:10:18] Farris: I had taken a project archivist position at Columbia University at the rare book and manuscript library working on the collection of the art historian Meyer Shapiro. And he was, one of the first art historians to graduate from Columbia. He was a great great art historian who really, in fact, it's funny because Meyer Shapiro really worked on Romanesque architecture and art was what he got his degree in, but he really started advocating contemporary artists of his generation. Ad Reinhardt was a student and he was a teacher to a lot of great people. Like, you know, He was friends with Mark Rothko, Allan Kaprow was one of his students. Alan Ginsberg and the whole beat generation took classes with him, Helen Frankenthaler, I mean, it goes on and on and on. He was really well revered and well-liked art historian because he kind of bridged medieval studies and was an advocate of contemporary art. And he did a really important show in the fifties with Clement Greenberg. And he was an artist himself, which is interesting, so that archival collection had not only his personal papers, whether it was him as a professor, but also a lot of correspondence with a lot of great people. He was friends with a lot of philosophers, like Adorno and Walter Benyamin, he was good friends with and they were corresponding and seeing those letters just blew my mind. And even Frida Kahlo asked him to write a recommendation for her Guggenheim grant application. He was Marxist at the time and he was in that Marxist sort of leftist circle in the village. And his home was like, Right there. So he was an interesting character. And so there was a lot of great material there and, he traveled to Europe before the war and photographed it there and went all over Europe. But you know, his collection stemmed from those photographs, just correspondence to his own artworks. I mean, he was a practicing artist and he showed his work at the Wallach Gallery in Columbia, I think in the eighties. I had read Myers Shapiro's essay on the shoes of Van Gogh and there was that famous tête-à-tête with him and Heidegger. You know So it was interesting. it was a great collection, and again, a lot of it was his own artworks too. 

[00:12:35] Ben: When you process these collections, did you get to really absorb and spend time with the material?

[00:12:41] Farris: Yeah. I mean, you get to know it very intimately. I mean, not only just in terms of the physical material, but you get to see how they put things in a filing cabinet or in a box, which is very telling in terms of personalities and that's where this whole like provenance of an original order in archival theory is that's why I learned it firsthand what that means, you know, because it's like you open like filing cabinets and, before you do anything, you have to do an environmental scan and you, you get to know a person intimately that way and you start seeing rhythms and patterns in terms of how an entity goes about organizing their life, and it's fascinating because as you go through the physical materials, you start finding patterns and you start seeing things and each collection is so different, but once you start going through it, you see these, you see a rhythm and you start getting, you start get getting into it. It's kind of like an archeology. Really. You start seeing sort of strata as you're sort of uncovering things. And you're like, oh, I bet this would be over here. And if you're right, you're like, oh, I'm seeing a pattern. If now you're like, well, where would this, how would this be organized? It's really fun. It's like a lot of like sleuthing, and that's why I love actually processing collections. Cause you, you get to, go through it and see what's happening here. If I can try and to create a understanding of what that is 

[00:14:03] Ben: Wow. That's incredible. Present day you're at the Whitney, and when you were explaining your position it sounds like, it's very interdisciplinary. It sounds like you collaborate with a lot of different departments. But I'm curious, what does your team look like?

[00:14:18] Farris: My department is made up of librarian, archivist, permanent collection documentation manager, a visual resources manager. Each area has their own sort of identity. I have actually co managed and led a media preservation project, the Media Preservation Initiative. So that project team, is a project manager, a researcher, a preservation specialist who works specifically on time-based media. It's a group of people who bring great perspectives to the roles. And it's interesting because the way, librarians catalog something is different than how an archivist would do it and there's a lot of great conversation about that, and I think it's not only a thought exercise, but it really makes you think about what are the categories of description for a thing which can have so many different perspectives. Cause one certain work can be described and categorized and cataloged in totally different ways. The team is made up of information professionals with backgrounds in library and archives, but also art history, 

I half report to conservation, the other half is with exhibition collections management. So, I work with conservators quite frequently, in different ways. One of them is I sit on the replication committee that Carol Mancusi-Ungaro headed, she's the head of conservation, who I half report to. So we have a lot of conversations about replication in different ways and exhibition copies and so I sit in that committee and we talk a lot about how to catalog this thing or descriptive practices for medium lines. When we went through a process of cataloging our permanent collection, with the conservators, we went about what are the preferred terms for certain things in a medium line? We talk about, descriptive practices for the work that they do, which has a lot of meaning in terms of how that data lives in the database and how it's conveyed. For us, it's always a matter of being as clear and concise in our, descriptive practices for a wall label for instance, so, we use synthetic polymer for a very long time, which is another word for acrylic. Right? But more people understand acrylic over synthetic polymer so why don't we just use acrylic? So we do have a lot of these discussions about, what vocabulary should reuse that are consistent are accurate as we can possibly be. But also that convey information in ways that really make it understandable for not only conservators and information professionals, but also the public. So, it's a process of really understanding what are we discussing at hand you, right? If you look at a sculpture, what are its composite parts? What is it made of? It can be very complex, but how do we describe this? Do we list everything that's part of the sculpture or is there materials that you can't see are not meant to be shown where we wouldn't put that in the medium line, but it would go into another area of the database like a conservation report. So it's really understanding the levels of cataloging and knowledge management in that regard, because there's so many different layers to it. And there's so many different descriptive practices that you can use for something, but it has to have a function, function in the sense like who is the intended audience for this particular source of information, is it the public then maybe it doesn't need to be as intensely specific because a conservator needs that information more than the public does. You know, at the Whitney it's interesting because as part of the collection documentation office, we do the descriptive standards for the entire collection. So we're not, segmented off like other institutions where it's like the painting and sculpture department has this prints and drawings has that film and video has that it's kind of a centralized approach. We're able to cut across all these different mediums and start seeing patterns and seeing sort of, what's going on. So that allowed us to really think about how to provide descriptive practices in a way that helps understand the collection across different categories. 

We had a major project to catalog and do conservation assessments and photograph and rehouse our collection. And we took it as an opportunity to create those standards, we call them internally the content standard elements set so we went through each field within our collection management system, which is TMS. And we went through each field, define the field, mapped it to different standards externally and so we had a definition for it. We had descriptions of what not to put in that field and where you should put that information. If you want to put that there to like examples of that to syntax, how it should be structured. So a lot of our data points within our collections management system are really defined which is really important because before that our database was not very reliable in that regard because people were using fields differently and without consistency, so sometimes information was in one field or not the other. That's, what's so important about collections information is defining it so that you know how it's used and who it's used for and by whom so that way you can really get a better sense of the collection and how it's represented. 

We put off time-based media from that initial project cause we know it required a totally different sort of process because of the complexity of time-based media. And we just weren't equipped at that time to really kind of wrap our heads around it because we were going through that major project. So we knew that time-based media would be, the next chapter. Our collection of time based media and digital media is large I mean, we have over 800 works of art that fit in that category. Some are, single channel videos and other really complex installation. So, you know, really understanding what would be the needs for that. Obviously, we had learned a lot from that previous project but we also had a lot of other questions about like, okay, what does that mean then if we start putting digital files onto our servers. So starting in 2014, 2014-2015, we brought together a cross departmental group, which included registrars, conservators, IT, AV and myself and Research Resources to really think about what this would look like. 

We wanted to quality control the files, so we would move them from what was delivered to us over to the server and really start doing, condition assessments and doing a lot of the research on, is this an installation or how is it supposed to be exhibited? We would run uh, some programs on it to get all the file specs to get the checksums, which is that digital sort of fingerprint of a file to see if it was Okay. So it was a very manual process. I have to say too. Contemporary artists are also doing digital files for all different types of things. So it's not just time-based media. It could be, a sculpture that has digital files with it, or a print that has a digital file with it so we were getting a lot of it. It was increasing really a lot and it's very, time-consuming when you do it manually like that. And you know, we didn't have any of the sort of digital processes that could help that workflow. So we knew that that was going to be a part of the project is how can we better leverage digital technologies to help us with these works of art that are coming to us digitally, obviously in our collection, we have film reels and videotape as well and that was a part of it too, was really getting a sense of what physical components do we have, whether it's, again, an analog 16 millimeter print, all the way to, a digital file that comes in a flash drive because sometimes they're delivering in flash drives. So it was that whole thing and trying to really get a sense of it.

 It was a big project, honestly, and so we went through that process for a year and a half, I want to say. And it was a big learning process. The project lasted three years. We set up a system in which we have a preservation application called Archivematica that helps us do all the like necessary steps for ingesting digital files. So that was one way of really getting a handle, but also preserving at the same time and really getting a sense of are these files in good condition. Are they healthy? While we're also getting physical control again, of the analog materials. We were going to start, you know, sending film out and video, but then the pandemic hit, so we had to stop and so what we did was we were like, okay, well, we can start doing in-house digitization. Right. And so continuing to do things that we can do to keep the project going, again, at the beginning, our project was very ambitious. And while we checked off a lot of the things that we wanted to do, some things we couldn't meet because of the pandemic or the timing. So we did, we did a lot and I think coming from where we were in 2015, it was immensely, incredibly helpful to go through that process and to really get a better sense of all aspects of that collection. 

[00:23:24] Ben: Something that I've seen in my time working with different institutions is when you're first establishing these kinds of protocols, sometimes there can be, surprises, maybe a piece of that was acquired, 40 years ago and it turns out, whoops, we don't actually have it. were there any surprises?

[00:23:44] Farris: Oh, yes. There were a lot of surprises. Certain things like, oh, this is actually not even a film work at all. There was something like, oh, these aren't slides. This is actually something else. So it was interesting cause when you start seeing the physical materiality of these things, you really start to understand them better, like in terms of just what their DNA is and I think really getting under the hood really helps you situate the work so much better. Even in complex works, really understanding not only preservation but documentation, but a lot of our questions? We're like, okay, how do we not install this work rather than how do we do install it? You know? So switching the question around sometimes to help, really think about what this work really needs to be experienced and this is something that we talked through, between Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Chrissie Iles, and Christiane Paul the curators was what is the experience of the work? Like how has it meant to be experienced? And when we started thinking about this experiential aspect of it and how time-based media can change and how is that understood through time? And does that change the way of work is experienced and perceived? So really getting a sense of those qualities of time-based media became part of our discussions, because it was really helpful to really think about it that way. Not only in the terms of the material aspects, you know, the physical components themselves, but also like how do those get parlayed into actual exhibition of the work which is how it's activated, Right? It's not activated on a Umatic tape or 16 millimeter film or a digital file, how it's activated is through how it's installed and experience. So that became part of our mandate as well, is that experiential aspect to these works. That's how we started finding out really fascinating things about works of art that we never really thought of before. You know, at least in my perception for me, it was really eye-opening.

[00:25:42] Ben: Yeah. And I mean, that's just an immense amount of time and effort spent on, any one of those particular artworks that you were working on. And these are in some cases, pieces that live in other collections. I know that what you've been working on lately is related to collaboration between different collections is that kind of what inspired that?

[00:26:02] Farris: Yes, because we knew going into it, obviously from the beginning research and dissemination was a part of the project and sharing it with people who are owners of the same edition or, museums who are borrowing the work or scholars who are looking into the work. A lot of these works are owned by other, collectors and institutions. Whether they're edditioned or co owned with us or distributed sometimes. So, part of it too was like, how can we better understand the ecosystem of this work and really bring people together to think about that? Cause a lot of times when these works are exhibited or borrowed, you know, there's a lot of communication around how do we install this. What if we're proactive and bringing this information together and, for example, if there's 12 people who own the same edition of the work, what if we connect with them and say, hey, we own the same edition of this work and let's talk about sharing our resources. This is what we have, you know, and I think it's a part of understanding the real history of the work itself too, and to really think of its genealogy across time and spaces. And it's really interesting to think of it that way. So as part of the MPI project, we're starting that network now and we're still thinking through a lot of questions in terms of what does this mean and how do we activate it? And what's the sustainability of this. I think for us, it's really getting an understanding of how do people who together are custodians of this work really think of this work through space and time and how it's installed, and if we can really think about together and with the artist. Why don't we engage in that way to share these sort of information points that we've been gathering and thinking about like stewardship of it in a way that really can be sustainable through time. So yeah, I mean, the network is something that we're thinking about and really trying to understand like how to collaborate on this. And it's been really fun because when you have a work that's owned by several people and is installed in different ways I mean, it's great to document that and have it centralized. So it's a resource for people to see and, something as simple as that is super helpful. Cause I know a lot of times that happens really quickly, you know, if you're like, we're installing this next week, how do you do it? So I think we're trying to like, think about a proactive stance on that sometimes maybe the network will get activated at those points when someone needs to install it or how was it shown in the past? Or like, what type of file is, you know, so there's all these different questions and I think it's a work in progress and it's being iterative too. So we're trying to understand, the needs and how we activated in that way. 

[00:28:46] Ben: You know, You've been at the Whitney now for 11 years, which institutionally is like, not that long but that's a good chunk of time and you've changed buildings. I'm curious, what are the most significant ways that you've seen the Whitney change over the years.

[00:29:00] Farris: Once obviously we'd moved to the new building in 2015, that changed a lot. That was a big endeavor and it was, a great sort of experience to be here when that was happening. A lot of the work that was happening in advance of that was really, interesting too, because moving to this building was to spotlight the collection and so that's where a lot of these projects were coming from was we knew that there was going to be an emphasis on the collection itself. Putting the collection online was a big project we did seven years ago, so it's, I think the emphasis on the collection has grown and continues to grow, which is really great, because it's a really wonderful collection. It has some of the coolest things, the weirdest things that you could possibly imagine, and it's just the history of the Whitney's work with artists and with our founder as a sculptor herself. So it's a great collection and there's been more of an emphasis on that, which I think is really great. I think with that is more of an understanding of the needs of the collection and preparing for it. So, you know, with the MPI project, really thinking of the collection storage, like it's not just a brick and mortar storage you have to think about server storage as well. So really expanding the notion of how to think of the collection, but also what is the research involved with that? It's an ongoing process, collections care is really critical and it's always integral to maintain it and to sustain it. And, that I think has been really starting to get more traction and understood in ways that I think is really beneficial once the collection gets used more and it gets more visibility with the new building and, yeah, so that's kind of what I thought I've seen a change in in the past 11 years. 

[00:30:49] Ben: Yeah. So similarly, I'm curious, you know, since your time, way back working on David Tudor's archives how do you think the, information science and archives field has changed over the years? 

[00:31:01] Farris: I think it's gotten very professionalized, since the mid nineties. The archives and information world is starting to understand more the nuances of collecting, describing, and preserving with the digital explosion now, we're getting a perhaps a more nuanced approach to it. We never thought about electronic records, back then. But now it's really important obviously. Right? And I think as technology's developing, I think there's a better understanding of how to approach this. There was a period, you know, in the early two thousands where people were like what I don't know, it's like a big black hole of what do we do? But I think now there's actual procedures and there's applications and there's best practices. There wasn't any of that, like in the late nineties, early two thousands, maybe there were, but it wasn't as accessible as it is now. So I think there's a more nuanced approach to those types of topics, but also it's become much more professionalized there's a lot of programs with archival and museum management. And I think it's become much more there's an emphasis on that. But you know, I think part of it too is really getting that experience, of working with archives and I feel very grateful for my trajectory and what I've done. Those experiences should be available to everybody and I urge everyone to get their hands dirty and work in the funkiest archives that you can possibly find. 

[00:32:28] Ben: So Farris what's coming next for you?

[00:32:30] Farris: I'm continuing to work on the network with the team and really, fleshing that out and working that out. It poses a lot of questions about time-based media in a way that really thinks about, what's that history of time-based media? You know, I mean, in the sixties and seventies, there was a different practice than editioning there was distribution, right? I mean, through Castelli Sonnabend and so seeing that genealogy and that historical sort of matrix there it's interesting to see how tendus media has evolved and how there's that DNA in it now and trying to understand what that means. So I think the continued look into that network, but also how the history of time-based media media has played into how we've gotten to where we are today with that and why networks are necessary. You know, editioning is a relatively new phenomenon for time-based media. So it's interesting. Thinking of historical precedence and the historical genealogists really interesting. So like thinking about documentation practices for time-based media, performance is one I'm looking into a lot what's needed for performance documentation and thinking about other forms of information management at the Whitney, there's never a dull moment. 

[00:33:43] Ben: This was fantastic. Thank you so much, Farris

[00:33:47] Farris: Absolutely.

[00:33:47] Ben: And thank you, dear listener for joining me for this week's conversation with Farris Wahbeh. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider supporting the show by heading on over to artandobsolescence.com/donate, where you can make a tax deductible donation through the New York Foundation for the Arts. If you're not in a place to donate, I hope you'll consider sharing the show with a friend or leaving a review. All of that really helps. And if you want to keep the conversation going, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at our obsolescence. Thanks again so much for listening friends. My name is Ben Fino-Radin and this has been Art and Obsolescence. 

 
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