Free Art, Real Value: The Zero Art Fair Story | Art Restart

Description

For more than a decade, conceptual artists Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida have collaborated on sharp, often darkly funny critiques of the art world’s economic and political machinery. One of their earliest projects together, a satirical telethon staged during the Great Recession, planted a seed they later returned to: What would happen if you ran an art fair where every work of art was free? That question eventually evolved into Zero Art Fair, a real, fully functioning event that uses a radically different contract to redistribute both artworks and power within the art market.

Zero Art Fair invites participating artists to place selected works into a five-year “store-to-own” agreement with collectors who take the work home at no cost. During those five years, ownership vests gradually; if a collector later decides to sell the work, the artist receives half of the sale price as well as a 10 percent resale royalty. The result is a system that clears storage, builds new relationships across class lines, and asserts one of the Fair’s core beliefs, namely that price does not equal value. So far, Dalton and Powhida have staged two editions — the first in a barn in the Hudson Valley as part of Upstate Art Weekend, the second this fall at the FLAG Art Foundation in Manhattan — together seeding more than 400 works of contemporary art into new homes.

In this interview, Dalton and Powhida explain how the Fair’s unconventional contract works, why prioritizing access for people who “need help to live with art” reshaped their second New York edition, and what kinds of unexpected relationships and ripple effects have emerged along the way.

https://www.zeroartfair.com/

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Transcription

Jennifer Dalton
You know, there is an activist component to this where we're trying to enlarge the community of people who feel that art is for them. And we feel that if that community can be enlarged, you know, if more people feel like fine art is something that is not just for the elite, that would increase art support, you know, in the general population. You know, we've been saying a long time, art needs to make friends.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Hello, and welcome to Art Restart. where we learn from artists who, wherever they work, whatever they make, are shaking up the status quo in their fields and in their communities. I'm Pier Carlo Talenti, the producer and editor of this podcast, a production of the Thomas S. Keenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. In this episode, we'll be speaking with Jennifer Dalton and William Pauheide, the co-creators of Zero Art Fair. What is Zero Art Fair? Well, Jennifer and Bill will explain that themselves, but a little bit about their artistic practice will give you an important context. They are both visual and conceptual artists who, for the last decade, have collaborated on sharp, often darkly funny critiques of the art world's economic and political machinery, which keeps a lot of new potential art lovers firmly locked out. One of their earliest collaborations was in concert with an artist collective called FIPCA. Together, they produced a satirical telethon during the Great Recession titled Telethon for the 1%. Which then led Jen and Bill to ask themselves the question, wait, what if we did an art fair where all the art was free? That question eventually led them to create Zero Art Fair. which launched in 2024 in a beautiful barn in the Hudson Valley as part of Upstate Art Weekend, and then recurred in 2025 at the Flag Art Foundation in Manhattan. In short, very short, Zero Art Fair is a fully functioning art fair that uses a radically different contract, which Bill had been using for a while to sell his own pieces, to redistribute both artworks and power within the art market. The two Xero art fairs have managed to place 400 works of contemporary art into the homes of art lovers, most of whom were either new to collecting and or could not remotely afford to purchase these pieces on the regular art market. How could this happen? Because the art was free with a five-year store-to-own agreement. I can't wait for you to hear how it all works. I started off our conversation by asking Jen and Bill to walk me through what I, as an art lover of limited means, would have experienced when I arrived at Zero Art Fair.
Jennifer Dalton
Well, it depends on if it was the first fair or the second fair.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Let's do the second fair, because I'm going to talk to you later about different changes you made between the first two.
Jennifer Dalton
Okay, Bill, you want to talk through the second fair at Flag?
William Powhida
Yeah, well, you know, we'll cover this difference later. but yeah for the second fair, not only did you have to know about Zero Art Fair, you had to know that there was a registration period ahead of the fair where you could go on our website, answer a few very simple questions about who you are, give us some contact info, and put yourself in one of kind of three buckets, whether you needed help to live with art, if you could normally afford to live with art or if you could help others live with art. And based on... those responses, we prioritized access for people who needed, we said they needed help to live with art.
Pier Carlo Talenti
That's a big change between the two. Yeah. Imagine what happened in the first, since you were on the literal art map, a lot of people who did have means probably showed up first.
William Powhida
We certainly had a few folks who would fit that category, particularly because the Wall Street Journal surprisingly wrote a very friendly, you know. kind of preview of what the fair was. So, you know, I think we had one couple that rolled in from Connecticut who claimed they had never really bought art before, but clearly had found out about it from reading the Wall Street Journal. I think they said as much. Yeah, just to continue with that process, once people registered and let us know they were interested in the fair, we kind of used a weighted randomizer to sort of assign tickets and timed entry slots because we had to balance you know, how many people could physically come into the space with the available amount of artwork, so there wouldn't be sort of nothing left, you know, in the last hours of the fair. And that definitely presented some challenges we can talk about, but... Once somebody had a ticket and assigned time slot and they came up the elevator to the ninth floor of Flag Art Foundation, they could walk in. If they saw work that they were interested in taking home, they could, one, you know, if they had means, they could buy the artwork outright still, which happened in a few cases. And or they could ask to sign the contract and take the work upstairs, have it packed up and take it home with them that day. So that's the basic process for how people get work. And inevitably in that equation, there was always somebody who'd say, so when do I pay? And we're like, you don't. Not yet.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Unless you want to buy it outright.
William Powhida
Yeah, unless you want to buy it outright, you don't have to put any money down to take this work home. But if you were to sell the work after a period of five years, you would have to pay the artist 50% of that sale price.
Jennifer Dalton
Yeah, and the artist never gives up copyright. Right. So the new friend, the collector, takes immediate physical possession of the work.
Pier Carlo Talenti
I love that in the contract, your collector is called friend.
Jennifer Dalton
Yeah. As Amy Whitaker, who helped build with that original contract, has mentioned, the contract just gets less. It started out extremely friendly, but as we've had to... you know, strengthen the language. It's getting a little less friendly, but it holds some, still has some friendly aspects. So the person who's holding the work, who's storing, you know, Bill originally called the contract store to own. So they're storing the work for five years and ownership is gradually vesting. And then after five years, they will, if nothing changes in the interim, there's a couple of caveats, but if nothing changes in the interim, after the five years, the new owner, the new store completely owns the work outright.
Pier Carlo Talenti
But should the new owner sell the work thereafter, the artist gets a portion of proceeds from any future sales. Is that correct?
Jennifer Dalton
Yes, 50%.
William Powhida
Yeah, this would be technically the first sale of the work. And the artist would also be granted subsequent resale royalties on future sales of the work. And that is a 10% resale royalty. definitely borrows from
Pier Carlo Talenti
you know european right to sweet and like resale royalties that those artists get to enjoy because here should either of you sell a work of art to a collector you have no more rights to that work of art no no economic or moral rights collector can pretty much do whatever they want yeah
William Powhida
yeah yeah so we we asked Alfred Steiner to see if he could graft on some of the language from French moral rights for artists, including the ability to ask a work not be necessarily exhibited in an exhibition that they didn't want their work to be shown.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Is there, it seems to me, because I'm an idealist, that this should be par for the course. Is there a movement for this moral rights to happen here in America?
Jennifer Dalton
There have been intermittent movements, but I think that gallerists, art dealers, will say it is already hard enough to sell art and that these, you know, resale and moral rights make it even more onerous. So there are intermittent movements and we would love to be a part of that. And that's, you know, seeding the art ecosystem with these 400 or so works that over the past two fairs, you know, that is one effort that we're trying to advance. it doesn't seem to gather a lot of steam, at least not so far.
Pier Carlo Talenti
And I want to make sure I understand the vesting system also over those five years. It's 20% each year. Is that correct?
Jennifer Dalton
So during one of the things that could happen during the vesting period that changes the contract or that changes the trajectory is that an artist, like say you have a work of mine and you've held it for two years and I am approached by someone else who'd like to to buy it. And for easy math sake, let's say they want to buy this work from, they say, is this work available? I would buy this for a thousand dollars. I would go to you, you would get right of first refusal and you would get a 40% discount off of that price that I'm being offered because you have a 40% interest in the work at this point. After two years. Yeah.
Pier Carlo Talenti
And then if I, so I either get the 40% discount or I say, no, thanks. And then you're your $1,000 buyer gets to work.
Jennifer Dalton
That's right.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Has that happened yet?
Jennifer Dalton
No.
Pier Carlo Talenti
No.
Jennifer Dalton
No, it hasn't happened. Yeah, and Bill's original bunch of work, 30-something, I think, works that he used the contract to transfer. Those are all vested, right? It's been more than five years, too.
William Powhida
Yeah, all of those works have transferred, and I have not been approached by any collectors interested in buying that work. And no one has, to my knowledge, tried to sell the work after the period so far.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Right. because according to the contract, you would have to be notified.
William Powhida
Well, that is one of the, you know, sort of asks and collector responsibilities. We also, you know, tell artists like, set up, you know, Google alerts for your name or the titles of these works. Because, you know, there are many regional auction houses, you know, throughout the United States of where works come up for sale and they don't have the same visibility as, you know, a Sotheby's or Christie's sale.
Pier Carlo Talenti
I can understand how this system benefits a collector of limited means who wants to get into the game or just loves art and would love to have art she loves in her house. How does it benefit participating artists?
Jennifer Dalton
There are a few ways. I mean, the first most obvious one that we talk about is that, you know, most artists, especially when they get to a certain age, they're storing a lot of work. Storage is expensive. It also kind of weighs you down. It's also depressing.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Right.
Jennifer Dalton
So, you know, it isn't sustainable, as we say over and over again. It really isn't sustainable for artists. It's not like artists can give away all their work. But many of us are storing a lot of work. No,
Pier Carlo Talenti
because if they did, in our system, the value of their work would start to diminish, right?
Jennifer Dalton
Right. But many artists are storing a lot of work, and they could let go of a couple works. And so in addition to clearing storage, which is one. way it benefits artists. I think most artists really are sad to see that their work is not in a loving home and benefit from the connection, a new connection made with a person who would not normally be able to afford it. I mean, I know many of us, it's an awkward, uncomfortable situation for our work to be priced at an amount that people in our class cannot purchase, you know, So to be able to make work available to, you know. quote unquote, regular people is a really beautiful thing. And then the third thing I would say is that, you know, there is an activist component to this where we're trying to enlarge the community of people who feel that art is for them. And we feel that if that community can be enlarged, you know, if more people feel like fine art is something that is not just for the elite, that would increase art support, you know, in the general population. you know, we've been saying a long time art needs to make friends.
William Powhida
Yeah, you know, I think if you're trying to make an argument that there should be, you know, greater public funding for artists, you know, this is an avenue in which art can get outside of the 1% and, you know, the sort of upper classes to working class people, you know, and right now, it's a lot of people who work in the arts, but also can't afford, you know, the thing that they have sort of dedicated their lives to and that condition, you know applies to a lot of artists too. A lot of us can't afford the things that we make or the things that our friends make. So in some ways, artists have long had a system to deal with this where they trade with each other and often works of sometimes very incommensurate economic value. And I think we do talk about this with artists that there may not be this kind of direct material benefit from the economic value of the work, but we don't. give up on that value. We're not just giving the work away. There's a kind of delay, you know, in the possibility of receiving economic compensation for the value of the work. And so it's still possible. And, you know, we hope that like kind of seeding, you know, the idea that artists could retain equity in their work, that artists deserve or should receive resale royalties, I think is something that benefits artists as a whole or a community. And so that's part of the balance of, you know, an artist might be giving up a small fraction of inventory that they've made that hopefully has been exhibited previously, that has had an opportunity to sell, but maybe didn't find a buyer. That, you know, there is this kind of longer term benefit for the whole, you know, rather than just to kind of focus on how does this benefit me directly.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Have you gotten any pushback or resistance from? Or any unexpected pushback or reactions from any artists you approach to take part?
Jennifer Dalton
I guess I wouldn't say unexpected. I mean, we expected pushback.
Pier Carlo Talenti
What does that look like?
Jennifer Dalton
Just artists who don't want to give their work away and would prefer to hold on to it in their studios in the hope, you know, that it would be sold. And, you know, we are just like, great, you know, this idea isn't for everyone. But I would say, you know, I was surprised at how few people that was. Like, we really did get a lot of positive. positive response and people wanting to do it, like a much greater percentage than I would have guessed.
Pier Carlo Talenti
I'd love to hear about some like fun, wonderful surprises or stories you've heard or experienced in the 2-0 art fairs.
William Powhida
One kind of comes immediately to mind. We had a kind of reception for the artists and their new collectors that took place after the fair this fall. That's a great idea.
Pier Carlo Talenti
I'm glad you did that.
William Powhida
That idea came directly from Glenn Furman, who sort of founded Flag. It's his collection. He thought it would be something really important to try to build these relationships. So we can thank Glenn for making that possible and coming up with that concept. While we were at that reception, one of the artists, Diana Spungen, said that it turned out that the collector of her work was a curator. of the Jack Witten show, or was the curator, I should say, of the Jack Witten retrospective at MoMA, and, you know, invited Diana to come to MoMA and gave her like a three hour tour of the show, which was sort of wonderful, you know, that, you know, she sort of developed a new relationship with somebody who may be in a position to look at her work or make some connections for her. And, you know, it's one of these tricky things where we might think, you know, a curator at that level must have, you know, enormous wealth or something that they could somehow afford to buy work. But we also know that, you know, many curators are not that well paid. Right.
Pier Carlo Talenti
He might be in the second bucket that you mentioned.
William Powhida
Yeah. Yeah. And so I think it was just, I mean, Diana was so excited and just pleased with that outcome that I wish everyone could have that kind of same experience with, you know, their collector. But we know it's like a really interesting range of people that... came to the fair and were interested in taking the work home. But that one really just jumped out at me that she had such a kind of great, you know, kind of outcome with placing some very large difficult to place sculptures and paintings.
Jennifer Dalton
Another thing that comes to mind is that, you know, during the first fair that was part of Upstate Art Weekend, so people are running around from, you know, venue to venue to venue, you know, in the Hudson Valley, somebody came to Zero Art and procured. their first, the first work, you know, that they'd ever, the first original art they'd ever owned. And then we later found out they went to another gallery and they bought the first work that they'd ever purchased. And I think that, you know, I just, we have thinking, well, I guess, you know, the first one's free, you know, we're starting, we're starting a cycle of generosity. We are, you know, getting people to see that this is something that that is within reach, you know, and, and yeah, encouraging people to, to see art that way. And we really do hope that, you know, anybody who can buy art does, and perhaps seeding them with, with an easy entry point can help spur that.
Pier Carlo Talenti
I wonder if you can, because we, we touched on this, if either of you can remember a time or that time when you realize, oh, I couldn't actually afford a work of my own, a work of my own art.
Jennifer Dalton
Oh, I feel like artists talk about that all the time.
William Powhida
Yeah.
Jennifer Dalton
And it, and, you know, it creates this, this strange feeling to, to have, you know, a dollar value placed on your work out in the world that puts it out of reach of everyone you know, you know, and then you're, you know, and then that means that.
Pier Carlo Talenti
It's also a mark of great success. It's, it's a double-edged sword, I guess.
William Powhida
I mean, I just had a very specific experience. with that very question. Speaking of regional auctions, a collector of mine apparently had passed away and the entire collection was sort of put up for sale in a Midwestern auction house. I saw that it was valued at like... The opening bid on a no reserve auction was something like $200 for a piece that I believe sold for $5,000. And on social media, I was like, Ho-ho! boy, I think I'm going to have to try to buy this one back because I'm less able to afford it. You know, not that I, you know, spending anything over like $500 would put a significant dent in our like monthly budget. Right. That would be the ceiling. And, you know, a few people responded, you know, on like Blue Sky that they would be interested. A couple of friends let me know that they were trying to kind of like maybe acquire the work for a thousand or, you know. I mean, ultimately it sold for, I think, around two thousand dollars, which is less than half of its retail value. But it does show that my work does retain some some value. But it was, you know, sort of it's a painful kind of embarrassing, you know, sort of thing. to happen and knowing that you know i certainly didn't have the means to kind of like reinvest you know into my work or something you know and it's also in a way it must be it's public i mean there must be talk out in the world about
Jennifer Dalton
so-and-so's work sold for this amount oh totally right and i mean that's one of the reasons that galleries dislike auction sales in general is it's public and it's not... controllable.
William Powhida
Yeah, and I think when Jen mentioned that retail prices are something of a kind of phantasm or something, there is this sense that it's not just a myth. Myth is almost too neutral. There is something it's like a specter. You're almost haunted by these prices because if works aren't selling for their estimates or above their estimates, it's like this work is broken or it doesn't... have the value that it claims. But, you know, so few works actually make it to auction. There's a kind of institutional bias already that, you know, the main auction houses are taking works that they know they can sell, that they have an audience. Obviously, there's some risk and they can't predict the whole thing, but it's very choreographed, you know, to kind of give the appearance that art is, you know, this kind of stable, lucrative investment vehicle, which is just not the experience that most of us have. Whether it's selling work in the primary market, achieving very, very high prices for the work, or having a sort of second life in the secondary auction market, you know, becoming a kind of commodity.
Jennifer Dalton
Right. And the other thing about prices being, you know, some sort of, I don't know, propagandistic phantasm or something is that they never go down. So if or that, you know, they never publicly go down. So, you know, if I have a show where my 20 artworks are priced at. $10,000 and none of them sell at my next show in a few years, they will be priced at $15,000. And that's like, what kind of so-called market is that? And because, you know, you can't ever upset people who bought your work for the lower price by, I mean, by the, for the higher price by lowering your prices. But then it just means that, you know, your prices get further and further from reality.
William Powhida
Yeah, I mean, it's based on this notion that there's a kind of fairness standard, you know, in retail that somehow, you know, like the art market doesn't operate like a lot of other familiar markets, you know, the pricing system is sort of monodirectional upward. But this idea of fairness is sort of like, the question is, who is it fair to? You know, is it only fair to people with the means that can buy the artwork or? Could we think about fairness sort of progressively, you know, and think about prices being something that's flexible for different audiences, different demographics, you know, within our kind of market-based consumer society? But it is, it's a question that I think is still one of those kind of, you know, very touchy or sort of sore points around this idea of kind of fairness.
Jennifer Dalton
Yeah.
William Powhida
Yeah, in the art market.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Do you remember this is a bit of an out-of-field question, but do each of you remember the first work of art that you loved that you were able to afford?
William Powhida
Yeah. For me, my wife and I were visiting Schroeder Romero Gallery, which is a gallery I ended up actually showing with a few years later. But we were at a group show they had curated, and there was a small painting, part of a group of small works by this artist. Jack Chartier, who is from Seattle. And I just sort of become aware of their work. So I was participating in a group show in Seattle. And it was like a $400 painting. And my wife and I made a payment schedule with the gallery to kind of pay it off over the period of like four or five months. But that was the first work that we both agreed upon that we would purchase for our tiny apartment in Williamsburg.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Well, you just taught me something. I didn't know that you could make payment arrangements with some galleries.
William Powhida
It's possible.
Jennifer Dalton
Yeah.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Okay. What about you, Jen, the first painting, the first work of art that you were able to afford and love?
Jennifer Dalton
You know, what's funny is I still have this work hanging next to my bed in my bedroom, and I'm not able to remember the artist's name right now, so that is terrible. But it was, so like in the 90s, I bought a piece at a small gallery in LA called Miller-Girazzo. And I remember that they were these little drawings, and they were priced at, say, I think they were priced at like $200 unframed. and $300 framed. And some of them were unframed and some are framed. And what I wanted is I wanted one of the framed ones, but I couldn't afford to have it framed. And so I was like, can I get this one? But can I have it unframed? And I was such a novice. I didn't know that like, you can't just like pop the thing out of the frame because the frames aren't like from Target. And so I was really, really stuck when they said you can have that work, but actually you're going to have to take it. framed. Like we're not taking this out of the frame. And so I had to go home and think about it. For the extra hundred dollars. Yeah, the extra hundred dollars. And I came back and I did it.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Wow. Given the work that you've done about critiquing the so-called art world, and has any part of Zero Art Fair felt like a work of art?
Jennifer Dalton
I mean, I don't think either one of us, you know, we've talked about this. We don't see it as a work of art, but it... really takes it's a lot of the same creative and like sort of satisfying problem solving efforts you know and like we both have you know kind of conceptual practices and and i think it just feels like it does feel sometimes like a big collaborative art project even though i think neither one of us would call it like our artwork yeah i i don't think it helps the fair to you know kind of claim it as a work
William Powhida
you know even a collaborative work and yeah it makes a little more elite and yeah and not just it's about us yeah it doesn't we don't have to center ourselves in this project you know there is there is a hope you know that this project is a model that it's a template that you know other people with the right funding interest in communicating with us could run this fair elsewhere that it's, you know, a little more open source than kind of traditional art project where you know the side effect of a lot of art projects is it generates a lot of value you know for the artist in their career and that's not something we've been you know so interested in kind of pursuing and you know the affair also had to be functional you know and it's like a lot of people think about art as what makes it unique is that it doesn't necessarily have to serve any particular function you know it's sort of autonomous and you know by keeping it art adjacent, it allows us to sort of think differently, to actually think kind of pragmatically, like, how does this work? No, it's not, you don't, you don't want this to be ambiguous, we actually need to have like a very clear process and method for making things happen. So yeah, I totally agree with Jen, it uses a lot of art thinking, you know, it uses a lot of the same skills. And it, you know, pushes our ideas into a different sort of like, part of the art world and it really engages you know production and distribution of art you know at conceptual levels yeah no not not like an artwork by by jen and bill you know so let's say somebody in because there's amazing artists working all over the country in big and small towns if somebody wanted to replicate this model in their community what would be your first words of advice to them well we have this question that we ask ourselves that you know comes from manon sloan but it's you know who pays for free and the sort of first piece of advice would probably have to do with how they're going to pay themselves how they're going to potentially pay the artist you know an honorarium if there's a an exhibition component and you're anticipating artists get an honorarium regardless if to have that funded.
Jennifer Dalton
the second for the second fair.
Pier Carlo Talenti
So it sounds like that's one of your first lessons to somebody else who wants to replicate it is that there is startup cost.
Jennifer Dalton
Yeah. I mean, and you know, the venue and really, it's quite a lot of it's quite a lot of time, like it's quite a lot of admin.
William Powhida
But you know, I think what we hope to do is that by creating, you know, this kind of template, that if we're able to really take what we've done internally, you know, put together almost a kind handbook. or how you could do this.
Jennifer Dalton
If another community or another institution sees the benefit of being able to, you know, tap a little bit of this kind of vast inventory of work sitting, you know, nationally in storage spaces and studios under people's living rooms or, you know, in barns all over the country, you know, that that would be a really a public good, you know, and that maybe it is worth, you know, putting a few thousand dollars or. you know, up to $50,000 together to get, in our case, you know, up to like half a million dollars of retail artwork out into homes, you know, and I think that is a really interesting value proposition, whether or not those retail prices are real, work has this other set of values, aesthetic, conceptual, spiritual, you know, I mean, it, you know, your question about, you know, the first artwork that we're able to sort of buy or live with, you know, that's something we want other people to be able to experience, you know, that kind of interesting thing that happens when you have a unique object in your home over a long period of time that, you know, in some cases, maybe a child grows up with and sees that art is something that's in their home that's accessible to them. That was a kind of motivating thing, I think. I heard from, you know, another artist not too long ago about even a reason to make physical objects after having a kind of you know, digital or sort of less material practice, that their work could live in a home, you know, and be experienced outside of kind of institutional sort of settings.
William Powhida
Yeah. And I would add, you know, one of the core, you know, tenets of Zero Art Fair is that price doesn't equal value, you know, so decoupling those two ideas and getting people, and even if the people get the work for free and they have it in their home and And I think that they can really feel viscerally, emotionally, spiritually, the value of having that work. And it has nothing to do with how much they paid for it.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Are you already planning fair number three?
William Powhida
We're figuring it out. We've been taking one year at a time.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Good for you.
William Powhida
But yeah, we're figuring it out. I don't think we're done, though.
Pier Carlo Talenti
If you'd like to learn more about Jen and Bill and read a longer version of this interview, just head to uncsa.edu slash art restart. Hey, do me a favor. Would you please do all those things that help us out? Subscribe or follow, rate and review us, all of that good stuff. We'd love that. And if you know and love an artist shaking up the status quo that you'd love us to profile, let me know. Or if there's a subject you'd like us to do a deep dive on, like Why does U.S. law not have the so-called moral rights that protect artists in France, for instance? You can find me on Instagram at Pierre-Carlo Talenti. Our theme music is by Shanghai Restoration Project. I'm Pierre-Carlo Talenti, and on behalf of the Kenan Institute for the Arts, thank you for listening.

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https://www.zeroartfair.com/

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Transcription

Jennifer Dalton
You know, there is an activist component to this where we're trying to enlarge the community of people who feel that art is for them. And we feel that if that community can be enlarged, you know, if more people feel like fine art is something that is not just for the elite, that would increase art support, you know, in the general population. You know, we've been saying a long time, art needs to make friends.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Hello, and welcome to Art Restart. where we learn from artists who, wherever they work, whatever they make, are shaking up the status quo in their fields and in their communities. I'm Pier Carlo Talenti, the producer and editor of this podcast, a production of the Thomas S. Keenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. In this episode, we'll be speaking with Jennifer Dalton and William Pauheide, the co-creators of Zero Art Fair. What is Zero Art Fair? Well, Jennifer and Bill will explain that themselves, but a little bit about their artistic practice will give you an important context. They are both visual and conceptual artists who, for the last decade, have collaborated on sharp, often darkly funny critiques of the art world's economic and political machinery, which keeps a lot of new potential art lovers firmly locked out. One of their earliest collaborations was in concert with an artist collective called FIPCA. Together, they produced a satirical telethon during the Great Recession titled Telethon for the 1%. Which then led Jen and Bill to ask themselves the question, wait, what if we did an art fair where all the art was free? That question eventually led them to create Zero Art Fair. which launched in 2024 in a beautiful barn in the Hudson Valley as part of Upstate Art Weekend, and then recurred in 2025 at the Flag Art Foundation in Manhattan. In short, very short, Zero Art Fair is a fully functioning art fair that uses a radically different contract, which Bill had been using for a while to sell his own pieces, to redistribute both artworks and power within the art market. The two Xero art fairs have managed to place 400 works of contemporary art into the homes of art lovers, most of whom were either new to collecting and or could not remotely afford to purchase these pieces on the regular art market. How could this happen? Because the art was free with a five-year store-to-own agreement. I can't wait for you to hear how it all works. I started off our conversation by asking Jen and Bill to walk me through what I, as an art lover of limited means, would have experienced when I arrived at Zero Art Fair.
Jennifer Dalton
Well, it depends on if it was the first fair or the second fair.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Let's do the second fair, because I'm going to talk to you later about different changes you made between the first two.
Jennifer Dalton
Okay, Bill, you want to talk through the second fair at Flag?
William Powhida
Yeah, well, you know, we'll cover this difference later. but yeah for the second fair, not only did you have to know about Zero Art Fair, you had to know that there was a registration period ahead of the fair where you could go on our website, answer a few very simple questions about who you are, give us some contact info, and put yourself in one of kind of three buckets, whether you needed help to live with art, if you could normally afford to live with art or if you could help others live with art. And based on... those responses, we prioritized access for people who needed, we said they needed help to live with art.
Pier Carlo Talenti
That's a big change between the two. Yeah. Imagine what happened in the first, since you were on the literal art map, a lot of people who did have means probably showed up first.
William Powhida
We certainly had a few folks who would fit that category, particularly because the Wall Street Journal surprisingly wrote a very friendly, you know. kind of preview of what the fair was. So, you know, I think we had one couple that rolled in from Connecticut who claimed they had never really bought art before, but clearly had found out about it from reading the Wall Street Journal. I think they said as much. Yeah, just to continue with that process, once people registered and let us know they were interested in the fair, we kind of used a weighted randomizer to sort of assign tickets and timed entry slots because we had to balance you know, how many people could physically come into the space with the available amount of artwork, so there wouldn't be sort of nothing left, you know, in the last hours of the fair. And that definitely presented some challenges we can talk about, but... Once somebody had a ticket and assigned time slot and they came up the elevator to the ninth floor of Flag Art Foundation, they could walk in. If they saw work that they were interested in taking home, they could, one, you know, if they had means, they could buy the artwork outright still, which happened in a few cases. And or they could ask to sign the contract and take the work upstairs, have it packed up and take it home with them that day. So that's the basic process for how people get work. And inevitably in that equation, there was always somebody who'd say, so when do I pay? And we're like, you don't. Not yet.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Unless you want to buy it outright.
William Powhida
Yeah, unless you want to buy it outright, you don't have to put any money down to take this work home. But if you were to sell the work after a period of five years, you would have to pay the artist 50% of that sale price.
Jennifer Dalton
Yeah, and the artist never gives up copyright. Right. So the new friend, the collector, takes immediate physical possession of the work.
Pier Carlo Talenti
I love that in the contract, your collector is called friend.
Jennifer Dalton
Yeah. As Amy Whitaker, who helped build with that original contract, has mentioned, the contract just gets less. It started out extremely friendly, but as we've had to... you know, strengthen the language. It's getting a little less friendly, but it holds some, still has some friendly aspects. So the person who's holding the work, who's storing, you know, Bill originally called the contract store to own. So they're storing the work for five years and ownership is gradually vesting. And then after five years, they will, if nothing changes in the interim, there's a couple of caveats, but if nothing changes in the interim, after the five years, the new owner, the new store completely owns the work outright.
Pier Carlo Talenti
But should the new owner sell the work thereafter, the artist gets a portion of proceeds from any future sales. Is that correct?
Jennifer Dalton
Yes, 50%.
William Powhida
Yeah, this would be technically the first sale of the work. And the artist would also be granted subsequent resale royalties on future sales of the work. And that is a 10% resale royalty. definitely borrows from
Pier Carlo Talenti
you know european right to sweet and like resale royalties that those artists get to enjoy because here should either of you sell a work of art to a collector you have no more rights to that work of art no no economic or moral rights collector can pretty much do whatever they want yeah
William Powhida
yeah yeah so we we asked Alfred Steiner to see if he could graft on some of the language from French moral rights for artists, including the ability to ask a work not be necessarily exhibited in an exhibition that they didn't want their work to be shown.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Is there, it seems to me, because I'm an idealist, that this should be par for the course. Is there a movement for this moral rights to happen here in America?
Jennifer Dalton
There have been intermittent movements, but I think that gallerists, art dealers, will say it is already hard enough to sell art and that these, you know, resale and moral rights make it even more onerous. So there are intermittent movements and we would love to be a part of that. And that's, you know, seeding the art ecosystem with these 400 or so works that over the past two fairs, you know, that is one effort that we're trying to advance. it doesn't seem to gather a lot of steam, at least not so far.
Pier Carlo Talenti
And I want to make sure I understand the vesting system also over those five years. It's 20% each year. Is that correct?
Jennifer Dalton
So during one of the things that could happen during the vesting period that changes the contract or that changes the trajectory is that an artist, like say you have a work of mine and you've held it for two years and I am approached by someone else who'd like to to buy it. And for easy math sake, let's say they want to buy this work from, they say, is this work available? I would buy this for a thousand dollars. I would go to you, you would get right of first refusal and you would get a 40% discount off of that price that I'm being offered because you have a 40% interest in the work at this point. After two years. Yeah.
Pier Carlo Talenti
And then if I, so I either get the 40% discount or I say, no, thanks. And then you're your $1,000 buyer gets to work.
Jennifer Dalton
That's right.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Has that happened yet?
Jennifer Dalton
No.
Pier Carlo Talenti
No.
Jennifer Dalton
No, it hasn't happened. Yeah, and Bill's original bunch of work, 30-something, I think, works that he used the contract to transfer. Those are all vested, right? It's been more than five years, too.
William Powhida
Yeah, all of those works have transferred, and I have not been approached by any collectors interested in buying that work. And no one has, to my knowledge, tried to sell the work after the period so far.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Right. because according to the contract, you would have to be notified.
William Powhida
Well, that is one of the, you know, sort of asks and collector responsibilities. We also, you know, tell artists like, set up, you know, Google alerts for your name or the titles of these works. Because, you know, there are many regional auction houses, you know, throughout the United States of where works come up for sale and they don't have the same visibility as, you know, a Sotheby's or Christie's sale.
Pier Carlo Talenti
I can understand how this system benefits a collector of limited means who wants to get into the game or just loves art and would love to have art she loves in her house. How does it benefit participating artists?
Jennifer Dalton
There are a few ways. I mean, the first most obvious one that we talk about is that, you know, most artists, especially when they get to a certain age, they're storing a lot of work. Storage is expensive. It also kind of weighs you down. It's also depressing.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Right.
Jennifer Dalton
So, you know, it isn't sustainable, as we say over and over again. It really isn't sustainable for artists. It's not like artists can give away all their work. But many of us are storing a lot of work. No,
Pier Carlo Talenti
because if they did, in our system, the value of their work would start to diminish, right?
Jennifer Dalton
Right. But many artists are storing a lot of work, and they could let go of a couple works. And so in addition to clearing storage, which is one. way it benefits artists. I think most artists really are sad to see that their work is not in a loving home and benefit from the connection, a new connection made with a person who would not normally be able to afford it. I mean, I know many of us, it's an awkward, uncomfortable situation for our work to be priced at an amount that people in our class cannot purchase, you know, So to be able to make work available to, you know. quote unquote, regular people is a really beautiful thing. And then the third thing I would say is that, you know, there is an activist component to this where we're trying to enlarge the community of people who feel that art is for them. And we feel that if that community can be enlarged, you know, if more people feel like fine art is something that is not just for the elite, that would increase art support, you know, in the general population. you know, we've been saying a long time art needs to make friends.
William Powhida
Yeah, you know, I think if you're trying to make an argument that there should be, you know, greater public funding for artists, you know, this is an avenue in which art can get outside of the 1% and, you know, the sort of upper classes to working class people, you know, and right now, it's a lot of people who work in the arts, but also can't afford, you know, the thing that they have sort of dedicated their lives to and that condition, you know applies to a lot of artists too. A lot of us can't afford the things that we make or the things that our friends make. So in some ways, artists have long had a system to deal with this where they trade with each other and often works of sometimes very incommensurate economic value. And I think we do talk about this with artists that there may not be this kind of direct material benefit from the economic value of the work, but we don't. give up on that value. We're not just giving the work away. There's a kind of delay, you know, in the possibility of receiving economic compensation for the value of the work. And so it's still possible. And, you know, we hope that like kind of seeding, you know, the idea that artists could retain equity in their work, that artists deserve or should receive resale royalties, I think is something that benefits artists as a whole or a community. And so that's part of the balance of, you know, an artist might be giving up a small fraction of inventory that they've made that hopefully has been exhibited previously, that has had an opportunity to sell, but maybe didn't find a buyer. That, you know, there is this kind of longer term benefit for the whole, you know, rather than just to kind of focus on how does this benefit me directly.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Have you gotten any pushback or resistance from? Or any unexpected pushback or reactions from any artists you approach to take part?
Jennifer Dalton
I guess I wouldn't say unexpected. I mean, we expected pushback.
Pier Carlo Talenti
What does that look like?
Jennifer Dalton
Just artists who don't want to give their work away and would prefer to hold on to it in their studios in the hope, you know, that it would be sold. And, you know, we are just like, great, you know, this idea isn't for everyone. But I would say, you know, I was surprised at how few people that was. Like, we really did get a lot of positive. positive response and people wanting to do it, like a much greater percentage than I would have guessed.
Pier Carlo Talenti
I'd love to hear about some like fun, wonderful surprises or stories you've heard or experienced in the 2-0 art fairs.
William Powhida
One kind of comes immediately to mind. We had a kind of reception for the artists and their new collectors that took place after the fair this fall. That's a great idea.
Pier Carlo Talenti
I'm glad you did that.
William Powhida
That idea came directly from Glenn Furman, who sort of founded Flag. It's his collection. He thought it would be something really important to try to build these relationships. So we can thank Glenn for making that possible and coming up with that concept. While we were at that reception, one of the artists, Diana Spungen, said that it turned out that the collector of her work was a curator. of the Jack Witten show, or was the curator, I should say, of the Jack Witten retrospective at MoMA, and, you know, invited Diana to come to MoMA and gave her like a three hour tour of the show, which was sort of wonderful, you know, that, you know, she sort of developed a new relationship with somebody who may be in a position to look at her work or make some connections for her. And, you know, it's one of these tricky things where we might think, you know, a curator at that level must have, you know, enormous wealth or something that they could somehow afford to buy work. But we also know that, you know, many curators are not that well paid. Right.
Pier Carlo Talenti
He might be in the second bucket that you mentioned.
William Powhida
Yeah. Yeah. And so I think it was just, I mean, Diana was so excited and just pleased with that outcome that I wish everyone could have that kind of same experience with, you know, their collector. But we know it's like a really interesting range of people that... came to the fair and were interested in taking the work home. But that one really just jumped out at me that she had such a kind of great, you know, kind of outcome with placing some very large difficult to place sculptures and paintings.
Jennifer Dalton
Another thing that comes to mind is that, you know, during the first fair that was part of Upstate Art Weekend, so people are running around from, you know, venue to venue to venue, you know, in the Hudson Valley, somebody came to Zero Art and procured. their first, the first work, you know, that they'd ever, the first original art they'd ever owned. And then we later found out they went to another gallery and they bought the first work that they'd ever purchased. And I think that, you know, I just, we have thinking, well, I guess, you know, the first one's free, you know, we're starting, we're starting a cycle of generosity. We are, you know, getting people to see that this is something that that is within reach, you know, and, and yeah, encouraging people to, to see art that way. And we really do hope that, you know, anybody who can buy art does, and perhaps seeding them with, with an easy entry point can help spur that.
Pier Carlo Talenti
I wonder if you can, because we, we touched on this, if either of you can remember a time or that time when you realize, oh, I couldn't actually afford a work of my own, a work of my own art.
Jennifer Dalton
Oh, I feel like artists talk about that all the time.
William Powhida
Yeah.
Jennifer Dalton
And it, and, you know, it creates this, this strange feeling to, to have, you know, a dollar value placed on your work out in the world that puts it out of reach of everyone you know, you know, and then you're, you know, and then that means that.
Pier Carlo Talenti
It's also a mark of great success. It's, it's a double-edged sword, I guess.
William Powhida
I mean, I just had a very specific experience. with that very question. Speaking of regional auctions, a collector of mine apparently had passed away and the entire collection was sort of put up for sale in a Midwestern auction house. I saw that it was valued at like... The opening bid on a no reserve auction was something like $200 for a piece that I believe sold for $5,000. And on social media, I was like, Ho-ho! boy, I think I'm going to have to try to buy this one back because I'm less able to afford it. You know, not that I, you know, spending anything over like $500 would put a significant dent in our like monthly budget. Right. That would be the ceiling. And, you know, a few people responded, you know, on like Blue Sky that they would be interested. A couple of friends let me know that they were trying to kind of like maybe acquire the work for a thousand or, you know. I mean, ultimately it sold for, I think, around two thousand dollars, which is less than half of its retail value. But it does show that my work does retain some some value. But it was, you know, sort of it's a painful kind of embarrassing, you know, sort of thing. to happen and knowing that you know i certainly didn't have the means to kind of like reinvest you know into my work or something you know and it's also in a way it must be it's public i mean there must be talk out in the world about
Jennifer Dalton
so-and-so's work sold for this amount oh totally right and i mean that's one of the reasons that galleries dislike auction sales in general is it's public and it's not... controllable.
William Powhida
Yeah, and I think when Jen mentioned that retail prices are something of a kind of phantasm or something, there is this sense that it's not just a myth. Myth is almost too neutral. There is something it's like a specter. You're almost haunted by these prices because if works aren't selling for their estimates or above their estimates, it's like this work is broken or it doesn't... have the value that it claims. But, you know, so few works actually make it to auction. There's a kind of institutional bias already that, you know, the main auction houses are taking works that they know they can sell, that they have an audience. Obviously, there's some risk and they can't predict the whole thing, but it's very choreographed, you know, to kind of give the appearance that art is, you know, this kind of stable, lucrative investment vehicle, which is just not the experience that most of us have. Whether it's selling work in the primary market, achieving very, very high prices for the work, or having a sort of second life in the secondary auction market, you know, becoming a kind of commodity.
Jennifer Dalton
Right. And the other thing about prices being, you know, some sort of, I don't know, propagandistic phantasm or something is that they never go down. So if or that, you know, they never publicly go down. So, you know, if I have a show where my 20 artworks are priced at. $10,000 and none of them sell at my next show in a few years, they will be priced at $15,000. And that's like, what kind of so-called market is that? And because, you know, you can't ever upset people who bought your work for the lower price by, I mean, by the, for the higher price by lowering your prices. But then it just means that, you know, your prices get further and further from reality.
William Powhida
Yeah, I mean, it's based on this notion that there's a kind of fairness standard, you know, in retail that somehow, you know, like the art market doesn't operate like a lot of other familiar markets, you know, the pricing system is sort of monodirectional upward. But this idea of fairness is sort of like, the question is, who is it fair to? You know, is it only fair to people with the means that can buy the artwork or? Could we think about fairness sort of progressively, you know, and think about prices being something that's flexible for different audiences, different demographics, you know, within our kind of market-based consumer society? But it is, it's a question that I think is still one of those kind of, you know, very touchy or sort of sore points around this idea of kind of fairness.
Jennifer Dalton
Yeah.
William Powhida
Yeah, in the art market.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Do you remember this is a bit of an out-of-field question, but do each of you remember the first work of art that you loved that you were able to afford?
William Powhida
Yeah. For me, my wife and I were visiting Schroeder Romero Gallery, which is a gallery I ended up actually showing with a few years later. But we were at a group show they had curated, and there was a small painting, part of a group of small works by this artist. Jack Chartier, who is from Seattle. And I just sort of become aware of their work. So I was participating in a group show in Seattle. And it was like a $400 painting. And my wife and I made a payment schedule with the gallery to kind of pay it off over the period of like four or five months. But that was the first work that we both agreed upon that we would purchase for our tiny apartment in Williamsburg.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Well, you just taught me something. I didn't know that you could make payment arrangements with some galleries.
William Powhida
It's possible.
Jennifer Dalton
Yeah.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Okay. What about you, Jen, the first painting, the first work of art that you were able to afford and love?
Jennifer Dalton
You know, what's funny is I still have this work hanging next to my bed in my bedroom, and I'm not able to remember the artist's name right now, so that is terrible. But it was, so like in the 90s, I bought a piece at a small gallery in LA called Miller-Girazzo. And I remember that they were these little drawings, and they were priced at, say, I think they were priced at like $200 unframed. and $300 framed. And some of them were unframed and some are framed. And what I wanted is I wanted one of the framed ones, but I couldn't afford to have it framed. And so I was like, can I get this one? But can I have it unframed? And I was such a novice. I didn't know that like, you can't just like pop the thing out of the frame because the frames aren't like from Target. And so I was really, really stuck when they said you can have that work, but actually you're going to have to take it. framed. Like we're not taking this out of the frame. And so I had to go home and think about it. For the extra hundred dollars. Yeah, the extra hundred dollars. And I came back and I did it.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Wow. Given the work that you've done about critiquing the so-called art world, and has any part of Zero Art Fair felt like a work of art?
Jennifer Dalton
I mean, I don't think either one of us, you know, we've talked about this. We don't see it as a work of art, but it... really takes it's a lot of the same creative and like sort of satisfying problem solving efforts you know and like we both have you know kind of conceptual practices and and i think it just feels like it does feel sometimes like a big collaborative art project even though i think neither one of us would call it like our artwork yeah i i don't think it helps the fair to you know kind of claim it as a work
William Powhida
you know even a collaborative work and yeah it makes a little more elite and yeah and not just it's about us yeah it doesn't we don't have to center ourselves in this project you know there is there is a hope you know that this project is a model that it's a template that you know other people with the right funding interest in communicating with us could run this fair elsewhere that it's, you know, a little more open source than kind of traditional art project where you know the side effect of a lot of art projects is it generates a lot of value you know for the artist in their career and that's not something we've been you know so interested in kind of pursuing and you know the affair also had to be functional you know and it's like a lot of people think about art as what makes it unique is that it doesn't necessarily have to serve any particular function you know it's sort of autonomous and you know by keeping it art adjacent, it allows us to sort of think differently, to actually think kind of pragmatically, like, how does this work? No, it's not, you don't, you don't want this to be ambiguous, we actually need to have like a very clear process and method for making things happen. So yeah, I totally agree with Jen, it uses a lot of art thinking, you know, it uses a lot of the same skills. And it, you know, pushes our ideas into a different sort of like, part of the art world and it really engages you know production and distribution of art you know at conceptual levels yeah no not not like an artwork by by jen and bill you know so let's say somebody in because there's amazing artists working all over the country in big and small towns if somebody wanted to replicate this model in their community what would be your first words of advice to them well we have this question that we ask ourselves that you know comes from manon sloan but it's you know who pays for free and the sort of first piece of advice would probably have to do with how they're going to pay themselves how they're going to potentially pay the artist you know an honorarium if there's a an exhibition component and you're anticipating artists get an honorarium regardless if to have that funded.
Jennifer Dalton
the second for the second fair.
Pier Carlo Talenti
So it sounds like that's one of your first lessons to somebody else who wants to replicate it is that there is startup cost.
Jennifer Dalton
Yeah. I mean, and you know, the venue and really, it's quite a lot of it's quite a lot of time, like it's quite a lot of admin.
William Powhida
But you know, I think what we hope to do is that by creating, you know, this kind of template, that if we're able to really take what we've done internally, you know, put together almost a kind handbook. or how you could do this.
Jennifer Dalton
If another community or another institution sees the benefit of being able to, you know, tap a little bit of this kind of vast inventory of work sitting, you know, nationally in storage spaces and studios under people's living rooms or, you know, in barns all over the country, you know, that that would be a really a public good, you know, and that maybe it is worth, you know, putting a few thousand dollars or. you know, up to $50,000 together to get, in our case, you know, up to like half a million dollars of retail artwork out into homes, you know, and I think that is a really interesting value proposition, whether or not those retail prices are real, work has this other set of values, aesthetic, conceptual, spiritual, you know, I mean, it, you know, your question about, you know, the first artwork that we're able to sort of buy or live with, you know, that's something we want other people to be able to experience, you know, that kind of interesting thing that happens when you have a unique object in your home over a long period of time that, you know, in some cases, maybe a child grows up with and sees that art is something that's in their home that's accessible to them. That was a kind of motivating thing, I think. I heard from, you know, another artist not too long ago about even a reason to make physical objects after having a kind of you know, digital or sort of less material practice, that their work could live in a home, you know, and be experienced outside of kind of institutional sort of settings.
William Powhida
Yeah. And I would add, you know, one of the core, you know, tenets of Zero Art Fair is that price doesn't equal value, you know, so decoupling those two ideas and getting people, and even if the people get the work for free and they have it in their home and And I think that they can really feel viscerally, emotionally, spiritually, the value of having that work. And it has nothing to do with how much they paid for it.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Are you already planning fair number three?
William Powhida
We're figuring it out. We've been taking one year at a time.
Pier Carlo Talenti
Good for you.
William Powhida
But yeah, we're figuring it out. I don't think we're done, though.
Pier Carlo Talenti
If you'd like to learn more about Jen and Bill and read a longer version of this interview, just head to uncsa.edu slash art restart. Hey, do me a favor. Would you please do all those things that help us out? Subscribe or follow, rate and review us, all of that good stuff. We'd love that. And if you know and love an artist shaking up the status quo that you'd love us to profile, let me know. Or if there's a subject you'd like us to do a deep dive on, like Why does U.S. law not have the so-called moral rights that protect artists in France, for instance? You can find me on Instagram at Pierre-Carlo Talenti. Our theme music is by Shanghai Restoration Project. I'm Pierre-Carlo Talenti, and on behalf of the Kenan Institute for the Arts, thank you for listening.

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