UNDOING THE ART FAIR
At the Butter Fine Art Fair, artists keep 100% — and the care shows.
ISSUE 1: THE UN/MAKING ISSUEButter’s intentionality—paying artists fairly for their work—is central to its mission of promoting the care and economic viability of Black visual artists, according to Alan Bacon, who co-founded the art fair with his wife, Malina Simone Bacon, in 2021.
In 2020, amid the uprisings for Black lives, the husband-and-wife duo launched GANGGANG, a creative advocacy organization that offers cultural strategy and plans arts events—including Butter—in Indianapolis and nationwide. “From our very beginning, we knew that in order to communicate topics around racism, around equity, these topics needed new ways to be shared. We chose design and marketing as leverage points to get our message across,” said Malina.
Alan added, “The level of taste and execution is super important to the work we’re doing, because we’re advocating for very hard truths in traditional environments.”
Even the name Butter, conceived by Alan, is meant to imply accessibility, familiarity, and comfort.
Last year, Butter featured sixty exhibiting artists—roughly half from Indiana and the rest from cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New Orleans. Butter artists not only sell their work at the fair, but they are also invited into months of mentoring and support focused on making a living from their work. In a press release following the fair, GANGGANG reported sales of sixty-four artworks for $154,190. Two institutions—the Indianapolis Children’s Museum and the Indiana Memorial Union—acquired pieces for their permanent collections.
To date, Butter has facilitated over $900,000 in art sales for artists.
However, there’s no denying that their model of centering Black artists—allowing them to retain 100% of sales profits... is a rare and radical model within the traditional art world.
This sentiment was echoed by several artists at Butter whom I spoke with at the fair. Butter’s model is unusual. Traditional commercial art fairs like Art Basel and Frieze function like shopping malls for ultra-wealthy collectors. Galleries selected to participate in these fairs can spend over $100,000 in booth rentals, travel, and shipping costs. Additionally, artists represented by these galleries typically split sales proceeds 50-50–a far cry from Butter’s operating model.
At Butter, sustainability for Black artists is baked into the fair’s operations. The Bacons say they’re dedicated to building a pipeline for artists to thrive, not just to show and sell their work. Artists and galleries are selected by the fair’s curatorial team through artist-submitted portfolios and the team’s network. Artists neither pay to submit their portfolios nor pay booth-rental fees, and the fair covers their travel and accommodation during the fair. Months before the fair, artists are supported through studio visits and mentoring around career advancement and financial sustainability.
This kind of care is needed.
Black artists are woefully underrepresented in the art ecosystem. According to a 2022 report on representation in museums and the art market, between 2008 and mid-2022, art by Black American artists made up only 1.9% of all auction sales and just 2.2% of acquisitions by thirty-one major US museums.1 At top galleries, Black artists represented less than 10% of the roster. 2
Unlike the well-known art fairs, which have reputations for luxury and exclusivity, Butter felt like a weekend-long block party—inclusive and fun. Thousands of people of all ages flowed through the exhibition space to admire art and connect with the artists. With work priced from the low hundreds up to $40,000, the barrier to entry for a would-be art collector was much lower than at a traditional commercial fair. (At 2024 Basel, the highest art sale was for $20 million.)3
Outside, there were mix shows, performances, food vendors (one fried catfish stand went viral on X for its extremely generous portions), and walking tours of the Indiana Avenue District—a historic Black neighborhood decimated by redlining—by local historian Sampson Levingston. Small eye-catching touches, like Butter-branded cereal boxes and a bodega, added to the electricity of the event.
Alan and Malina floated throughout the fair all weekend talking to artists, community members, and potential buyers. Weeks before Butter, I interviewed the two to better understand the ethos behind Butter and the importance of creating a new, economically just model for Black artists.
Interview edited for length and clarity
Makeda Easter: Something that stood out to me in the marketing around Butter was this idea of art reparations. Could you both talk about what that means to you?
Alan Bacon: At the heart of Butter, we are centering Black artists and thinking about the economic justice, care, and viability of the art they create. One of the things that Butter is allowing us to challenge directly is the dichotomy between value and worth.
We’re advocates for what that looks like. How that manifests in Butter is as follows: there’s this art piece that is amazing, but the artist is selling it out of the trunk of their car, their home, or other institutions. It’s priced at $250, $500, or $1,000. But in the context of Butter, where we are centering their economic viability, that $500 piece is now worth $5,000. So what does that do to an artist’s identity? What does that do to their understanding of their work? We’re creating an equitable environment where artists can realize their true worth.
Malina Bacon: The mission of Butter is to center the care for, and economic viability of, Black visual artists. This in itself is a reparational approach to fairs because other fairs are not committed to the care or the economic viability of Black visual artists. We are unique because we’re offering artists 100% of their sales, educating them on their pricing, and providing financial literacy workshops. We arrange studio visits with curators from around the country who review artworks with artists, having very intimate sessions, and talking about what they want for their careers. We explore how artists might want to introduce themselves in the Midwest and national markets and how we can together shape and influence the art industry at large to become a more equitable place.
MB: Being a Butter artist means you’re in a relationship with us for at least eight months. For many of these artists, that has turned into almost four years because some are returning; some artists have completely changed the trajectory of their lives, as they’re now doing their art full time.
We have put together a curatorial team, which changes every year for the health and sake of the artists, that scours the country, thinks about and sees what Black visual artists want to express right now, and pulls those artists together. We have sessions with them that range from discussing who they are, what they want, how Butter can help provide that, how the market can help provide that, and finally, how the industry can provide that—even if it’s something we need to create.
AB: We offer many resources throughout the process—studio visits, for example. If there’s production costs, we’re looking to assist with that. We’re also helping these artists develop commerce outside of their art on the walls: we’re putting their art on products like t-shirts, puzzles, and coffee mugs. These things serve to expand their offerings into multiple revenue streams.
There’s also a financial literacy component. We partner with banking institutions, so when artists receive larger payments, they can think through how to treat it responsibly. It’s not about waiting for the next Butter; it’s about using these earnings as an investment in themselves and their art to propel sustainable careers as arts entrepreneurs.
MB: We typically sell a certain amount of artwork over the four days of the fair. The following months of the fair almost always double that amount in sales as people discover artists and their artwork that was sold at the fair. We effectively become brokers and we’re matchmaking all of these artists to other opportunities everywhere.
“You could really tell they care about the artists,” Tony said. “It’s not no weird façade stuff.”
I’ve worked as an arts journalist for nearly a decade. When I was a staff reporter at the Los Angeles Times, much of my job entailed covering the city’s most powerful cultural institutions and some of their glam art and entertainment events. Sitting front and center at a touring ballet performance, at a premiere, or even an event like Frieze Los Angeles with my notebook and recorder in hand, I had a recurring, jarring experience. As a young Black woman working these events, I often received deep stares from others in attendance—typically white, wealthy, and older—whose eyes not-so-subtly communicated, “How did you get in here?”
If I, as a journalist at a respected newspaper, could feel so uncomfortable, then what did that mean for the artists of color within these systems and the communities of color who have been historically excluded?
From the first moments of stepping into Butter, I was welcomed and felt my subconscious guard go down. During the VIP opening night party, yes, the crowd skewed well-dressed, possibly moneyed, artsy folks. The audience morphed throughout the weekend, though. On Friday morning, large groups of school-aged children roamed through the space taking in art like Clayton Singleton’s large-scale acrylic work, “Rags To Riches,” a vibrant painting of a Black man in a flowing, royal blue durag, and Asari Aibangbee’s “Improvisation Blooming,” a colorful, textured tufted rug inspired by Alice Coltrane. As the morning turned to afternoon and the weekend, all types of community members filtered in and out of the art showcase warehouse.
It was heartening to see the area transformed not just with visual art but with poetry, food, music, and performances. Unlike the stuffy art events I’ve attended for work, Butter felt welcoming to art collectors, first-time buyers, art admirers, and people who just wanted to have a good time.
In my interview with founders Alan and Malina Bacon, I asked about Butter’s marketing tagline, “America’s Equitable Fine Art Fair.” Alan explained that the motto was inspired by a New York Times article about the fair. With hundreds of art fairs in the US alone, it would be difficult to ascertain if Butter is the only equitable fair. However, there’s no denying that their model of centering Black artists—allowing them to retain 100% of sales profits, and supporting them along the way through paying for their travel and accommodations and financial literacy workshops—is a rare and radical model within the traditional art world.
I’m also deeply interested in other efforts that ensure artists are recognized as workers deserving of a living wage. For instance, Springboard for the Arts’ guaranteed income program has supported Minnesota artists with $500-a-month, no-strings-attached payments for 18-month cycles. I wonder if there can be some crossover—for example, Butter could offer stipends in addition to sales proceeds for the artists it selects each year.
During the interview, Malina described Butter as the “Black Basel” of the Midwest. While invoking Basel might suggest exclusivity, the Bacons have effectively leveraged their marketing skills and connections to cultural institutions in Indianapolis, using the power they have to force change in the city and introduce Black artists to the global art market. It’s clear they are seriously invested in the economic vitality of Black artists.
Most importantly, every artist I spoke to at the fair gushed about their experience selling work at Butter. They shared how encouraged and supported they felt, and how unusual that is as a working artist.
South Bend, Indiana-based pop artist Terrible Tony talked to me in front of his work—a painting inspired by The College Dropout album by Kanye West. Now in his second year selling work at Butter, he called the experience an honor.
“You could really tell they care about the artists,” Tony said. “It’s not no weird façade stuff.”
NOTES
1. Charlotte Burns & Julia Halperin, “Exactly How Underrepresented Are Women and Black American Artists in the Art World?,” Artnet, 2022.
2. Burns & Halperin, "Exactly How Underrepresented."
3. Daniella Sanader, "What Sold at Art Basel Paris,” Artsy, 2024.
1. Charlotte Burns & Julia Halperin, “Exactly How Underrepresented Are Women and Black American Artists in the Art World?,” Artnet, 2022.
2. Burns & Halperin, "Exactly How Underrepresented."
3. Daniella Sanader, "What Sold at Art Basel Paris,” Artsy, 2024.