APRIL BEY STUDIO |

EQUITY IN COLLECTING

The Equity in Collecting Program is a program from April Bey Studio aimed at creating access and inclusion for potential art collectors who are routinely unable to collect art and support artists of their interest due to being from a marginalized background. Marginalized populations are groups and communities that experience discrimination and exclusion (social, political, and economic) because of unequal power relationships across economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions.

This program will act as a supplemental aide to support equity within the art gallery system of selling and collecting art—it provides a discount to bring artworks down in price for collectors to afford who otherwise would have no access. The works are priced as they should be in accordance with the artists worth and market value, but the supplemental discount will act as a leveling agent to provide access to potential collectors otherwise excluded. Potential collectors from marginalized backgrounds are defined here as:

Identifying as Black, African, African American or from the African Diaspora

Identifying as a woman of color

Identifying as a person of color

Identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or gender expansive, queer and/or questioning, intersex, asexual, and two-spirit (LGBTQIA2S+)

Indigenous or the descendants of the peoples who inhabited the Americas, the Pacific, and parts of Asia and Africa prior to European colonization

Operating as a single parent

A person with disabilities

Recipient of WIC, SNAP, CalFresh or any other state or federal assistance program

Emerging artists in any discipline/field 

Emerging curators

Public service employees (educators and classified staff at state or community colleges, university/CC art gallery curators)

Any other specific economic marginalization not mentioned above

INSTRUCTIONS: To participate in this program, potential collectors must complete an attestation which places them on a waitlist and sign an agreement upon sale which includes an anti-flipping (reselling) agreement. Please review the information below:

  • ARTWORK PRICING:

    • EQUITY COLLECTOR $600.00+Shipping (90% Discount)

    • SPONSORING: $6,000.00 + Shipping

      *Sponsoring Collectors qualify for the Equity in Collecting Program but choose to purchase artwork at full cost. Excess funds go back into the Equity in Collecting Program.

NEXT STEP INFORMATION FOR THOSE WHO MADE THE WAITLIST:

  • With each drop, galleries will reach out with available works.

  • Everyone who made the waitlist will get a work but if you want an exact work you need to be prompt when responding to galleries, in all regards.

  • If you did not secure an artwork for this round your name will be automatically remain on the waitlist with love and gratitude for your patience where you will be first up on the next round!

CURRENT ROUND OPEN: ROUND V

THE ATLANTICAN PORTAL PLANTS

This work lives inside Atlantica, my imagined planet where Black beauty is sacred, cultivated, and powerful. A manicured hand emerges from a dense cluster of calathea leaves. It is not decoration. It is the harvest.The hands are the fruit, the prize worth checking for ripeness. The leaves cradle and protect the form like something rare and intentional. Calatheas move with light, and here they guard what has been grown with care. The embellished nails are ritual, labor, glamour, and armor all at once—BLACK OPPULANCE. They signal that beauty is not passive. It is produced. It is tended. It is defended. Working in textile allows the image to hold memory and softness while carrying the weight of the future. Black femme aesthetics are not fleeting. They are fertile, futuristic, and fully in bloom when they decide to be.

EQUITY IN COLLECTING ROUND V APPLICATION