- 14 hours ago
This panel on Black Art will examine the current state of the market, the challenges and opportunities facing Black artists, and the role collectors play in supporting their work. Panelists will also share insights on what it takes to create a thriving ecosystem for Black creativity.
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00:02What's going on Essence Festival? How y'all doing? Welcome back to the Swade Man stage.
00:09This is the final conversation of today, so we know we had to close it out in a special way.
00:14Collecting art is more about what's on the wall. It's about preserving culture,
00:19investing in artists, and building legacy. Today, Allen and Melina Bacon share how they're creating
00:25new opportunities for black artists and collectors through the Butter Art Fair and beyond.
00:30Please welcome Mr. Allen Bacon and Ms. Melina Bacon.
00:51So I'm really excited about this conversation because I love them.
00:54I love everything that they're doing, and they're doing it together, which is definitely beautiful.
00:59We love you too, man.
01:00We're so excited. Yes. Hello.
01:03So my first question, Allen, I'm not going to start with you, brother.
01:06When we talk about investing in black art, what does that really mean beyond just money?
01:12That's a great question, man.
01:13Beyond just money, when you think about art created by black hands, by people from the diaspora,
01:21you've got to think about the 400 years.
01:23When we landed here 400 years ago, what did they take?
01:26They took our fashion.
01:28They took our visual art.
01:29They took our spoken word, our language, our music.
01:33It's the work that we get to do, and the reason why collecting black art is important,
01:38because it's a piece of your identity.
01:39It's something that was taken from us that we get to now feed back to ourselves.
01:43So it's part of our diet, and that diet helps us remember who we are.
01:47So that's why I think just the tangible aspects of this, the economic viability of art is amazing,
01:54but what it does for identity, that's really what the blessing is to our culture.
01:58What does that mean to you, Molly?
02:00You know, I think that there is, at least for me, there has been some intimidation around the investing in
02:06black art topic.
02:07It suddenly makes us think we're having an economic conversation.
02:10Maybe I don't belong in this conversation, but we really need to realize that investing in black art is what
02:16we're doing right now.
02:17This is investing in black art.
02:19You know, the people that drove here to see this conversation, we are all investing in black art, you know,
02:24right now,
02:25and so we need to realize money as, like, a tool, you know, that we can leverage to do the
02:29things that we need to do,
02:30but what we're understanding is the power and the responsibility of who and what we're collecting.
02:36So the Bacons are also the co-founders of the Butter Art Fair.
02:39Yeah, so if you all were to find yourself in Indianapolis in September, what's the-
02:43Labor Day weekend, September 3rd through the 6th in Indianapolis, be there.
02:47Make sure y'all check it out.
02:48It's a beautiful, beautiful event.
02:50Can you talk to me about why did you guys decide to create the Butter Art Fair,
02:54and what's the plan and the goal for that particular event?
02:58If I can go maybe macro or higher altitude, we are the founders of two machines.
03:07We built a nonprofit machine based in Indianapolis called Gang Gang to incubate visionary creative ideas,
03:15ideas that leverage the arts for more equitable cities.
03:18And then we built Studio, a boutique creative agency, to scale ideas that Gang Gang has developed,
03:26and Butter Fine Art Fair is one of the ideas that Gang Gang has incubated that is now at the
03:30point of full development.
03:32We've now introduced Butter LA.
03:34We're introducing the online shop this summer.
03:36Like, Butter has been a proof point in a case study toward our work.
03:42Yeah, and Butter's our art fair that centers the care and the economic viability of black visual artists.
03:48So, you know, what Butter does is, I mean, if you guys know, like, Miami Art Basel,
03:52it puts, you know, our art in that type of fine art context.
03:56And then what it also does, it challenges the dichotomy between value and worth.
04:01So value, we know, you know, what our work is and just, like, how much it means,
04:06but the worth is a cost associated to that value.
04:09So a lot of times in our missions and our art that we create, there's a gap between value and
04:14worth.
04:14So what Butter actually helps to do is to kind of close that gap.
04:18So where artists are not only receiving, like, what they deserve for the artwork,
04:23but they get 100% of the sales and proceeds.
04:26So that's what makes, you know, Butter different from other art fairs, from, you know, from other, you know,
04:31like expositions where, you know, they're taking 40%, 50%, you know, of the proceeds from the artists.
04:36So how can we think about art from an equitable perspective,
04:40but also from a reparational perspective, as we want to feed our culture
04:43and just give back what we deserve and what we earn?
04:47100%, y'all.
04:48I don't know if y'all heard that, but 100%.
04:50That is unprecedented.
04:52Yo, and over, like, so we've had Butter, this will be the sixth Butter this year in Indianapolis,
04:57but over five years we've raised over $1.5 million to go back to Artists' Hands and Households.
05:02So that's the impact of what, you know, our art is and just initiatives like this.
05:07So with the art fair, what's your guys' process when you're choosing which artists and which stories to highlight?
05:14That's the fun part.
05:15We get to help select curators that become a part of a rotating annual curatorial team
05:22that selects artists from all over the world, and we have a commitment to 50% of the exhibiting artists
05:28being from Indiana.
05:30My role gets to be, again, like, broader than that,
05:34and I get to think of the message that Butter wants to share for the year
05:37and then translate that to the curators, and that is how, you know, they're selecting,
05:42like, which voices can represent that message.
05:45So talk to me about the Butter LA experience, and I was able to attend that as well
05:49to being able to branch out to another city.
05:52How has that experience been, and what's the goal, I guess, for expansion in the future?
05:57Oh, I would say Butter LA was affirming.
06:01You know, we are, we absolutely, at least I suffer from a little Hoosier humility,
06:05and bringing it, bringing butter, you know, this idea that we've grown, you know, from, you know, seedling.
06:12You know, we've incubated this in the Midwest, in the middle of Indiana.
06:15You know, we're doing arts work in the middle of Indiana.
06:17And so bringing that to LA and for the Los Angeles market to say,
06:21we needed this, this is good, how have you been doing this, how can we support this?
06:25It was, it was affirming, it was life-giving.
06:29And we realized that the artists need support everywhere, you know,
06:33so the issues that are existing in Indianapolis and, you know, in our market are across artists.
06:39It's across us.
06:40Everywhere we are, we need to be supportive.
06:43And it was groovy, man, just, like, to see the mission spread, you know, in such a beautiful way
06:48where whenever you had this density of our people together, I mean, you get this feeling of, like,
06:54just joy and affirmation and just that manifests, especially, I mean,
06:58even what we're experiencing here at Essence.
07:00So, I mean, it's the same type of situation no matter where you go, like, where two or three are
07:05gathered,
07:06you know, that's kind of like, you know, just the beautiful nature of our people, man.
07:09So just coming to LA and just having LA embrace Butter, embrace the mission,
07:14and having the same type of, you know, feeling and emotion behind it is just really, really special.
07:19But that's, you know, because we're special people, you know.
07:22Shout out to the team on the ground, the local community that invited Butter to happen there,
07:27that embraced Butter, and that made it happen, yeah.
07:30Jack Forbes, Khalil Kinsey, our co-chairs, yeah.
07:34Jonathan Coleman, I want to ask you, how do you feel about the Indianapolis art scene?
07:39Because it's a place that I never envisioned going, but now that I've went, I want to go all the
07:44time.
07:44You know, that makes sense.
07:45So how would you describe the art scene in that city?
07:47Yeah, I think, like, Indianapolis is like a lot of cities, man.
07:50And if you think of, like, what happened to Tulsa, Oklahoma, I mean, that has happened to our people across
07:55the entire nation
07:55in different, you know, time periods.
07:57So Indianapolis was like a very big, you know, hustling and bustling.
08:01Like, Indiana Avenue was the area in Indianapolis that was decimated and redlined.
08:06But we had, like, West Montgomery and, like, jazz greats and historians, like, come from this place.
08:11So, like, you know, having the opportunity to do this work now just recontextualizes what was.
08:16So, like, almost like, you know, that which was then is now.
08:19So we get to kind of continue that spirit.
08:21But there's a lot of history in Indianapolis.
08:23I mean, shout out to Bevy Fates, you know, who hit yesterday, you know, from Indiana.
08:27So I think, you know, for us, it just gives an opportunity to talk about our history
08:31but put it in the current context that we're still creating and we're still being artists.
08:36You know, there's not arts infrastructure in Indiana and Indianapolis.
08:41You know, if we want to have a career in the arts, it's not that easy.
08:44And so the artists there are doing it because they have to, because they're creators,
08:49because this is what we do, because we're doing it in spite of not having, you know, infrastructure for us.
08:53And so that's the kind of grit mentality and the hustlers that we have, you know, in our creative scene
08:58in India.
09:00So I wanted to actually briefly speak about you two.
09:02Beautiful union.
09:03Again, I love them so much.
09:04They're just amazing.
09:06How have you been able to balance the business with the personal?
09:09The business with the personal.
09:11You know, since you guys are married, you know, you're spending all these time together.
09:15Alancing the business.
09:16First off, we got five kids.
09:18Five teenagers.
09:19Well, one's not a teenager anymore.
09:20Yeah, four in college.
09:22That is our actual life.
09:23Yeah, four in college.
09:24One, there was an HBCU panel a couple seconds ago.
09:27So one's going to Hampton, you know what I mean?
09:28So that's like really life.
09:30H-U.
09:31Butter and Gang Gang is good.
09:33But, like, you know, parents is the, you know.
09:34It's bittersweet working together, you know, because we can do so much more because we're always together.
09:40And, like, we can go faster because we can always riff.
09:44We can always ideate.
09:45And we can cut through, you know, we can cut through, I won't say bad ideas, but we can have
09:52real conversations.
09:53You know, and so I would say it's bittersweet because we can work more.
09:57But we're really working on the balance.
10:01We're taking days.
10:02We're staying in NOLA an extra day.
10:06So there are so many artists, so many museums, so many galleries throughout history that have come to be.
10:13It may be overwhelming for someone wanting to get in the art collecting game.
10:16What would be the first step that they would need to take if they want to start collecting black art?
10:21Man, I would say it's just like anything else, man, whether that's, like, food or music.
10:26You know, buy what you love.
10:27You know, you love a particular dish or a, you know, culinary experience.
10:31I mean, you gravitate towards that.
10:33You like a specific genre of music, whether that's, you know, gospel or hip-hop or jazz or whatever it
10:39is.
10:39I think art, visual art has the same type of, you know, presentation.
10:43So I think it's almost just like, you know, just gravitate to what you love.
10:46And that would kind of guide you through what that process is.
10:49And it's beautiful to collect all forms, you know, of art from our people.
10:54I think it's, there doesn't have to be an exorbitant amount of money to begin with.
11:01Like, again, money is a tool, so we're not talking about that.
11:05But, yeah, I think it's about buying within budget and buying for forever, about quality and about what you love
11:13and what can, what you can live with forever.
11:16So I have a lot of artist friends and artist acquaintances, and a lot of the up-and-coming ones,
11:21the big issue they face is pricing their work.
11:25So I wanted to ask you, too, what should artists know about protecting their work and make sure that they
11:30get paid with their worth?
11:32I mean, we talk about this a lot, you know, especially at Gang Gang.
11:35We are relentlessly advocating for artist worth, and I think what I've realized is that the mindset has to be
11:41there first.
11:42You can't price what you can't name, you know, and so if you're not realizing the power in your art,
11:47it's always going to be this struggle.
11:50And so, like, the technical parts we can figure out.
11:52I feel like pricing, preservation, you know, all the technicalities of preserving artwork are, you know, things to learn and
12:00discuss.
12:01But the mindset is the hardest part.
12:02Like, we have to know that we'll never be paid back for what we've contributed, you know, A.
12:07And, yeah, we have to know our worth first.
12:10Yeah, and then there's always the market, and then there's the maker.
12:13So the market you can kind of figure out, but the maker is, like, yourself.
12:16So, I mean, that esteem and that dignity is always, like, what we like to feed first, and that kind
12:21of, like, almost, like, leads, like, what the market decision would be.
12:24And one quick, like, a simple, like, very tactical piece of advice for pricing artwork.
12:29How much would you be okay with this leaving you for?
12:32You know, like, when we make things, like, this is ours.
12:35Like, it's very special and precious to us.
12:37What would it, how could we be okay with this not belonging to me anymore?
12:41And whatever that is, that's what it is.
12:44So what does the word or phrase black art mean to y'all?
12:47Because there's this misconception where when you hear black art, you think of portraits with black bodies.
12:53You know, so there's a kind of misconception.
12:55Like, what does the word or phrase black art mean to you?
12:59I mean, I think that it has, when we say black art, I think it makes us think that we're
13:06talking about something over there.
13:07Like, it's something niche.
13:09And it doesn't describe everybody sitting right here.
13:12And so I actually think it's very limiting.
13:14We're talking about creations made by black hands.
13:17What are you talking about?
13:17That's every single thing that we're looking at.
13:19Every single thing that we have on.
13:20And so when we say black art, I feel like you're talking about something, like, you're making it seem like
13:25it's cornered or othered.
13:27And so we need to, like, frame it correctly and talk about the master that we are, the masters that
13:32we are, and the creations that come out of that.
13:35That's black art.
13:37And, like, you know, our art isn't monolithic.
13:39So I think there's, like, terms that are, like, placed on us that helps, like, put us in some type
13:43of, like, constrictive box.
13:45But then, you know, we get to also challenge things like black, which is also a construct, right?
13:50That is continually, like, perpetuated.
13:52So I think this art aspect helps us even think outside of, you know, all the contrasts that we're faced
13:57with.
13:57So, you know, black art is almost like, you know, this is art created by, you know, black hands, right?
14:02Yeah, yeah.
14:03So you spoke about it earlier about buying what you like as a collector, man.
14:08But I wanted to ask you, if a person is on a budget, what advice would you give that person
14:15wanting to be a collector?
14:16You already are.
14:18I think that, like, just like with investing in black art, we have been collecting because that is what we
14:23do.
14:24We support each other.
14:25Like, when we buy our friends' earrings, when I buy Kim's designs, I am supporting black art.
14:30You know, like, I'm investing already.
14:32And so, like, know that you're already a collector because we've been doing this.
14:36We've been trained to do this.
14:38It's how we support our culture.
14:39And so, again, like, reframe it, re-narrate it so that it comes back to us and there's not this
14:44barrier between us and, like, the investment world or the collecting world.
14:48We're already collecting.
14:49You're collecting, you know?
14:51Like, so keep doing it.
14:53Again, use money as the tool and scale that however you need to do it.
14:57But you already are collecting.
14:58Yeah, and that's a word.
15:00I mean, art doesn't have to be as expensive as what we think of it.
15:04So just, like, these barriers that we have when it comes to, like, art.
15:07But, you know, we buy music every day.
15:09I mean, we're buying clothes, I mean, every day.
15:11So I think how can visual art also be in the same type of conversation as something that's also so
15:17natural, you know, for us?
15:19What inspired y'all to get in the art space in the first place?
15:21And what was the impetus of that?
15:23I think, again, us, the people around me, what I saw, my friends and family, my church community, everybody around
15:31me were creators.
15:33You know, they were, we didn't know to call ourselves artists, but we were singers and we were dancers and
15:38we were designers.
15:39We were making everything.
15:41And I was, like, after college, I realized, why is there not, why are there not jobs for us?
15:45Like, what are we supposed to go do now?
15:46Why does this have to become a hobby and we have to go find a real job?
15:50And so that doesn't, that doesn't make any sense to me.
15:52And so I'm still figuring that out.
15:54I'm still creating infrastructure and trying to come up with both telling society we didn't do it right and then
16:00building it myself at the same time.
16:03I'm an artist, man.
16:04So just being a musician just kind of helps me, like, see the space from a very specific and genuine,
16:12like, perspective.
16:13So I think just the ability that we had to create platforms where we can have these conversations.
16:18And just even this conversation alone I think is important to just how we view art and just, like, the
16:22future of art as well.
16:26So, I think with social media and the digital age, you know, art has become really interesting as of late,
16:33I would say.
16:34Where do you see the future of black art going?
16:38Under attack.
16:39Under attack.
16:40Again, we could talk about, like, the technicalities and what the artists are doing and the revenue streams and all
16:45of that.
16:45But we are under attack and especially the arts and especially the things that we make.
16:50And so, once again, like, the future of it is us protecting ourselves and what we create and the people
16:56who are creating it.
16:57We have to, like, that we have to advocate because the future is not supporting.
17:03And no matter what has happened, like, in our history, you know, our art has always, you know, existed and
17:10continues to exist because we continue to exist.
17:12So we'll continue to create.
17:14We'll continue to make clothes and to have, you know, to make languages and visual art and music, just all
17:20the things just because, you know, that's within us.
17:22So I think that's the importance of, you know, what is just, like, innate with this, like, what else can
17:27you do with it than to celebrate it, to amplify it, to help produce more of it, and to help
17:32encourage it in every corner.
17:34So, as I said earlier, we were at the 2026 Essence Festival.
17:38This is you guys' first experience, you said.
17:40Yes.
17:41So I wanted to ask you, how has that been and how do you feel about the city of New
17:44Orleans?
17:46Man, it's super rich, super warm, super welcoming.
17:49Everybody's really nice.
17:50Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:51Lots to eat.
17:52I'm excited to have dinner.
17:54And you can feel the culture, man.
17:56And I think, you know, Essence, you know, gets a – it feels like it's intertwined with the city in
18:04a way that everything is natural.
18:07You feel like you can probably come here all the time and have this same type of experience, you know,
18:12which is cool.
18:13So I think, you know, for us, I mean, we're looking for, you know, places of safety and to be
18:17comfortable and to be yourself.
18:18And I think, you know, Essence and, you know, Nola does a good job at presenting that for sure.
18:25Labor Day weekend, Indianapolis.
18:28Get your tickets.
18:28Butter Art Fair.
18:30Make sure y'all go.
18:31Y'all give a round of applause for Allen and Melina Bacon.
18:34Thank you so much.
18:36Essence Festival.
18:36Thank you, O'Connor.
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