From Wednesday, Dec. 6 to Monday, Dec. 11, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts will be hosting its 26th annual December Sale, an event that collects the work of any current SMFA student, alumni or faculty and displays them in a massive exhibition.
The sale usually amasses around 4,000 works from 800 artists worldwide, drawing on any talent that has been associated with the school, including everyone from freshmen students to donated works by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg (more on the rich and famous later). From this pool of artists and work, December Sale amasses what is now the largest art sale in the Northeast. Roughly 40 percent of the artists are students, 50 percent are alumni and the remaining 10 percent are outside donors like Rauschenberg, Richard Serra and Cecily Brown. Though a large part of the sale is student work without a reputation behind it, the Sale's grand total last year was over $1 million of artwork sold, priced from $2 to $10,000.
From SMFA freshman to professionals artists, the December Sale has a unique array to offer both collectors and art enthusiasts alike
The sale itself is an incredible opportunity for the artists; they have a chance to publicly display their work to a wide audience, set their own prices, and have their work professionally hung in the three areas that make up the show.
The event is well known in the Boston area and attracts everyone from collectors looking for a good price on a new emerging artist, to families simply looking for attractive, well-priced student work for their homes. The SMFA takes 50 percent of each sale (a standard gallery commission) as a contribution to their student scholarship program. This makes pieces donated by artists like Rauschenberg, renowned for his collaged post-modern works in the 1970s and 1980s, Richard Serra and Ellsworth Kelly particularly helpful as well as attractive to those attending: Each print of their work goes for upwards of $3,000.
The more expensive and well-known artists are separated into a gallery of their own, the Grossman Gallery. Also included in the room are the large beanbag chairs covered in faux-grass material of faculty member Barbara Gallucci. This variety of notoriety from famous to obscure - as well as the fact that every single piece is for sale - is what makes the Sale so unique. Nowhere else does work by a freshman SMFA student hang next to a large-scale photo from Lalla Essaydi, well known in Chelsea group shows for her provocative Muslim imagery.
The sale doesn't just offer pretty pictures
The range of the sale is virtually unlimited. Every student is invited to submit four works for the show, two framed and two unframed. However, this doesn't limit the medium selection. Also available for sale is anything from T-shirts to prints, sculptures, large oil paintings and even a neon light piece, "Caribbean" by Ann Deluty.
In one section of the Grossman Gallery, there is a large glass counter complete with mirrors and display racks for the jewelry section of the sale. This is largely student work, but even prices here reach up to $3,500 for one red and black gemstone necklace. The pieces that visitors will see upon entering the show have been selected by the curators as those that will sell most quickly. Pieces are cycled off and onto walls, through different galleries, or into the copious amounts of rack storage. Not every piece submitted to the sale will be shown, but the pieces first displayed are known to go very quickly, replaced by another round as soon as they are sold. The Sale set-up allows for mass exposure as well as recognition of student artwork
In addition to the wall space throughout the rooms of the show, the lobby racks also contain easily accessible student work, priced to sell fast. The average price of a piece in the show is $500, but these racks hold the smaller works, and cheaper, younger students' submissions.
New this year is an award system. Different luminaries from around Boston come to the show and pick their favorite pieces. This includes anyone from gallery owners to celebrity chef Ming Tsai. (To satisfy your curiosity, the chef's favorite was a grey and purple abstract piece separated into horizontal sections.)
The December Sale at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts lasts from 12 to 8 p.m. Dec. 6 and 7 and 12 to 6 p.m. Dec. 8 through 11, so go and catch the show early to get a look at some of the best work coming out of the art students of Boston, and to maybe catch an early work of the "Next Big One."
Joanna Soltan, the Curator at the SMFA, enlightens Daily reporters
Joanna Soltan, the Curator at the Museum School, was still in the midst of setting up the December Sale for its opening Dec. 6 when the Tufts Daily asked her some questions.
Tufts Daily: How long have you been the curator for the December Sale and have you ever curated other exhibits or sales similar to this?
Joanna Soltan: No, nothing similar to the December sale. You know we are a non-profit [organization] so all of our other exhibitions focus on either showing student work or invited artists, but never with the idea of selling. This is the only one that's a fundraiser and I've been doing it since I've been working for the museum school. I think it's been going on for about 20 years. And for me this is my fifth time doing it.
TD: What thoughts go into deciding which work to put up and when and where to hang it?
JS: We begin by doing an overall design of the space and when we create the space we already have in mind which walls will like large pieces and which will like small pieces. It depends on the viewpoint, if one can see the wall from far away or if large pieces won't work there, and so it's obvious which walls should have large pieces. Also, we make the walls different colors and then we can see a piece and immediately know what color they would go with best.
We actually rotate works quite a bit and so if we hang a piece up it'll stay for about a day or a little longer, and sometimes we think that it will look differently in another location. I hesitate to say it will look "better" because then why didn't we put it there in the first place, but sometimes I think something's magnificent and people don't see it that way when it's in one place, and so I wonder if there's somewhere else I can put it where people will see it better. We also have more pieces than space so we keep rotating to make sure that every piece gets its change to be seen.
TD: In terms of the artwork, what kind of pieces get entered, and who is allowed to put works in the sale? Are Tufts students able to submit artwork?
JS: It's work by Museum School students, alumni, faculty and affiliated artists, like artists who have been invited to give a lecture here or have been visiting or received an award from the school - anyone who has some kind of a connection to the school. I'm not sure if Tufts students can submit artwork, unless they took Museum School classes, because then you become affiliated very clearly; artists themselves become affiliated.
TD: Since this is a public sale, what do you think makes art sell, and who do you expect to come to the sale?
JS: Well, it's actually very interesting because it's such a broad audience, so different people are attracted to different things. I noticed that some people are fascinated by specific media, so we have one wall dedicated to just photography, because people love that and they don't want to have to deal with painting to get to the photography.
Many people come here looking for fabulous work that is not very expensive, sort of to discover among student work someone very talented who is not expensive yet. So that's one category. The other is people who look everywhere for student work. Another category is people who are actually looking for artists who are already successful. Some people already have somebody in their collection and are in love with them and just looking for more.
We've done a lot of advertising, so it's hard for me to say who will come, and I think it also depends on the day. On Wednesday we are open in the evening, so I think it will be a lot of young professionals, [but] on Friday probably more families. Since it's opening on Wednesday, it'll be people who aren't coming to browse, but to see the first greats before they get taken by somebody else. And then the last two days, psychologically, it'll be people who already came, fell in love with something and went home and realized they can't live without it, so they come back to see if it's still there. Or some people come back to see how much the installation has changed. There are a number of people who come back many times.
TD: Are there any trends that you're seeing in contemporary art, whether in a particular medium or style?
JS: I don't know if the December Sale is the best way to see trends because we have such a broad spectrum of artists, so I would hesitate to make a pronouncement. One thing that we saw last year was that there were more people interested in sculpture than there were good sculptural submissions. People came in saying, "I'm looking to buy a piece of sculpture, what can you show me?" And we didn't have very much sculpture, so if we had it there was a demand but there wasn't much. This year we might have more, but we're still installing, so I don't know, but we're not overwhelmed with huge amounts of sculpture.
Okay, so let's focus on the little changes. Maybe ... maybe this tiny shift is towards work that, in various ways across media, is in dialogue with nature and both those artists who do traditional work or work in a new media or in a new way, try to find the contemporary mode of relying on and being in dialogue with nature. There are two magnificent photographs that are very much about nature. There are some sculptures that are made of wood but are not a violation of the shape of the wood, but listens to its shape. There is a video that is very much a sort of song to nature. So you could say that there is a Romanticism revisited, but maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's hard to say and it's early to say.
JS: [The December Sale] is a huge adventure because it changes all of the time, so it's always an opportunity to try a new way to present the work. It's really fun for me. And every year we make it slightly bigger, this year it's bigger again, we've added a couple of walls, so it's truly a whole city of artwork. If you take classes here, you should submit work.
My advice is always not to submit the work until it's very strong so that people don't get an image of an artist in their heads and can say "Oh that one, I don't like his work," just because they were disappointed at some point. Begin to show your work when it's strong so that it seems like you were just born an absolute genius.
