Like most artists or writers, organizations often have a few big questions that consume them for their whole lives. POWarts is an organization like this.
In 2008, Sara Kay, now a director at White Cube in London, founded POWarts to help women build careers in the arts. But the remit of POWarts was more specific. You could boil it down to three questions:
How do art and business fit together?
How are individual and collective success related?
And, most importantly, how do leadership and generosity co-exist?
Back in the Duran-Duran era, women wore Working Girl power ties (and Reeboks) and fought their way into a man’s world.
But POWarts comes out of the belief that communities of kind, thoughtful, inventively hard-working people can champion both individual and collective success.
A network of generosity creates a space in which to help others in an open-ended way that can only—untidily and indirectly—come back around and help you too.
But skills and business knowledge are important. Understanding business is a tool that makes space for artists’ lives, for funded exhibitions, for successful sales, for non-profit financial soundness, and, eventually, for whole careers across the arts.
From 2008 to 2012, POWarts began creating programming about all the things in the arts besides art: fund management, career paths, tax advice, managing oneself…. Then the organization spent more than a year on hiatus. Its founder was called to London for work.
So we decided that it was time to create an organization with a whole steering committee. We wanted to design a system that could keep going, beyond its founder and its original relaunchers.
We warmly invite you to celebrate the relaunch. And please reach out and let us know if you would like to get involved!
In honor of our relaunch, POWarts is also offering a special reduced membership—join now through June 10th and annual dues are only $50 instead of the usual $85. Sign up here.
Watch this space for more updates on our programs for this summer and fall!
Ars longa, vita brevis,
Amy Whitaker
President, POWarts
And the POWarts Steering Committee:
Meredith Blechman, Artspace
Sara Bodinson, The Museum of Modern Art
Elisabeth Conroy, Edward W. Hayes P.C.
Emilie Faure, White Cube
Molly Kurzius, The Jewish Museum
Laura McCarthy, Sotheby’s Inc.
Alexandra Schwartz, Montclair Art Museum
Li Jun Xian, Emigrant Bank Fine Art Finance - Treasurer
Sara Kay, White Cube - Founder and member ex-officio
POWarts is a volunteer-run, membership-funded organization and a registered 501(c)3.