Curator Britt Salvesen, of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is the first of 100 curators who will step up to the plate over the next 100 days—one curator per day—for Saatchi Online’s exhibition, “100 Curators 100 Days.” Billed as an effort to promote up-and-coming artists by the six-year-old online exhibition space, the show presents a selection of works, 10 per day, selected by each curator from the 60,000 artists exhibited on Saatchi Online. But what’s different about this online exhibition is that it serves just as well as a kind of college “pig book” of curators around the globe who you should get to know a little better. Do you like independent curator Ana Finel Honigman? Then you may also like the work she has selected. Well, that seems to be the premise anyway. And we’d be surprised if it doesn’t get people clicking.
Even the layout of the show seems to be taking its cues from Facebook with the curator’s image to the left and the artworks presented, slightly larger and in two neat columns to the right. And don’t worry, if you scroll down through the images, the image of the curator, and her bio, will scroll down with you.
Rebecca Wilson, the director of the Saatchi Gallery, selected the curators, a global group that includes Eric C. Shiner, director and curator at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Catherine Hug of the Kunsthalle Vienna and, from here in New York, Cecilia Alemani, the curator and director of High Line Art and Clara Drummond, assistant curator of the Morgan Library & Museum.
The initiative is the first exhibition by Saatchi Online’s new CEO, Margo Spiritus. “Our mission at Saatchi Online is to provide all artists with the tools, opportunity and support to have sustainable careers and to make a living selling their art,” said Ms. Spiritus in a statement. “By providing a global platform visited by art lovers from over 190 countries each month, we are able to connect consumers and curators alike who would otherwise never have the opportunity to discover their work.”
And connect they will. Ms. Salvesen has selected easily digestible works of collage, digital art and photography that include an assemblage by Jason Blackmore of the U.K., a photograph by Patricia Eichert of Belgium, a digital work by Annika Finne of New York and a painting by Cécile Van Hanja of the Netherlands, in a range of prices beginning at $49 for a print to $7,500 for a painting. And if Ms. Salvesen’s tastes aren’t quite yours, stick it out. There are 99 days—and 99 curators each with their own tastes—to go.
