Two 4-year students of ICEF, Vlad Dukhanin and Anna Oorzhak, came up with the idea of a charity art sale to promote emerging artists and got it funded by ICEF. Here’s Vlad with details of how they got the event started, what makes art management an exciting career, and how art managers can benefit from financial education.
As someone who is interested in arts management, I thought it might be a good idea to start an art event at HSE, and this led me to the idea of a charity artwork auction. HSE runs a student project contest, where we can pitch our ideas and get some of them funded. We thought this might be our chance and applied. The jury liked our project and we got it financially supported by ICEF. The winning projects are provided with a venue. Ours was the HSE Cultural Center.
We designed this artwork sale to be hosted like a gallery viewing and an auction to support young artists by dividing the proceeds between them and our partner, Beacon House Charity Foundation.
We set up a dedicated page and made an open call announcement to get submissions for the contest, sale and auction, and we got the information spread through art-related platforms that are in use by the emerging artists. As a result, we received around 160 submissions, which were then reviewed by our art curators who finally shortlisted artworks by fifteen emerging artists.
On the promotion side, the artists did benefit greatly from the event, as it produced a beautifully printed catalogue and a network of potentially promising partners. Alongside with fees, the contributing artists got an important record to add to their portfolios. Some of the funds raised went to the charity foundation, and there was a large-scale media campaign on contemporary art as charity fundraiser that helped our partner to highlight itself and its activities. 60% of the auction proceeds were donated to charity.
Beyond that, the event increased our cooperation with HSE Art and Design School and its art gallery, which we hope will continue in the future. We had HSE ART GALLERY director, Daria Kuznetsova, helping us to select the artworks for the auction, and there is a plan to use HSE Art and Design School as a venue for this year’s sale of artworks by young artists. A portion of its proceeds will similarly be donated to charity.
My internships in consulting, data analytics and FMCG made me realize none of those industries were best fit for my ambitions. I would like to deal with something more abstract, like art, and be able to apply the skills I learned at ICEF to managing art-like events organizationally and on the financial side. Art is really where I want to be professionally. I like how things have been working out for me so far, and I think I understand the target audience for artworks. Many of the people who are buying contemporary art in Russia are, in fact, successful financiers or consultants with ample affluence to collect art. Some of them earned their degrees from ICEF, so in this sense arts and finance can form a perfect union, thriving through art management.
Management basically works the same way no matter what industry you’re in. You just need to have a good understanding of the line of work you are managing
I think I’ll spend my first year after graduation working in art management and will then go abroad to do a master’s. Some schools abroad offer arts management degree programmes that are really strong and come with exciting experience in international arts market. So, my plan for next year is to be in for-profit galleries gaining more experience and promoting my own art projects.
