Fund the work directly

Support runs through Buy Me a Coffee, which handles the payment. You can give once, in any amount, or set up a monthly level. Neither requires an account here, and one-off support is just as useful — a single contribution is not a lesser version of a subscription.

These are works in progress. Early access is a promise about things that do not exist yet — the features are being built and there is no date on any of them. The monthly dispatch is the one thing on that list that starts immediately, because it is an account of the work rather than a feature of the site. Support the work because you want the archive to exist, not because of what a tier gets you. If you would rather wait until there is more to show, that is a reasonable thing to do and we would rather you did that than feel misled.

Institutional support is coming and will look different — cross-market views and archival reports for organizations that can pay for research. That is not built, so it is not for sale. For institutional support information, see For Institutions.

Artist memberships are free, but artists are always welcome to support this project using any of the options above.

Research. We hold 131 market editions going back to 1922, but artist lists for only a handful of those years. Finding records and getting them into our system is slow, skilled work, and it is the most urgent item on our to-do list: every year that passes, some of this information stops being recoverable.

More people to help artists update their records. Reviewing identity matches, spellings, affiliations and other profile information is the biggest bottleneck in this process so far. A budget to pay qualified reviewers would be game-changing.

An archival office. A climate-controlled office would allow us to safely retain more records for processing, and provide an on-site location for reviewers to work and artists to bring their records for digitizing.

Images. There is not one photograph of a single work in this directory. For a visual field, that is the largest gap between what this is and what it should be.

Fiscal sponsorship. If your organization sponsors projects like this one, or you can introduce us to one that does, that unblocks everything else on this page. Contact us.

Archives. If you hold old market programs, catalogues, artist lists or photographs, we want to hear about them. We intend to borrow them and send them back to you, so please still consider reaching out if you are not ready to part with your physical records.

Corrections. If you know this field, tell us what we have got wrong. Any free member can do this from the site — every record has a “Something looks wrong?” form at the bottom of it. If you would rather not make an account, write to info@nativeart.directory instead. Both options will get you in touch with a real person.