What we intend to build
Roadmap
Everything we mean to build, what stage it is at, and what is blocking the pieces that are stuck.
This list is public because a directory asking artists to trust it with their careers should say what it plans to do with them. Nothing here is a promise with a date attached. Where something is blocked, the blocker is named.
Live now
Cross-market exhibition histories for every artist on record
Booth placement traced year over year
Search and filter by market, medium, nation, breadth and trajectory
Market pages with classifications, leadership and edition history
Award winners, mapped to profiles — all 679, done
Next
Claiming your record
An artist verifies they are who the record says, and the record becomes theirs to edit — biography, website, contact details, corrections. Free to artists, permanently. Duplicate records have been resolved, so no two people can claim the same artist.
Blocked by: Email deliverability, so a claim decision actually reaches the artist who made it.
Artist IDs and cards
A private identifier issued on claim and renewed yearly, with a physical card. Proof of a documented exhibition record that an artist carries rather than reconstructs.
Images
Artist-uploaded photographs of work, sized for the web so the directory stays fast on a phone at a market with bad signal. There is currently not one image of a single work here.
Corrections and removal, self-service
Today a correction is an email to us. It should be a form on your own record, and a removal should not require a conversation.
Planned
Historical rosters, 1922–2023
111 of 118 market editions are live, with the rest on the way. We hold artist lists for only the most recent. The rest exist on paper, in boxes, and in the memories of people who ran these markets.
Blocked by: Funding, and access from the organizations that hold the paper.
Community-led review, paid
Reviewers from the community check identity matches, generational suffixes, spellings and affiliations — the judgements a machine should not be making alone. This work is paid. Volunteer labour from the people whose records these are would be its own kind of extraction.
Curators list
A register of curators, writers and researchers working in the field, and a route for consulting work to reach them when institutions ask us for names.
How an artist works, at a glance
A visual distinction on the artists list between artists who show at markets, artists represented by a gallery, and artists working independently of both. The field is computed and ready; it stays out of the interface until gallery representation and claiming give it something true to say.
Blocked by: Gallery representation and claiming. Today every public record computes as a market artist, so the distinction would be decoration.
Gallery representation
Which gallery represents an artist, shown as a current fact rather than buried in an exhibition list. The field exists in the database and is empty until artists fill it.
Collaborations and kinship
Artists who work together, and — if the community votes for it — family and mentorship lines. Both parties confirm before either profile shows it.
Blocked by: The artist vote. How kinship is recorded is not ours to decide.
The public archive
208 written accounts of individual market years, from the first Southwest Indian Fair through the pandemic seasons. Held back until the records have been reviewed.
Exploring
Replacing the application system
Every market roster in the country flows through third-party software that artists pay to use and that returns nothing to them. Native-owned infrastructure for applications would change the economics of showing work — and rosters would arrive first-party and current rather than being assembled after the fact.
More markets, and beyond markets
Six markets are on record. There are dozens more, plus galleries, biennials, residencies and museum acquisitions. A career is bigger than a booth.
Research access
Structured export for researchers and institutions studying the field, under terms the artists have agreed to.
Notifications
Tell an artist when a new roster lands with their name on it, so their record stays current without them checking.
Something missing from this list? If you work in this field and we have not thought of the thing you need, tell us. The roadmap is not a fixed plan and we would rather hear it now.
info@nativeart.directoryMost of this is a question of funding. See Donations for what support pays for, or Partnerships if you run a market.