What Happens When Artists Ignore Money?

A frank discussion about the relationship between artists and money. This panel will explore facts, misconceptions, and fresh ideas on how artists are building careers and adapting to changes in the professional and economic landscape. New York Academy of Art Senior Critic and independent curator Dexter Wimberly will be joined by visual artists Amir H. Fallah, and Valerie Hegarty, and award-winning author, essayist, and literary critic William Deresiewicz (The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech).

William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges, high schools, and other venues, and the best-selling author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. His most recent book is The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech. The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society is forthcoming in August 2022.

Bill has published over 300 essays and reviews. He has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle’s Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and a Sydney Award; he is also a three-time National Magazine Award nominee. His work, which has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The American Scholar, and many other publications, has been translated into 18 languages and anthologized in 39 college and scholastic readers.
Amir H. Fallah received his BFA in Fine Art & Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and his MFA in painting at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and abroad. Selected solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson; South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings SD; Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland OR; San Diego ICA; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland KS.

Valerie Hegarty (b. 1967, Burlington, VT) is a painter, sculptor, ceramicist, and installation artist based in NYC. Previous solo exhibitions include Malin Gallery (New York & San Francisco),the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, Nicelle Beauchene (New York), Marlborough Gallery (New York), Locust Projects (Miami), Museum 52 (London), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), and Guild & Greyshkul (New York). She has completed public commissions for the High Line in NYC and the Brooklyn Museum, and her work is featured in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Perez Art Museum, the Saatchi Gallery, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Peabody Essex Museum, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Tang Museum.