From Accessible Art to Empowerment
Stephanie Manasseh is the founder of the Accessible Art Fair, in Brussels, and of SM Art Advisory. She talked to us about her journey towards art.
“I was always surrounded by art”. When asked about her path, Stephanie Manasseh starts right at the beginning. Born and raised in Montreal, her parents were immigrants from Israel.
“My mom is an artist and my dad was in fashion. He had a factory creating very very high-end clothes for working women, and this was a big deal in the 70s and 80s” she explains.
Her mom’s work and her introduction to the system
After her studies, she decided to go to Prague, to teach English. Soon enough she was hitting the art galleries trying to get her mom’s work promoted.
“I was going to galleries and openings, trying to figure out the system in the art world, I didn’t understand how some people ended up with the galleries and others didn’t. There were some codes of conduct but I didn’t really understand them, I was very young, it was a sort of introduction” Stephanie reflects.
“There are two worlds, living in parallel. The gallery world, with the big art fairs, and the world of the artists. But there’s nothing in between.”
She continued her pursuit in Milan, where she lived for three years, and then in Brussels, where she’s based for 15 years now.
That’s where she had what she described at her “aha moment”: “I attended an event and I realized that there is a lot of artists unrepresented, ending up doing events themselves because they don’t know where to go and they haven’t got the gallery. It’s these two worlds living in parallel. The gallery world, with the big art fairs, and the world of the artists. But there’s nothing in between.”
Taking things into her own hands: the creation of the Accessible Art Fair
She decided then to create an event for artists without galleries, and the Accessible Art Fair was born. “It really is a platform for artists of the highest caliber but who are not yet or not necessary with a gallery.”
“People need to interact with culture at different degrees. We need to give them the opportunity to be able to meet the artists directly, to engage with the art”.
The first edition, 15 years ago, was a small event, with 9 artists and about 500 visitors. The path was not an easy one. She started with no budget. It was before the internet was big, social media didn’t even exist. She had to learn how to be completely resourceful, everything was done on a shoestring. “I had a beer sponsor and a pizza sponsor” Stephanie laughs, remembering, “it was this tiny thing, but people loved it, and it just grew and grew over the years”.
Now the Accessible Art Fair represents 100 artists at the time, it is a well-known event on the culture scene, on the art world scene as well. “At first, it was sort of a disrupter. Now it’s totally accepted that artists self represents, especially in the age of social media”.
“People need to interact with culture at different degrees. To give them the opportunity to be able to meet the artist directly, a chance to engage with the art, in a very sort of low key setting, all of that for little money, I think that was a very good formula. I never had doubts.”
The art fair works as a stepping stone for the artists, allowing them to have contact with the visitors, to get out of their studios, but also to create communities with the other artists.
“When you go to a lot of the big art fairs you don’t see the camaraderie, because people are in competition. At my fair it’s different. The artists are there the whole time, they promote each other’s works, or hug each other when they sell a piece, it’s quite nice. I’m very very proud of what I’ve created. It was really a small thing, that I did from the heart because I wanted to promote my mom’s work. And it turned out in this huge thing, where artists really feel empowered, and that’s amazing”.
From the fair to her raison d’être
It was the growth of this event that truly made Stephanie recognize that this could actually be her career. “I realized, oh my gosh, people really love it, it could be something that I do, it could be something for the future”. Back then she had no formal training in the arts or art management, so she decided to catch up with an Art Business course at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and a Curator course at Goldsmiths.
“Bringing people together has always been my strength, so this felt like a natural progression of who I am as a person and what my passion is”.
From the Accessible Art Fair Stephanie launched herself. She created SM Art Advisory 10 years ago. She’s been working on a lot of different art projects around the world since.
“I’m working with a sculptor in the US, we are going to launch a sort of incubator for art technology architecture. His name is Jonathan Prince, he’s a traditional sculptor in metal. But we are adding all sorts of things around his art, like AI, because I think this is the way the world is going, the art world is evolving, and people want to experience art in different ways. So we’re taking this trend and creating this project that we want to present to museums and to sculpture gardens, to give people an opportunity to experience it”, explains Stephanie enthusiastically.
She’s also curating a Sol Lewitt exhibition, set for May 2021 in Brussels. An American artist who died in 2007, he was one of the founding father of conceptual art. “I’m proud of this exhibition. To be able to curate a show at a museum, of an artist that I love, and to give an opportunity to this country to host such an event, I think that’s huge, and I’m very grateful for it”.
When talking to Stephanie, you sense how at ease she is in her environment, how she has found her calling.
“Bringing people together has always been my strength, so this felt like a natural progression of who I am as a person and what my passion is. Besides, office life has never really been for me. I like to make my own schedule. Sometimes I have calls at 8, sometimes I don’t work until noon, but then I work all weekend, and I have no problem with that”.
She’s working with her one employee and one intern around the kitchen table, three times a week, and makes them lunch. “I think when people are fed well then they are happier, at least that’s the case for me”, she smiles.
“I’m involved in a lot of things, and I sell small works and big works. I just love to surround myself with artists and art, it has become my raison d’être”.
Parting advice
Finally, when asked about advice for women starting, she reflects: “I’ve got a really good piece of advice when I started. Never say no to a meeting. If someone reaches out to you and asks to meet you and talk to you, then don’t say no, because you never know what can come out of it. You learn a lot from meeting other people.” And of course, it goes both ways “You should also reach out to people, whoever you want to meet, because you’ll find that often, people will simply say yes”
