OPEN TRANSCRIPT

ROB RICHARDSON
All right. Welcome everybody to the Art and Equity Summit. With me, Onaje Henderson with the ZuCot Gallery. I’m very excited to have him here. We're going to go through the art of collecting, specifically what it's like to be a black collector -- the psychology behind it; the mindset you need to have. We're just honored to have him participate, be a part of the Disruption Now ecosystem. -- Welcome.

ONAJE HENDERSON
Thank you. Thanks so much. Happy to be here.

ROB
Well happy to have you. So you're an engineer like myself. I’m an electrical engineer. You're a mechanical engineer, I believe. Is that correct?

ONAJE
That's right.

ROB
So how does one move from the technology space to getting into art collection? Walk me through that process of how that happened.

ONAJE
My brother and I are both engineers along with our father, Aaron Henderson.

ROB
All right. I love it. Black excellence all throughout -- generational. Let's make it happen.

ONAJE
My father was an artist. He was the campus artist at Tuskegee when he was there and he was painting his entire life. When we went on to college, my brother and I… He was three years older than me. We grew up around art. We grew up exposed to… And I think that's really important in this conversation with the exposure piece. So it was natural for us to be around art and appreciate art. Not just visual but from all different types of art -- from performance to different types of plays to dancing to all those different types of forms. My parents would just take us out on weekends and we’d go different places.

We go to college and my brother starts coming back home, picking up art to put on his wall in his dorm room just to have something around because it became kind of central to him.

As engineers, we’re problem solvers. When we got out of college, my brother had a phone call. I just got out of school and my father had left his corporate. We got our scholarship to college and my father was done. He's, “All right. I’m done with corporate.” He was going to do art full time.
So we got out of school. My brother and I had a conversation. We said, “We need to take over the business side. We'll use our corporate dollars to rent out gallery spaces in Atlanta.”

And we realized that no one was talking to anybody our age at that time. I was 23. Omari was 26. We were engineers. We had money but we weren't ever approached. No one even spoke to us about collecting. So we would go into galleries just be looking for artwork and get ignored. And so we said, “Okay, well this is the space for this.”

So we took over the business side and we start creating these exhibitions and inviting our peer group and converting our peer group into collectors. I think connecting with engineers to be problem solvers… So the problem was, “Why are we not collecting culture?” We weren't seeing ourselves in these spaces. We also realized that there weren't many African-American art galleries and there still aren't many African-American galleries.

ROB
There still aren’t. You're the largest in the southeast, correct?

ONAJE
Yes. But if you think about galleries in general, I think it may be… Well before COVID, there was about 64 African-American organizers in the United States. “64” -- so that means when you think about… And that's not saying that every state has one. It's kind of like you equate this to [indiscernible - 03:33] in a sense [on a park - 03:35], right?

ROB
Yeah.

ONAJE
So where can you find African-American art galleries? In a number of states, there are no places. You have to jump states to get to other places that have. So we saw that opportunity there.

Over the years, the business grew. We're working with various artists. A lot of them started out as my father's friends who are amazing artists but… And they were already working in galleries, maybe even from a collection museums but still we relatively had no idea who they were. And I think that became the issue, like we don't know who our greats are -- contemporaries. A lot of times, we are told who our greats are by people outside our community.

ROB
Amen. Yeah, that's a great point. Go ahead. Finish.

ONAJE
So for us, it was an opportunity to be able to step in and kind of help with that, not saying what's about but more about opening eyes up to the importance of collecting culture and becoming custodians of culture.

ROB
“Becoming custodians of the culture.” I love the way you really term that. When I think about our culture, it's valuable. There's no question in that. Black art is valuable; has always been valuable.

The black equity doesn't always follow for a lot of the reasons you said. We don't always recognize or know who our great artists are. We allow others to determine who we get to define as great artists instead of, like you said, being custodians of the art.

Walk with me about… I want to take it from the perspective of both the artist and the art collector. We'll start with the art collector since that's more your space. What advice, as an African-American art collector, would you give those who are in the business, aspiring to be in the business, given that you've had some success? Like, what model of advice you can give them. When you first started off years ago, what knowledge would you have given yourself knowing everything you have now? What would you say to these aspiring art collectors that are starting and want to aspire to expand their collection and expand their reach and exposure?

ONAJE
I think there's a couple of things. One, you initially buy what you like -- what speaks to you. Art is one of the last few things where you literally… It is all about how it affects you. And I think for a lot of us that's difficult because we're so used to being told what to like.

ROB
Yeah.

ONAJE
We look at society now where brand sometimes is more important than how it actually fits or looks on you, right?

ROB
Yeah.

ONAJE
There's people walking around with really expensive shoes but their feet hurt. [Laughter] What is the validation piece that comes along with it? I mean we're all guilty of this.

ROB
We can't help it. We're tribal by nature.
ONAJE
Exactly. And society that we live in, right? So first off, it's that.

There's a book by Halima Taha called “Collecting African-American Art” and it's a great starting point. And she also talks about this in the book as well -- it’s about buying what you like first. Do you like the piece? There's no need to over-complicate it. When we go shopping, do we need to know how to make clothes before we purchase them?

And also at the gallery, we're looking at normalizing the idea of collecting or buying these things because these prices… We spend this money now. As African Americans, you know--

I always tell this story. I had a client who came into the gallery. It's her first time in the gallery. She looks at the artwork. “Oh, this is expensive” and I smirked. She said, “Why are you laughing” and I said, “Well you have one $4000 handbag.”

ROB
[Laughter]

ONAJE
She looked down and she looked back up over the pieces because the pieces were… The pieces she was looking at in particular was less than her handbag. She looked down and she said, “I never thought about it that way.”

I’m not saying don't buy the handbag. What I’m saying is, for some reason, you've allowed yourself to understand or look at this and say, “Okay, I want this so I can get…” For some reason, there's a mental roadblock that stops us sometimes from collecting. And we feel we had to be experts. But you can also buy because you like it, right?

ROB
Yeah.

ONAJE
The other piece though is that recognizing, even when we look at evaluation, is that the collectors are under control. People always ask questions like, “Well will it be worth anything?” Two points to that. Number one, how many things do we buy that we just enjoy, that we never look to resell? That's most things in our life, right?

ROB
Yeah.

ONAJE
So I buy a car tomorrow, I’m not thinking about how much I can get for it after 20 years. I spend all this money on it. Once I’ve enjoyed it enough, either I get rid of it or breaks down and I get another car.
ROB
Right.

ONAJE
So number one, you can buy these things and pass them down. The beauty of art is that it will not break down and you can pass it down to generations to come. But art is also… there's an intrinsic value that's there that we sometimes overlook. And art is a reflection of who we are.

ROB
Yes.

ONAJE
It's a reflection of what you believe in. Someone goes in your home, they can see who you are. So it's really important outside of the standard evaluation. But at the same time, the art collectors, they control the evaluation as well. So collectors determine value of work, right?

ROB
Yeah.

ONAJE
You never hear about an artist without a collector in regards to the value of the work. What happens now is that a lot of times, validation comes from outside our community. So we're told who our top artists are by other people who are invested in those artists. And then we go by the word and create more of a--

ROB
Onaje, I would just say we tend to create the trends more than we're giving credit for. When you look at it, there's no question when an artist wants to make sure that something gets out to the mass public. Who they usually go to? They go to hip-hop culture. They go to black people. And we are seen as--

We're not custodians. We help sell things but we should definitely get into the mindset of, “How are we moving towards making sure that black art collectors are getting exposure and not just helping others?” I mean there's nothing wrong with promoting work from other people. I just think we have to be intentional about how we do it because… We're having this conversation to make sure equity doesn't just flow through us but to us.

ONAJE
Right.

ROB
Everybody is popular now to say “Black lives matter” when a year ago, it wasn't. Black lives have always mattered. Yes, we're about equality but I want to have more of a conversation about equity. And I think it's certainly in time for that in art and really, across the board.

So what about artists -- artists that approach you? It seems like there are some similar advice there. When I hear you say “as a collector,” it's like, “Understand your why.” I’m hearing that. Understand what really speaks to you; what moves you.

I know I would want something around social justice impact art. That's what Rob Richardson would want because that's what I care about. I already know the type of art I’m going to buy because that's what I care about and that's how I feel. But with artists, what do you tell them in terms of looking to raise their profile, understand how to become successful in this creative economy?

ONAJE
One, I would always say… Well I talk to a lot of artists about their work. Materials matter. We always ask about, “Are you using acid-free materials?” So pH-neutral from engineering standpoint, right? So the idea is that when you want--

ROB
You’re such a nerd. Go ahead. [Laughter]

ONAJE
You want the piece to last, right? If I’m selling a piece, I want to make sure that it was created with the intent that it can be passed down, so the best materials are used in the piece. I want to know if the artist is a hobbyist or are you dedicating your life to--

ROB
How do you tell the difference? Because all the time, people have nine to five gigs and like... I think you still do consulting for tech and you still do collecting. How do you know when people are really in this, not just passed by hobby but they're committed? How do you, as a collector, make that determination?

ONAJE
Well from an artist’s standpoint, from a gallery, what we do is we look at how long they've been creating. So this is not something that just happened. We have a lot of friends out there who can sing. They're also not considered singers as well, right? So someone who can draw is not necessarily an artist. I think by making that distinction, you can look and see what they've done -- how long they've been around, have they worked with any galleries in the past, have been in exhibitions. Really, just looking at their résumé to understand that.

The price points, a lot of times, dictate how much experience they have in the space -- a lot of times. It's also fine to support artists who are just coming up as well.

ROB
Yeah.

ONAJE
The price is a little bit different. And I think that's also very needed as well. But if you're looking for a mid-career artist then you want to take a look at their résumé as well. But also who you're buying from. If it's not from the artist, is it a reputable gallery -- asking about materials, understanding what they create on, what their subject matter is. And then just seeing how it connects to you as a collector is really important.

But from an artist's standpoint, it's the materials piece that's so important. That's the narrative behind the work -- why they're creating the work.

And then understanding then that every market may not love you. We have artists right now who we sell a lot of work on the west coast for some reason. They don't have as many clients here. But there's something that gravitates that collector base. So you have to find your audience and understand that every audience won't love what you do.

ROB
Yeah. There are so many points in that. Art applies the same way every other business’ mindset applies.

A story I think about is really Apple. One of my favorite books is Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why.” He talks about how Apple made its decision for what it was going to do with the iPhone. It’s great to a lot of us now but if you look at how it started, it was really counterintuitive. Apple was like, “Okay, we want to design a phone that will have all these features. We want to empower individual users so they have more choice” -- things like that. But before Apple, if you didn't know, the phone providers had to tell you how your phone had to be designed.

So Apple approaches all these phone providers with these weird designs to them. They're like, “We're not taking this.” All of them rejected them -- every single one except for AT&T which became exclusive for Apple, right?

Knowing your essential purpose and being willing to make decisions on that is extremely hard because people are like, “Okay…” because Apple could have adjusted their model. Had they adjusted their model, they wouldn't have had the level of success they did. And they wouldn't have that level of success unless they understood their narrative, knew who they were targeting and were willing to cut out the others that didn't believe in the vision.

ONAJE
You know, it's funny. We had to do the same thing in the gallery. If we were to take the same rules that traditional galleries used to sell to primarily African-Americans, it would not work.
ROB
Give me some examples. What are some differences about how your gallery approaches versus the traditional galleries?

ONAJE
Something as simple as making people feel comfortable in this space and making it okay to ask questions. A lot of times people feel intimidated by galleries and so, “Okay, how do we cut down the intimidation factor to keep so many people out of galleries?”

And something as simple as speaking. Being a black-owned business, sometimes, you recognize the fact that… You can have a business but if somebody walks in and you don't acknowledge their presence, it's a problem, right?

ROB
Yeah.

ONAJE
But they can go to another area of town and go to a gala where no one speaks ever. That's just not what they do.

ROB
Yeah. I saw that in your thing. Like there's galleries like this that… If you go by designing what the traditional path is, no one speaks and they're just… You have music at some of your galleries, right, to make us…

ONAJE
Yeah.

ROB
…which makes sense to me. I wouldn't want to sit at a gallery and nobody is… That wouldn't appeal to me.

ONAJE
Personally, I never liked it. It almost says to a customer, in my opinion, that “You don't matter until you are interested in buying something here.” But in reality, you don't know who anyone is in the space, right? So I would notice that when I went into galleries. The interest will only come after they've sized me up enough, after we've had a couple of con… or I’d have to do something to let them know that I’m not whatever stereotype you think I am, right?

ROB
Yeah.

ONAJE
I think that's the difference. I think that we want to make sure that we are also just good stewards of the community in general so people feel comfortable.

And looking at generations, like when we started out being in our 20s, you know, [making through - 17:31] at that time and thinking you could buy [inaudible - 17:32] for two years, right -- you know, fresh out of college.

And help people understand that there are programs. We do have programs where you could put down and pay over the next three months at zero percent interest. So they understand there are payment plans for things like that so then begin collecting. So we're trying to erase all these barriers that keep us from collecting.

ROB
Yeah. I mean this is right in line with Disruption Now. We're about disrupting the common narratives and constructs that are put on. And I love that you didn't follow the path of, “This is how art was defined. This is the process for how a gallery is going to be. We're going to define our own process because that doesn't fit within who we are and the demographic we are seeking to serve.”

Onaje, man, it's been a pleasure. We look forward to work with you more.

We definitely want to take any questions you guys have. We'll take this and we'll address you directly within the comments. Thank you everybody for attending the Art and Equity Summit. We look forward to engage you some more. And we'll have Onaje in some of the breakout rooms.

ONAJE
Thank you so much. Thank you.

ROB
Thank you.

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