The Miami club that’s democratising collecting

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Five years ago, starting an art collection felt intimidating and unattainable to Miami native Chris Menendez. “I was raised by a Cuban single mom,” he says. “Art was not in the picture growing up.” Today, he is the editor-in-chief of LoHi Magazine, a new publication focused on the Florida city’s cultural offerings and throughout his career has interviewed artists and attended white cube events. Yet he still felt like an outsider to the art market. “Ultimately, it came down to economics,” he says. 

Now, though, his home is filled with contemporary works by Miami-based artists: a gold-painted, treasure-encrusted sculpture from Loni Johnson’s Visceral Pod Series (2024); a glowing textile piece by Michelle Lisa Polissaint (2022); an ink and gouache depiction of a ship by Beatriz Monteavaro (2023). All have been purchased through Commissioner, a membership programme co-founded by Dejha Carrington in 2017 that offers art-lovers the opportunity to acquire work by local creatives at a reasonable price point, bringing collecting to a broader audience. 

Members pay an annual subscription fee, with different tiers to choose from. The entry-level patronage membership ($90) supports scholarships for arts educators and artists, and also includes Art Week passes and invitations to events and workshops. But it’s the collector membership, arguably, where the fun really starts. Each year, up to 40 members, each paying $1,800 (or $550 quarterly), collectively commission four Miami artists, strategically selected at critical points in their careers. In exchange, they each receive four pieces of art, which are created as limited editions or part of a series, and unveiled at events throughout the year. 

Up to 40 members, each paying $1,800, collectively commission four Miami artists. In exchange, they each receive four art pieces

At the point of signing up, members don’t know who the featured artists will be or what the works will look like. “You are working with 39 other people to have access to and acquire work, and you need to have trust,” says Carrington. “You also give artists time and space to create and explore new ideas. That is part of the contract.”

So far, Commissioner has worked with more than 30 artists and commissioned $325,000 in new works. “In some art worlds, $325,000 could be raised by less than 10 people in one room on a sunny afternoon,” says Carrington. “But the art world is a multiverse, and our intention is to do it differently.”

Recent art market reports focus on how the ultra-rich are buying less art, but creative strategies might help to tap new groups as future collectors. “Inclusivity and community-driven cultural engagement are all factors that could allow the gap between artists and collectors to be bridged,” says art historian and economist Charles Moore, author of The Brilliance of the Color Black Through the Eyes of Art Collectors.

Commissioner was inspired by African, Caribbean and women-led group saving clubs known as susus and is one of many initiatives aiming to democratise art collecting. Other models include LA interdisciplinary artist April Bey’s Equity in Collecting Program, which gives potential collectors from marginalised groups direct access to artists, and online collector communities such as Salon, a decentralised, blockchain-orientated art fund through which people can collectively invest in major works. 

Born in Montreal, Carrington has worked across various roles in the Miami arts sector. As well as running Commissioner, she is a board trustee of MAP Fund (known initially as the Multi-Arts Production Fund) and a professional advisory committee member of Miami-Dade Art in Public Places and New York University’s Center for Global Black Studies. Her focus, she says, is on “supporting artists and building models for access in the arts”. 

When Miami artist Anastasia Samoylova — the first woman photographer in 33 years to headline a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — was approached to collaborate with Commissioner in 2022, she didn’t hesitate. “All I want is to keep being a full-time working artist until I die, and you need support for that,” she says. Her exclusive photographic print, “Looking” (2022), a poetically structured image of a local storefront displaying traditional Sunday dresses, was unveiled to an intimate group of Miamians, many of whom remain friends and supporters. “It was like attending the cool kids’ club; such a thrill,” she says. 

For the architect and designer Germane Barnes, whose work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, creating signature pieces for Commissioner allowed him to experiment with smaller scales and meet new supporters. “The experience brought me out of my comfort zone,” he says.

At member events, collectors can ask the artist questions and connect with the piece in ways that go beyond traditional art-purchasing transactions. “When I think of Commissioner, the first word that comes to mind is community,” says multidisciplinary Cuban-American artist Antonia Wright, whose sound installation “State of Labor” (2022) was recently acquired by the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and who will create Commissioner’s first set of commissioned pieces for this year’s iteration. “It adds a new layer to the art ecosystem,” she adds.

For Menendez, attending a “Collecting 101” Commissioner event taught by David Castillo in his Design District gallery altered his mindset. “After that, I stopped fearing the art market,” he says. “We loved the last piece [Beatriz Monteavaro’s “Voyager”] so much that we reached out to the artist for another commission.”

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