Common Field

Last week I had the pleasure of participating in The Contemporary’s first artist retreat. The first, I hope, of many. For four days, 50 artists from Baltimore joined dozens of “consultants” and “guests” that included national arts professionals and artists, representatives from nonprofit organizations, gallerists, curators, and critics at a Jewish retreat center with a farm in rural Maryland. The program included presentations from artists, numerous panels and workshops, and one-on-one meetings; all catered towards networking or “this weird vortex hellhole that is professional development for artists,” as director Deana Haggag described it. What follows is a diary assembled from the notes I ended up scribbling near-constantly.