‘The Thing Quarterly’ Democratizes Art Collecting

Given the supremacy of the digital world, it seems counterintuitive that an endeavor like THE THING Quarterly, an “object-based publication” that sends items designed by contributors including artists David Shrigley and Tauba Auerbach to subscribers, would flourish. The opposite was the case. Produced by San Francisco-based visual artists Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan, the first “issue,” a window shade by Miranda July, was originally slated for a run of 50 — but they received thousands of requests. “We accidentally stumbled upon something people were looking for,” Herschend says.

This something was, the duo speculate, a democratization of art collecting. For $240, THE THING Quarterly subscribers receive pieces by four different artists throughout the year whose work they’d never be able to afford in a gallery; and the artists themselves, whose collectors are increasingly pooled from the rareified world (at least financially) of slick Russian oligarchs and hoodie-wearing Silicon Valley billionaires, are able to reach a wider audience. “It literally enables artists to create something that goes into people’s hands,” Herschend says of the pieces

Contributors have included not only visual artists such as Auerbach (who produced a wall clock) and Trisha Donnelly (a secret), but also publishing superstar Dave Eggers (a shower curtain), actor James Franco (a table mirror) and writer Jonathan Lethem (a pair of clear eyeglasses). Read more…

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