A Less Than Half Founder's Journey

Hi, I’m Hall, the founder of Less Than Half and the writer behind this Substack.

Ahead of our doors opening on Wednesday to a new cohort of Matrons of the Arts (get notified!), I thought I’d take a second and explain how we got here, to an organization that believes that teaching women to collect women artists is the key to an equitable art world. (You can tell me how you got here in the comments!)

Bloggy Beginnings

Less Than Half has been many things— I founded it as a blog in 2017, as a place to exercise my critic’s pen in reviews about exhibitions in New York featuring women artists. When the pandemic hit, it became a place for the “50 Women Project,” a series of profiles of women artists from across the country, from Boise to Alabama.

Throughout, my Instagram account (and a number of Hyperallergic articles) has been a depository for my thoughts on why women artists are underrepresented by the art world. It was even host to a 23 episode series chronicling western art history with women as the focus. (Like this post if you were here for those, and if you missed them, watch this space— they might have a second life!)

The Less Than Half Salon, an online community I started in 2021, was a place for conversation— what I called a break from “swimming against the current,” or a space where the contributions of women to art history were simply a given. It’s the Salon where I made so many artists friends— many of you are still here on Substack!

Artist-centered; collector-focused

No matter the iteration of Less Than Half, my conversations with artists and my engagement with art history defined how I went about my work. Talk to enough artists, read enough artist biographies, and you start to see patterns: woman artist after woman artist turning down a residency because they didn’t have space for children. Biographies published yearly on the same “great” male artists, but scant few on women or artists of color. Clear support for women’s careers at their inception and their close (usually when the artist was in her 90s), but not at mid-career. The system was failing women in a way it wasn’t failing men.

The idea that we couldn’t change the status quo without addressing these structural barriers gave birth to the idea of Matronage: or a philosophy on how to holistically support the work and careers of women artists by thinking beyond just the instant of commercial exchange, but also considering a woman artist's long term well being, both professionally and personally.

While a gallerist or curator can practice matronage, it became clear that the most effective, enduring, and impactful way to support women artists would be to take a step back and support the people supporting them: collectors.

Digging into the research, it also became clear that women were in an unprecedented position to become collectors of women artists. Report after report shows how women outspend their male peers as art collectors, are more likely to support women artists, and take risks on lesser known ones. Add to that the fact that we are more and more of the workforce (and a growing proportion of C-suite executives) and about to inherit the majority of the Great Wealth Transfer, and we’ve got a winning combo.

Less Than Half is there to make sure not only that women artists are supported in the most effective, status quo destroying way possible, but that you, as a collector, feel the most confident, happy, and fulfilled doing it.

So what about you?

Have you been here since the blog? The 50 Women Project? The Salon? Maybe you’re a new member of the Cobalt membership cohort of the Matrons of the Arts! Comment below and let me know.

And if you’re new here? Welcome! Become part of this chapter of Less Than Half and sign up for our waitlist— membership doors open Wednesday (June 17th)!

Join the waitlist