Art is a vital cultural and economic engine. It’s how we think, learn, teach, express, love, connect, and find the strength to get through challenges. Art is essential. Santa Fe Indian Market—Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) knows that. So when SWAIA acted quickly and decided to work with us to continue to showcase hundreds of Native American artists and craftspeople by pivoting to a virtual market this year, we couldn’t wait to be by their side. For almost a hundred years, SWAIA has hosted this world-class market annually in August, attracting artists and collectors from across the US and globally. They are leaders in creating business opportunities for Native artists. CHF has been working in the virtual space for years, and like SWAIA, we’re proud to call Santa Fe home. CHF is committed to delivering effective entrepreneurial education and tools that allow artists to build sustainable businesses, leveraging all instruments at our disposal, including technology. We’re committed to building a thriving art ecosystem, not only in local communities, but with ties to the entire art industry. A pandemic may have made these needs immediate and brought them into the spotlight, but they have been with us for a long time, and they will still be there when we’re well into recovery from the current crisis. CHF will continue to be an active part of planning for the short-term and long-term flourishing of the arts in the SWAIA community, New Mexico, and beyond. We could not be more excited to announce our partnership with SWAIA. “The partnership with the Clark Hulings Fund arrives at a moment when SWAIA is approaching our centennial year—establishing new methods of assisting Native artists and preparing them for success in the next 100 years. We are fortunate to receive the expertise of the Clark Hulings Fund, which offers extensive art-business programming to communities,” —Kim Peone, SWAIA Executive Director “With many summer art markets canceled, we are thrilled to create a virtual Indian Market. The hundreds of artists who participate will not face an economic catastrophe on the heels of a medical one. Now, thanks to the work we are undertaking with SWAIA, artists will be able to showcase and sell their work virtually. Beyond the emergency response, our collaboration also affords the Clark Hulings Fund the occasion to help Indian Market artists—and SWAIA as an organization— develop healthier, more sustainable business models. With our help, Native small businesses will be positioned to thrive over the long-term, economically and artistically. It feels good to be able to step up and deliver valuable assistance at this moment,” —Elizabeth Hulings, Clark Hulings Fund Executive Director You may also enjoy Alex De Vore’s article in The Santa Fe Reporter.

We’re happy to share The Clark Hulings Fund’s 2019 Annual Report, which includes a description of our major programs, eye-opening stats from 2019, and direct commentary by artists on how CHF moved the needle for them toward profitability and success. EXCITEMENT: CHF, if you haven’t heard, has been recognized as one of the 49 most innovative nonprofits in the country—a prestigious shortlist to be sure. We were a semi-finalist for the Drucker Prize, which recognizes cutting-edge nonprofits that produce socially transformative change. This represents a clear understanding that the innovation of CHF is seeping into the popular consciousness, and is about to pop. TIMELY & PIVOTAL CHANGE: Instinctively, perhaps, social investment is often targeted at basic needs—buying a person a fish so they can eat today. Can we make the case that investing in CHF, which is necessarily teaching people HOW to fish, is directly impacting basic needs? Yes. Now, more than ever. The Annual Report demonstrates that, by putting our efforts and your contributions toward a cultural need, it creates a direct impact on basic needs across multiple sectors of the economy and society. That starts with the artist, now profitable and self-sustaining as a contributing business, but extends to the local and state economy, with demonstrable job-creation and economic fortification of non-art businesses, and a substantive impact on the national GDP, at a time we need it most. CHF’s Annual Report goes beyond providing updates on continuing programs that have been successful in previous years—although you will see some notable additions, expansions, and important growth. By featuring the results of CHF’s Data Science Initiative documented in 2019’s The Report on the Working Artist, we’ve documented the effectiveness and need for business training, and demonstrated that artists can contribute at a much broader economic level when this need is met. WHAT’S NEXT? CHF is in a unique position to help the cultural sector right now. Artists and the organizations that serve them must now “go digital” urgently to survive. They don’t know how to do this quickly, efficiently and effectively enough. CHF is already digital, and our mission is to help artists and the organizations that serve them thrive through integrated virtual and in-person programming. The artists and organizations CHF helps will not only survive the current crisis, they will be best positioned to thrive long-term, because they will have made the leap to digital, and they will integrate their new virtual capabilities with their in-person activities. We’re expanding rapidly to meet the demand. It’s a great time to offer your support to CHF, and we can’t wait to welcome you. Donate here. View the full Annual Report here.

We are so sorry to say goodbye to a true friend of the Hulings family and champion of CHF, bronze sculptor Glenna Goodacre, who passed away from natural causes on Monday, April 13th. A Santa Fe resident originally from Lubbock, Texas, Goodacre’s work is represented in collections across the country. She is best known not only for large public works such as The Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, DC and the Irish Memorial in Philadelphia, but also for her design of the Sacagawea dollar coin in 1999. Goodacre won the James Earl Fraser Sculpture Award at the Prix de West Exhibition in 2002, and in 2003 she was awarded the Gold Medal For Career Achievement from The Portrait Society of America, the Texas Medal of Arts, and was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. In a 2006 interview with Dickinson Research Center Director Chuck Rand, she described being a student who got a “D” in sculpture from a professor who didn’t think she could see 3-dimensionally and should never sculpt. She was later awarded honorary doctorates from Texas Tech University and from her alma mater, Colorado College, where Goodacre titled her commencement address: “Success is The Greatest Revenge.”

Clark Hulings’ colleague and friend for many years, Goodacre was an enthusiastic supporter of CHF. She and Hulings were anchor members of the Santa Fe artist lunch group started by Robert Lougheed, where discussion and debate about the business art was always on the menu. CHF’s mission resonated loudly with Goodacre, who overcame discrimination of many stripes during her long, storied career. The last piece she created before retiring was a bas relief of Hulings’ drawing Helping to Push. She included both Hulings’ signature and her own on it, and donated the original for CHF to use in its fundraising efforts. Glenna Goodacre was a force to be reckoned with, a tremendous talent, and a class act. We will miss her.

Things are not business-as-usual. We wish you well: health, sanity, and endurance, whatever that looks like for you. For us, it looks like a whole lot of hard work to meet all of the requests we’re receiving from artists and the organizations that serve them. CHF has been virtual from day one, and we’re doing everything we can to increase our digital capacity and curriculum to keep pace. For perspective and a shot in the arm, read Elizabeth Hulings’ recent Director’s View. Focusing on professional development? Good for you. Our Digital Campus awaits 24/7. You can also dig into Daniel DiGriz’s article “How to Tell A Better Story”—Daniel recently covered that topic in a live web interview with Dave Geada of BoldBrush. For a guide to artist relief resources and compensation, CHF Development Coordinator and shelter-in-place painter Alex McAdams breaks down some of the basics of the CARES Act and Pandemic Unemployment Insurance (PUI). Many of you have been reaching out with feedback and ideas. Keep it coming.