 
Top: James Wagner, Barry Hoggard with Lyle Ashton Harris’s Man and Woman #2
Bottom: Hiroshi Sunairi, Pro-Montage T.V. (detail)
| 
What do you collect?
James: Contemporary art. We like work that's edgy, aggressive, conceptual.
Barry: We buy a lot of photography, but not because we think of ourselves as photography collectors. What we're really buying is conceptual work.
James: Also, a lot of the most recent stuff is pretty playful (I don't know where that's coming from).
When did you start collecting?
James: After I first moved to New York, in 1985 or 1986 I bought a painting in Tompkins Square Park. Starting in the late '80s, I was involved with ACT UP and we had two major benefit auctions. I knew some of the artists and that made it approachable. Also, the cause was wonderful, so I wanted to be a part of it. The prices were extremely good, even accessible to activists, if you stayed away from the established names.
Barry: When I was growing up in Arkansas and Texas, Picasso was the only 20th-century artist I knew, but when I came to New York I became interested in contemporary art. I started off visiting blue-chip contemporary galleries, and then eventually found out about places like White Columns and Art Resources Transfer.
|
