The Golden Colonel

About

Curated by artists Heather Kapplow and Itala Aguilera, with assistance from Shinobu Akimoto, co-director of Residency for Artists on Hiatus, The Golden Colonel features works in all the mediums by John Allen, Sydni Ann Baker, Margaret Bellafiore, Noémie Jennifer Bonnet, Ben Galaday, Carrie Hawks, Li-Ming Hu, Shushanik Karapetyan, Alix Lambert (in collaboration with Itala Aguilera), Marcel Marcel, Nancy Nowacek, Moses Ros, Mark Shaw, Walker Tufts, Yolanda He Yang, Silvana Zuanetti, and an anonymous submitter using the moniker “Older Artist.”

There is an unspoken understanding that because being an artist is not a “real” job, but something more like a calling, and because artists often don’t earn enough money to save for old age, they can’t retire. They just make art until they die. From July 12 through August 11, 2024, The Golden Colonel explores some of the complexities of artists considering the same choice to retire from their practices as everyone else.

Most people wait until they retire to explore their creativity. The Golden Colonel is a place for people who have already done that. So what comes next? We’ve gathered work by artists ranging in age from their early 20s to their early 80s to reflect on what might lie beyond artmaking, or whether it’s even possible to stop making art.