We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Steph Foster. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Steph below.

Steph, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Being an artist myself, I wanted to create the business model that I wish I had. After I first started with my professional art career, getting gallery representation and participating in the art market for some time, I began to realize how out of touch the industry really is. The market can be exploitative and very risky for artists, with many holding on to the hope that that can be one of the lucky few to “breakthrough”. This creates a competition between artists within the market while simultaneously creating a system that only benefit ultra wealthy collectors and closing off some of the most profound ideas, aesthetics and cultural artifacts behind private collections.

From the moment I founded Athenaeum, my primary mission has been to support contemporary artists and cultural producers, make art collecting more accessible, and shift the dynamics of a flawed commercial art market. Most art galleries take more than a 50% commission on art sales, oftentimes leaving the artist to cover the production costs of artwork. What makes Athenaeum unique is that we handle the production of the many artworks in-house and give the artists a largest share of the profits, ensuring that they are fairly compensated and recognized for their work. We also offer a wide range of art-related services, such as printing, archiving, workshops, and merchandise to other businesses and individuals to help subsidize production costs.

By encouraging more artists to express themselves without financial risks, we are fostering a more inclusive and diverse art scene while reducing exploitation by intermediaries like dealers and auction houses that inflate the prices or artworks and take large cuts. This will make art more accessible and create a more transparent relationship between artists and buyers. We believe that creative expression is a fundamental human right and that everyone deserves access to high-quality art and design.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Being from Detroit, MI I grew up wanting to be an engineer. My mom worked on the assembly line most of my life. Almost every adult I knew was affiliated with the automotive industry in some way. It wasn’t until I enrolled into an automotive engineering academy, that I found out that it wasn’t the career for me. The lack of diversity and opportunity to truly be creative left me feeling uninspired. It wasn’t until I started taking art classes in high school that I felt really excited about my studies. I was mostly concerned with my Track and Field career, but I enjoyed the process of finding myself in the studio. I also had a really amazing teacher, Mrs Pasternak, who taught me photography. She really helped me understand the camera as a marriage between mechanics and creative expression, which really resonated with me as a former-aspiring engineer.

I ended up at Michigan State as a track and field athlete. All student athletes are required to declare a major by their sophomore year in order to remain eligible to compete. I originally chose Arts Management as a major, before discovering I actually wanted to be an artist myself while taking the required foundation courses. After undergraduate, I moved to Providence, RI to study at the Rhode Island School of Design, where I earned my MFA in photography. After graduating I signed to a gallery, opened my art studio, and started my career in academia. It was after the pandemic when I decided I wanted to create a new business model that combined the things I appreciated about all my separate creative careers, with the goal of disrupting these industries to make them more artist centric, and thus Athenaeum Editions was born.

Athenaeum Editions is an imprint and production studio that specializes in limited edition art, books, apparel, and objects carefully curated by some of the most talented contemporary artists, writers, and cultural producers. We prioritize an equitable, accessible, and ethical business model, ensuring fair compensation for artists. Not only do we most handle production in-house, but the artists that we collaborate with earn the largest portion of all sales without having to assume the risks that are common in traditional galleries (which typically take 50% commission from an artist’s sales). This model benefits the collector with more challenging artworks, more unique designs, and democratic price points that gives more access to a new demographic of collector that’s often overlooked in favor of wealthy individuals, institutions, and corporations.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, it’s the actual process of creating that I find most rewarding. I feel most like myself when I’m in a creative state of “play”, in which myself and oftentimes others, are engaged in a creative process of experimentation, not dependent on any particular result or outcome. I feel like there’s so much to discover about ourselves through this process. Collaborating with artists from a variety of different backgrounds and disciplines is incredibly rewarding, and I am grateful for the opportunity to combine talents and perspectives to enter into creative discourse and produce new meanings and expression. My goal for Athenaeum is to contribute to the cultural lexicon, offering an opportunity for artists to disseminate their truths through the lens of personal experience, while increasing access to these ideas and aesthetics to an audience of collectors who are often overlooked by the art market and art institutions.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think what non-creatives often struggle to grasp is the artists’ relationship with money. Artists have always been force to do this balancing act between “staying authentic” and “selling out”, which makes the term “Art Business” sound like a complete contradiction. On one hand, art and culture are celebrated, ubiquitous, and immensely profitable. Our society recognizes the value of creativity in enriching lives, fostering understanding, and even driving economic growth.

The irony is that those who create the art we consume on a daily basis — the artists — are frequently undervalued and marginalized. There’s a clear disconnect between the value of creative enterprise and the often precarious financial realities of being an artist. Many view artistic pursuits as risky or impractical, failing to acknowledge the labor and skill involved. This can lead to artists being underpaid, overworked, or having their art stolen. It’s a disheartening reality for many creatives, who pour their hearts and souls into their work, only to be met with financial insecurity and a lack of recognition for their true worth.

This is exactly why I think artist-run spaces like Athenaeum are important. By creating spaces where artists have agency and a stake in the financial success of their work, we can begin to dismantle this exploitative system. We can show that art is not just valuable culturally, but also economically, and that artists deserve to reap the rewards of their labor. It’s a shift in thinking that I hope non-creatives will come to embrace. By recognizing the immense value that artists bring to society and supporting models that empower them, we can create a more equitable and sustainable future for the arts.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://athenaeumeditions.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/athenaeumeditions/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AthenaeumEditions
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/athenaeum-editions-philadelphia

Image Credits
Steph Foster