COLLECT MEANING; ESCAPE EASE W/ HOLLY HAGER
Written by Anna Carlson
Photos supplied by Holly Hager
Discovering art's transformative power, Santulan engages in a conversation with Holly Hager, an entrepreneur and art enthusiast, who shares her journey from a restrictive upbringing to curating a collection that challenges conventions, advocates inclusivity, and intertwines art with social change.
Art was frowned upon in Holly Hager’s house growing up. Hager’s family were Christian fundamentalists, so even religious art wasn’t understood or even seen as an act of worship. Nonetheless, Hager always had an affinity for it.
Santulan sat down with Holly Hager, a New York based entrepreneur, art collector, speaker, and author to discuss cultural consumption in the art world. Currently, Hager serves as a business professional and co-founder of House of Puff, a New York cannabis brand that’s working to bring cannabis to the mainstream through the intersection of art and social justice.
Hager came into contact with art through school. Spending most of her adolescent life in the Illinois suburbs, Hager encountered art through high school trips with friends to the Chicago Art Institute. She spent time viewing impressionism and posing as an art critic playfully scoffing at works by McCrakken, declaring that “this isn’t art.” It wasn’t until she needed a summer college credit course that she really fell in love and understood art for the first time. “I took a course called Art in the 21st Century thinking I’d absolutely hate it…I was absolutely enthralled,” Hager shared. “That’s what really took me there. Education; someone saying, ‘this is what that is, this is what that means.’”
To this day, Hager’s Soho apartment imitates a small contemporary gallery. Before she seriously started collecting in 2006, Hager’s slim art budget led her to haphazardly collecting things she liked. Among them were mainly religious objects from around the world. Hager shares this same fascination with her current husband which upon her meeting also collected religious objects. They shared this interest because they were in search of what these religious objects said about worldview and culture. On the other hand, when Hager’s mother first entered her current apartment and saw Zhang Dali’s installation, Chinese OffSpring hung in the dining room, she said, “Oh Holly, that’s gross!” Hager’s mother found the work distasteful and scary as Chinese Offspring displays multiple hanging nude human forms made out of real body casts of Chinese migrant workers.
“These nudes are meant to be provocative. Most of the art we collect is because we are very privileged and we’re interested in difficult work because it reminds us of our privilege. That’s a lot of what drives our art collecting,” Hager says.
Unbeknownst to the inner circles of the art world, who think privilege is their best kept secret and their smarts make them valuable, everyone on the outside knows how much elitism dictates art world culture. Making art more available for the casual art consumer takes intention and thought. Hager recognises the desire of intellectualism within the fine art industry, but adds,
“I find that really great art speaks to people of any sort of background because it communicates that ineffable thing visually that is very difficult to communicate verbally.
In an effort to demonstrate her point, she takes the Zoom camera over to a photograph of a Chinese performance artist who put toxic paint on himself to protest against the government. The black and white photograph is complex with many characters and multiple points of perspective. It’s the kind of piece that stops people in their tracks. “Plumbers, handymen, people who don’t go to art museums typically, they will come into the house and the one piece they’ll ask about is that one. To me, that is the thing of being super inclusive just by being really fabulous moving art,” Hager enthuses.
All the same, Hager notes as she seriously started collecting she quickly became frustrated by white supremacy, class division, and exploitation being perpetuated by the art world. One of the ways Hager responded to this was by starting her company Curatious which aimed to create an online art platform for academics and teach non-art insiders to engage with art. It didn’t take long for the platform to take off with Hager creating an extensive network of artists. After some years of operations, Hager wanted to bring more representation for people of color and women in her database and envisioned the business turning to a grassroots model. Two weeks before the launch event, Hager clashed with a few prestigious male art insiders she was working with on this project who told her that the idea no longer resonated with them due to the “inclusivity” aspect. Hager was dumbfounded. That’s when she decided to call it quits working in the art world as the harsh realities of exclusion clashed with her nature of inclusiveness.
Despite her ideals and practices, Hagger needed to find other art insiders who understood that the importance of art went beyond owning, buying, and elitism. “People need art especially now that religion is on the decline. I think people need that sense of universal communication, and understanding, and a feeling of togetherness that religion has provided for so long that art can also provide,” Hager explains. After closing Curatious, her mindset was that she was better off and would be more aligned by collecting from the right people.
Not long after, Holly met her now-business partner, Kristina Lopez Adduci, when they were co-panelists at Art Basel Miami in 2016. Adduci pivoted over to the cannabis industry from the art industry due to similar reasons as Hager. Adduci started a cannabis accessories company, in which she was hiring artists from all walks of life to make her products. Hager approached Adduci to become her partner, finding this idea a niche she could get behind. It’s at House of Puff where Hager believes she's been able to accomplish her goal of bringing art to more people. She feels fulfilled as she gets to source diverse artists with compelling work. Hager continues to show these art pieces and accessories in her house, so she may tell guests their stories.
A strong takeaway from Hager’s personal reflections in her over 30-year career was this idea that art isn’t supposed to be consumed easily. It’s supposed to be something you chew on and wrestle with. It’s clear that Hager believes that pretentiousness doesn’t have a place in her home or the art world for that matter because when art is accessible, that’s when it collects meaning.