Market Value Carrier (Featuring Andrea Fraser)

This limited edition series of transparent, color-blocked vinyl tote bags was created by the art and fashion collective CFGNY on the occasion of Triple Canopy’s 2023 benefit honoring Andrea Fraser.

Each bag features two pockets: an empty “book pocket,” to show off your reading material of choice, and a pocket filled with a portion cut from an exhibition copy of Andrea Fraser’s print 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics. The print depicts diagrams published in Fraser’s 2018 book of the same name, which documents the intersection of electoral politics and private nonprofit art institutions; the diagrams chart political contributions made by trustees of 128 art museums in the United States in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

Distributed across the bags, the pieces of the print trouble the sanctity and traditionally non-fungible status of artworks. CFGNY’s totes raise questions of how value is assigned and obscured—in the art world and beyond—and how such operations might be made transparent.

Each tote includes a random fragment of Fraser’s print. Books are not included.