Animal Locomotion; Plate 197 (Couple Dancing) by Eadweard Muybridge

Muggy, damp Tuesday greetings, collector friends. Sticky weather aside, I'm thrilled to be back in NYC after a wonderful week in San Francisco. The confab was, well, fabulous. Particularly gratifying this year: selling framed prints right off the wall. It is so cool to see so many smiley people walking out the door with their new acquisitions tucked under their arms. And, as always, the chance to mix and mingle with our collectors face-to-face is both invaluable and inspiring. It's a nice change of pace from imagining all of you as I tap away at my keyboard, and hearing all your stories, ideas and feedback makes the why of what we do that much more real.

Animal Locomotion; Plate 197 (Couple Dancing) comes with Bay Area roots and an excellent back story. Its creator is the legendary Eadweard Muybridge. English by birth, Muybridge made a name for himself in San Francisco with his pioneering work on animal locomotion, unraveling its mysteries through stop-motion photography and the earliest projections of motion pictures—the series dates back to 1887.

Releasing vintage images has always figured into the broader vision of 20x200, but like many (so! many!) of the other ideas we've got about what the site can and should be, it's remained on the back burner for a long time. A Valentine's Day blog post by my friend and fellow art dealer James Danziger proved to be just the thing to make the idea a reality. I was utterly charmed by James' tale of his pursuit of this image, its subsequent disappearance and resurfacing, and was especially intrigued by his alluding to the idea of printing reproductions of it. Being the type of person who will ask anyone anything, and having long wanted to collaborate with James on something or other, I immediately fired off an email to him with the subject line: "We should do an edition with the Muybridge!" The rest, my friends, is about to be history.

Supporting contemporary artists in their practices is, and will always be, core to 20x200's mission. The introduction of vintage editions today is a key component to furthering and expanding upon that mission. Naysayers and skeptics are sure to look askance at such a statement, which takes me back to 2007. Back then, the idea of translating the sales of affordable prints into substantive support for artists was deemed preposterous by almost anyone I told. I'm pretty excited about how we're planning to use proceeds from sales of these editions—while we're not 100% ready to unveil our full plans yet, you can purchase this print today knowing that a substantial portion of its proceeds will be funneled into 20x200's newly formed Artists' Fund.