Fine Art Adoption Network (FAAN) is an online network, which uses a gift economy to connect artists and potential collectors. All of the artworks on view are available for adoption. This means acquiring an artwork without purchasing it, through an arrangement between the artist and collector. Their goal is to help increase and diversify the population of art owners and to offer artists new means for engaging their audience.

FAAN is initiated by Brooklyn-based visual artist Adam Simon, and commissioned by Art in General. Sustained by the belief that critical cultural production entails re-imagining the ways in which art can be experienced and shared, FAAN’s goals are to give committed artists a platform to share their artwork with an audience interested in owning and experiencing it day after day; to give people the occasion of learning about contemporary art, as well as the way to enter into a direct dialogue with an artist. As a posting board, FAAN is also a collection of artworks in itself that, like a museum or an exhibition, has the potential of creating new knowledge about art and its experience, and a new type of audience, a community created from a dialogue about art and trust, and, evidently, social exchange.

Since its launch in April 2006, over one hundred artists have created accounts, more than 500 people are participating as adopters, and dozens of adoptions of contemporary art work have taken place.

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