Last year a museum in Germany asked me to do a talk and a small intervention in their permanent collection. Three days of work plus prep. They had a budget. I told them not to worry about it. I don't even have a good reason. I respected the institution. I liked the curator. I wanted to seem generous. So I just said don't worry about it and ate the time. My son found out and gave me this look. Not angry. Just disappointed in a way that was worse. He said you always tell me to value my work and then you do this. I sat with that for a while. I'm still sitting with it. The thing is I know exactly why I did it. There's a part of me that still thinks if I'm not being paid it means I'm doing it for the right reasons. Which is a stupid romantic holdover from the 80s when nobody had any money anyway. Now I have a studio to run and materials to buy and a grown son who watches me undermine myself. I charged them eventually. Six months later. Sent an invoice with a note saying I reconsidered. They paid it without a word. But I still feel the embarrassment of that first conversation. Not the embarrassment of asking for money. The embarrassment of being too afraid to ask for it.
