A new analysis of US Census Bureau data indicates that American art students have a mere 1-in-10 chance of becoming working artists. And that’s not all:

Most surprising was the lack of overlap between working artists and arts graduates. In the United States, 40 percent of working artists do not have a bachelors degree in any field. Only 16 percent of working artists have arts related bachelors degrees. Though arts graduates may acquire additional opportunities and skills from attending art school, arts graduates are likely to graduate with significant student loan debt, which makes working as an artist difficult, if not impossible. … Although there are 1.2 million working artists over the age of 25 in this country, there are only 200,000 working artists with arts-related bachelors degrees. The majority of working artists have median earnings of $30,621, but the small percentage of working artists with bachelors degrees in the arts have median earnings of $36,105.

Alexis Clements is an arts journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently working on a book about the role and value of the arts in US. Learn more about her work at www.alexisclements.com. She reacts:

Most reports about artists that I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a fair number) that are based on quantitative data are pretty fuzzy when it comes to the thing that many artists would love to know: How much money do artists make from their creative work?Why is the data so imprecise? Because almost everything about the ways that artists work seems to defy typical practices for collecting labor and earnings statistics. By and large, it appears that labor statistics, like the ones collected in the American Community Survey, generally assume that most workers have a single or primary job that provides the largest share of their earnings and that job is comprised of a bounded set of tasks or modes of earning money — for example, if you say you are an auto mechanic, the assumption is that you earn most of your money fixing cars. But as many artists know, when you say you’re an artist, how you earn your money can and often does come from a wide array of sources — it could be sales or commissions, it could be royalty payments, fees for presenting work, or teaching in various forms, which many artists lump into their occupation as an artist. … All of this makes it really tough to understand what income really means for an artist when you’re trying to isolate their artistic earnings.

Source: Andrew Sullivan's The Dish.

Wiki Resource: DIY Budget Gallery

What is DYI Budget Gallery?

This wiki is a Do It Yourself manual on how to organize your own Budget Gallery where you can get an introduction to what a Budget Gallery is. If you're thinking about organizing a show, you'll be interested in seeing our show planning timeline that guides you through all the steps.  

Not everything presented is applicable in Canada or other constituencies. There is an American bias to the text but it remains a worthwhile resource for artists planning on mounting an exhibition.

Link.

I have just started teaching another term at Emily Carr University. I am teaching a course called The Business of Art Practice and I have 25 students of whom 24 are female.

[Penn State archaeologist Dean Snow's new study] began more than a decade ago when he came across the work of JohnManning, a British biologist who had found that men and women differ in the relative lengths of their fingers: Women tend to have ring and index fingers of about the same length, whereas men’s ring fingers tend to be longer than their index fingers. … 

[Snow] analyzed hand stencils found in eight cave sites in France and Spain. By comparing the relative lengths of certain fingers, Snow determined that three-quarters of the handprints were female. ”There has been a male bias in the literature for a long time,” said Snow, whose research was supported by the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration. “People have made a lot of unwarranted assumptions about who made these things, and why.” 

Archaeologists have found hundreds of hand stencils on cave walls across the world. Because many of these early paintings also showcase game animals—bison, reindeer, horses, woolly mammoths—many researchers have proposed that they were made by male hunters, perhaps to chronicle their kills or as some kind of “hunting magic” to improve success of an upcoming hunt. The new study suggests otherwise.

Link to the whole article at National Geographic.

Good News about Our Disgusting National Gallery

I am disgusted in our National Gallery. The gallery you might expect to be our nation’s strongest advocate for the rights of visual artists is opposed to fair treatment of Canadian visual creators to the extent that they have fought our advocates all the way to the Supreme Court. This is not our government fighting us; this is the leadership of the National Gallery.

Canadian Artists Representation/le Front des artistes Canadiens [CARFAC] and le Regroupment des artists en arts visuals du Quebec [RAAV] are the two organizations that have been working with Canadian public galleries to secure fair and reasonable exhibition fees for the artists the galleries show—these are galleries that do not sell work, often charge admission and exist only to show visual art.

In 1980, along with other nations, Canada signed a declaration of commitment to improve the financial situation of artists. Our government then passed The Status of the Artist Act (SAA) that allows professional arts organizations (CARFAC and RAAV for us) to negotiate collective agreements with federal institutions to cover things such as artists’ fees and working conditions.

Then, in 1988, our government added the exhibition rights to the Copyright Act giving artists the right to expect payment when their work is, “presented at a public exhibition, for a purpose other than sale or hire.” Consequently, the fair payment of artists’ exhibition fees has become standard professional practice in Canada.

CARFAC and RAAV began negotiations with the National Gallery in 2004. Discussions progressed for two years and then, in 2007, the Gallery ceased negotiations. They based their decision to conclude negotiations and oppose the fair payment of artist exhibition on a refusal to recognize CARFAC’s and RAAV’s right to negotiate for Canadian visual artists. They believe that there is a conflict between the objectives of the Copyright Act and the Status of the Artist Act. 

In 2008, CARFAC filed a complaint with the Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal (CAPPRT—sorry for all these acronyms). It is the body that oversees the SAA. That action led to unsuccessful mediation sessions that lasted for over a year. Finally, in 2012, the Tribunal found the Gallery guilty of bargaining in bad faith. The Gallery then asked for a judicial review in the Federal Court of Appeal and the Tribunal decision was overturned on a split vote of two to one.

Here’s what CARFAC has to say about the decision:

In essence, the National Gallery believes that the Copyright Act, which protects the rights of individual artists, trumps the Status of the Arts Act, which allows artists to organize collectively. They believe that because CARFAC and RAAV do not have copyright assignments from all individual Canadian artists, we do not have the right to negotiate minimum fees for their work. 

The CARFAC explanation (above) successfully explains the legal basis of the National Gallery of Canada’s opposition to the payment of artists’ exhibition fees. But why, you might ask, is Canada’s foremost exhibition hall for visual artists so opposed to fair treatment of the artists they exploit to earn their visitor admission fees? (General admission is $12; seniors & students admission tickets cost $10; youth admissions are $6.)

The split decision is why CARFAC and RAAV appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada to fight for our rights. I believe the Court may shame the Gallery in their ruling but to win CARFAC and RAAV need your help. Please visit the carfac.ca to donate specifying that your donation is to help fight the Supreme Court case against the National Gallery.