Report: NYC Artists an Endangered Breed
It’s an old story, but let’s hear it again: Up go the rents, out go the artists. A new report from the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Columbia’s Teachers College makes the case that New York real estate values are driving artists to lower-cost cities and that the city’s cultural capital is endangered,…
It’s an old story, but let’s hear it again: Up go the rents, out go the artists. A new report from the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Columbia’s Teachers College makes the case that New York real estate values are driving artists to lower-cost cities and that the city’s cultural capital is endangered, according to an article in today’s Sun. The report, entitled “Above Ground,” is based on interviews with 213 visual artists between the ages of 62 and 97. The artists interviewed earned a median income of $30,000 and 44 percent of them live in rent-regulated apartments. The report recommends that the city recycle buildings for artists to live and work in and designate areas in new condos for galleries run by artists. “New York is at risk if we lose that creative community,” said Theodore Berger, the project director of Urban Arts Initiative. “We risk becoming what Paris has become: filled with wonderful institutions, but with no living, breathing community.” Sacre bleu?
New York in Danger of Losing Its Artists [NY Sun]
Photo by jennpelly
There is a lot of hostility toward artists here… but you should all remember that artists are the Original Gentrifiers!
I hope NYC does not become like Paris. If it does, then the transit workers will go on strike forever.
Ah 4:43, had you lived there you’d be singing a different tune, I assure you. You should have met their friends and the many, many musicians who came by to rehearse. Lovely bunch of folks who came careening drunk up and down the stairs and “disposed” of their lit cigarettes by throwing them out the windows and onto our terrace. Truly, just the most wonderful bunch of creative souls.
They were lame so of course that means all artists are lame. yuuup.
Let me tell you a little story about having “artists” as neighbors.
My husband and I used to live in a brownstone, on the 2nd floor. A couple of “artists” moved in above. He was a painter, she a violinist. Because they were so very creative and talented, they undertook a renovation of their apartment (a rental, mind you) that included ripping up layer after layer of flooring. They kept expecting to hit hardwood. Eventually they hit the subfloor, at which point they “ran out of money” (because they were artists dontcha know, making due on limited funds). We could hear everything they did. Every conversation, every sneeze, their sex. But the worst part? She practiced that violin 12 hours a day. It was the first thing we heard in the morning, the last thing we heard at night, and all we heard all day long on the weekends. Somehow, they could afford month-long vacations, a studio for him to paint in, and materials for the never-ending “renovation” (they totally fucked up a perfectly nice apartment and took complete advantage of our kindhearted, old fashioned Italian landlord). But they never had the money for rugs or to finish the floor. We finally moved after they had a square-dancing party on Thanksgiving. Yes. Square-dancing.
All in all, I’d rather live near teachers, social workers, cops, fireman, office workers … anyone really. God save us from the artists.
good work 11:20! way to find the logical flaws in my JOKE!
Jimmy Legs said, ” i’d love a federally-funded artists colony smack dab in the middle of the city, where artists can ply their trade unmolested by the forces of the ultra-rich”
Ummm, artists can’t ply their trade unmolested by the forces of the ultra-rich. The ultra-rich are their patrons. Art is a luxury good, and the wealthier the city becomes, and the more of a tourist destination, the more money will be spent on art, and the more artists will find gainful employment plying their trade.
that reminds me. I knew this guy who transported art from LA to NYC and once he had to move these paintings this buy made by giving himself a paint enema. He then would shit all over the canvas and film it and show it in the gallary.
needless to say the guy died of colon cancer soon after.
Montrose Morris at 2:16, you rock.
And artists…yeah, come on down to Flatbush. This year, there just may be an artists’ open studio tour pegged to the Victorian Flatbush House Tour. Truth…stranger than fiction, even stranger than irony!