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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


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  1. Let’s face facts. The only reason this story–and the others that deal with anything related to rent protection–is a featured post on Brownstoner today is cause it gets everybody all hot and bothered and in the mood to comment, thus driving up site visits and Brownstoner’s ad revenue.

  2. 3:44, you have no idea what you are talking about.

    Success in the arts is as much about luck, being in the right place at the right time, connections, the right person seeing/hearing you, and sometimes, superior sexual technique, as much as it is about talent.

    Read the biographies of most of the most successful artists, writers, actors, dancers, singers, etc, etc, and the prevailing theme is perserverance, self belief and good fortune. Most of them toiled in obscurity for years before becoming successful. It certainly is not as easy as good=successful=wealthy.

  3. “uncultured slobs with a lot of money in this city”

    who can afford to buy art? Rich people.

    50 million dollar Jackon Pollocks dont just get bought by poor people.

    also if you’re an artist starting out I would suggest you not quit your day job and just sit around and paint all day. If I want to be a gutiar player I dont just give up everything and sit around the woodshed.

    and honestly guitar players are artists as well.

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