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
im friends with alot of teachers and the only thing they have in common with artists is that they drink alot.
and theres always the weekends. Its two whole days of free time.
The stereotype of artists ensconced in huge, cheap lofts, laying around contemplating their navels while creating strange and bad art, is just that, a stereotype.
I don’t know any artists of any kind, fine arts or performing arts, who don’t work, and most work very, very hard. The number of trustfundian artists is ridiculously small, not enough to constitute a viable statistic.
The definition of “artist” goes well past someone creating sculpture from sticks and dog poo, or sliding down a wall and calling yourself a performance artist. Artists create the clothing, jewelry, tshirts and video games you love, the fonts on your computer, and the billboards on the subway. We need fine artists in the city, as well as those in all of the performing arts. Most will stay anyway, as they are busy in the general economy, trying to pay rent, buy supplies and take voice lessons. They are us, part of the working horde.
Let’s fund those performance spaces, rehearsal spaces, workshops, galleries and studios, because the question is not really where an artist will live, it’s whether there is any reason to live here. If there are no places to work on and perfect your craft, you can’t be successful. The theatre strike shows how art and commerce in this city are intertwined. We need all of the arts and the artists who make them, to stay here in New York City.
If you want to support artists, buy art. Don’t give them free housing. Let the market decide who should be able to make their living as an artist. The others should get another job and do their hobby on their own time like the rest of us. Calling yourself creative does not give you the right to free housing.
good point about teachers and soho. artists have edge. they make music and plastic art and rhyme words and color their hair in funny ways. and rich people want to be near that energy. no one want to live near a teacher unless the teacher is a professor who writes about art and postmodernism as a Shaker-BedStuy problematic.
The majority of artists also suck that is why they work in crummy jobs to try to make their art in their pathetic little studios and hang out at Gorilla Coffee all day looking at stupid blogs like this one, Get off your ass and do something worthwhile, Art is over. It is a plaything for the rich. I should Know I have a fuckin MFA. And if I was not in the fucking hospital right now recovering from a fucked up situation I would kick everyone of your sorry little artsy asses.
This is all true.
the whole starving artists thing is kinda played out and worthless. Id love to not work and just fuck around all day but I cant really do that. Most people I know in bands have really great jobs and make a good amount of money. Just check out the feature on Stereogum that shows different bands and what the members do. Its interesting.
also bed stuy and crown heights are cheap and you can easily get a large apartment in a great brownstone with multiple people and pay less than $500.
Hey 11:39…
No, you ARE an idiot to make it sound like the majority of artists are rich. The majority of artists don’t make shit. The majority of artists hold down office jobs or service jobs. The majority of artists try their best to express themselves in the few feeble hours they can get in their studios. The majority of artists really do struggle. The majority of artists probably think you’re an idiot.
artists make people want to move to an area b/c they make it cool.
teachers and postal workers dont do that.
you could have moved tons of teachers into soho and it wouldnt have done shit.
while personally 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, i know it’s not gonna happen. in fact, the harder we try to hold on to our shadowy notion of ‘artist community’ in NYC, the faster we’ll choke the life out of it. there might be concessions to be made, but Montrose is right, it’s a different world from those loft-livin’ days.
if we want to get back to that, all we have to do is start running the city the way it was run in the 70’s: constantly near the brink of economic annihilation.
maybe we’re not so far off from paradise regained. perhaps The What has a pertinent article to quote?