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
don’t worry about philly. the murders (horrible!) will keep the southern trek in check.
Finding Shaker Condos oxymoronic is like finding “Modern” condos in Windsor Terrace oxymoronic. If by modern you mean modernism (an aesthetic stance moored in the horrors of WWI, the rejection of Victorian mores and aesthetics, pastiche, increasing women’s liberation, jazz, African art etc.). I mean, what on earth does that have to do with Windsor Terrace!
Every aesthetic movement comes from something “real” and much Western ART is in some way inspired by religion or the rejection of it.
Think Shaker STYLE. It’s not the same as the religion. Although it’s rejection of ostentation makes this development “really new” as the modernists might say.
“Uh, I think the truth you are missing is that artists will move to those “undesirable” neighborhoods, make homes there, work to improve them, get pilloried as gentrifiers, then get priced out of them.”
What I don’t see is how this has any special application to the case of artists. If a postal worker or a short order cook moves to one of these nabes, works to make it better, gets pilloried as a gentrifier, etc., won’t prices go up then as well? If so, then should we be looking for special protections for them as well?
PS: I’m also finding that my posts aren’t showing up. What’s going on?
The creative brain drain is already underway. Oh well, our loss is Philly’s gain, as well as everywhere else’s.
10:59 and Montrose Morris at 11:15 make wonderful points, among the best I’ve heard in the many discussions on this topic on this site. A vibrant, thriving arts scene depends most on centrally located, appealing spaces where the arts can be produced, exhibited, and experienced. Audiences (both local and tourist) will travel to those places. Those who are making the art can commute there–just like most of the rest of us commute to our jobs. And it’s simply a fact of life that those who make less money generally have to commute farther/longer.
no, you REALLY are a effing idiot.
to say most of the artists you know are rich means you are one of two things:
1. too old to not know any young artists who are most certainly not rich
2. an idiot
11:23…
problem is…sure it will begin again.
but if this keeps up…it will begin again in savannah…or in austin or in portland.
there are fewer and fewer neighborhoods in nyc that have been untapped.
we need to find a way to make even the long ago gentrified neighborhoods welcome and affordable for artists.
it’s a good thing for brooklyn and queens. we will see the influx of artists for many years to come.
i’m afraid those days are over for manhattan, however.
HEY 10:34, I am not a fucking idiot, I used to work in the art world for many years, I saw many many rich artists. So FUCK YOU.
I’ll take five percent of the subsidy we give to real estate developers (AY anyone?) and/or Wall Street and/or corporations instead of the pittance we give to artists. Sound like a fair trade?