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
Ridgwood Queens/Glendale
Corona
Rockaway
Gravesend
Bensonhurst
Sheepshead Bay
Hollis
Jamaica
Bronx
New Utrecht
Staten Island
All interesting neighborhoods with something to offer and as affordable, if not more than places like Bushwick.
Kind of like the Shakers all over again.
“Shaker Condos” is a hilarious oxymoron in any neighborhood. I hope they have separate entrances for men and women. 🙂
‘there are plenty of affordable areas within the five boroughs, it’s just that artists don’t want to live in them”
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.
I look at my block in Williamsburg. It is diverse, close-knit and fun. We all lived here when the L train was full of empty seats and there was one bar. We got stop signs put in to slow down the traffic that was endangering local children. We got some trees planted and a community garden put in. Some of my block is “hipster,” some is Dominican, some is Polish, some is Italian. Some is section 8 housing. We are all going to have to move soon.
So we will move to a new neighborhood and it will all begin again.
what is an artist anyway? not sure how we are defining that term in these repeated discussions…
At least the last five or six posts I’ve made have never shown up, but I’ll give it one more shot….
I don’t see why an artist can only be creative in an area that’s EXPENSIVE. Nor do I see why affordable areas that are good enough for other people somehow aren’t good enough for “artists”. That’s bullshit.
When I was a graduate student (in a HUMANITIES discipline, mind you), I spent many nights worrying about rent and bills, but no one made a big stink about my plight and I never expected them to. Instead, on one or two occasions I moved to cheaper areas and worked part time. That’s life at at some point we all have to suck it up….even artists.
I agree that where you live has less to do with production of art, than where you can show it. If we include the performing arts, the venues for newbies breaking in to the arts are few and far between.
I would definitely support any efforts to keep and create affordable performance, rehearsal and gallery spaces, as well as the creation and continuation of affordable studio spaces.
It’s a romantic notion to think of all artists living in large loft spaces, creating in cool spaces, with lots of light and room, but the reality is that most forms of art do not need that kind of space, and most artists never have it until they became successful.
The starving artist in a large loft is a vanished breed. That’s too bad, but instead of crying over what won’t be again, the efforts should be put into practical applications. It would serve the greater arts community to keep and maintain performance, rehearsal and studio spaces. The idea of an artist colony in a place like Sunset Park, or the South Bronx, or any other accessible, still affordable space has great merit.
Art=Commodity
Seems we should give people who manufacture art a place to do it like any other manufacturing type business opperating in the city. Gentrification usually means loss of commercially zoned loft buildings. SOHO>DUMBO>WILLIAMSBURG>REDHOOK>SUNSET PARK>?
Protect Manufacturing Districts like Naval Yard and you will continue to support the arts.
Louis Armstrong lived in Queens. Coltrane lived out on Long Island. Lots of artists live in Staten Island, Bronx, and other places. People will live wherever they need to if they want to produce art.
The thing that drives artists to want to live in NY is that there are venues for the art to be distributed, listened to, and viewed. If those are endangered, then we’ll lose the artists. I would think that to keep the culture, we’d want to focus on that. How many good music venues are left in Manhattan? Even Brooklyn? How many galleries are there that don’t cater to the Sothebies crowd? How many dance rehearsal spaces are left? Without those kinds of places, we can’t keep the art. When that happens, the artists will move.