ArtistFacts
Artists as Workers | Credit | Workspace | Healthcare | Income | Grants | Education and Training | Resource Links
ArtistFacts is a compendium of facts, figures, and comments gleaned from some of the work that the Research Center has sponsored, including The Worklife of Jazz Musicians, Information on Artists (IOA), Information on Artists II (IOA II), the Artists Training and Career Project (ATC), and The Artists Speaks Series. The jazz study data are from 2000. IOA financial figures refer to 1987. IOA II financial figures refer to 1996. The Artists Training and Career Project data were gathered between 1990 and 1994. These facts offer a few highlights of the data from RCAC studies. If you would like more information, please see the full reports.
Over 35% of IOA II artists spend 31 or more hours a week on art or art-related activities, compared to 39% of artists in IOA. Only 43% of artists spent more than 21 hours a week on other employment in IOA II compared to 57% in IOA.
Ninety percent of IOA II artists and 86% of the IOA artists had at least one credit card; 52% of IOA II artists and 43% of IOA artists applied for bank loans, 42% of IOA II artists and 26% of IOA artists applied for mortgages.
Twenty-eight percent of IOA II artists and 32% of IOA artists owned their current workspace; 40% of IOA II artists and 36% of IOA artists shared that workspace with others; and 60% of the buildings where artists’ workspace is located were residential.
Seventy-nine percent of artists in the IOA II study had some form of medical
coverage, as compared with the 1988 IOA study, when 82% had some form of
medical coverage. The 1988 study showed that 28% of artists obtained this
coverage themselves (not through their mates, employers, unions, etc.);
51% paid for this coverage themselves; 49% obtained routine health care
from a private physician; 24% from an HMO or PPO; and 51% had been exposed
to occupational hazards in their work (for over half this was an ongoing
condition).
In the jazz study, 88% of AFM jazz musicians had health coverage; among RDS respondents only 43% of jazz musicians reported having health or medical coverage.
With adjustments for inflation, artists in the IOA (1988) and IOA II (1996)
studies earned about the same from their art. Sixty percent in 1996 (64%
in 1988) earned under $7,000 from their art, and 45% in 1996 (49% in 1988)
earned under $3,000 from their art. In 1996 an average of 8% earned over
$40,000 from their art, compared to 7% in 1988.
In IOA II, 25% of respondents earned between $20,001 and $30,000 total gross
income in 1996. 6% earned between $50,001 and $60,000, and another 8% earned
over $60,000.
In the 1990 ATC study, 81% of the painters earned under $12,000 from their
art; 75% earned under $30,000 as individuals from all sources of income;
and 64% earned under $40,000 gross household income.
In the jazz study, 68% of AFM jazz musicians earned 100% of their incomes from music.
In 1988 the grant amount that appeared most often (the mode) for artists
in the IOA study who received grants was $500; the median was $1,500. By
1996 the mode was $1,000 and the median, $2,000.
Of the 11% of AFM jazz musicians who received grants or fellowships in 2000 as jazz or aspiring jazz musicians, more than 90% received $5,000 or less. 37% of the RDS respondents received grants and fellowships in the same year, but more than 90% of these awards were also $5,000 or less.
All RCAC studies show artists as being highly educated.
Forty-three percent of artists in the IOA II study had a college degree,
and another 38% had a graduate degree. Forty-one percent of the painters
in the ATC study had a college degree, and 43% a graduate degree. Sixty-three
percent of the IOA and IOA II artists remained in the cities where they
received their training.
Almost 45% of both AFM and RDS jazz musicians held bachelor's degrees or higher, a relatively large share compared to the 24% of the US population over age 25 in the year 2000 with this level of education.
Observations and Comments from the Artists Training and Career Project:
Painters:
Competition, for artists, should be a search for ideas, a search for originality.
There is no loyalty by painters to each other because of the small pie of the marketplace.
There is a societal pressure that says, “What makes you think you can dabble in your interest when ninety-five percent of the world has to make a living?”
Painting is not something I want to do. It’s something I have to do.
The world doesn’t care if you’re in the room...So if you care, stay in the room.
Actors:
In theatre’s mirror, civilization comes to know itself.
Acting is not a ‘career’ or ‘work’; it’s a permanent joy.
You’re torn. You yearn for the work – we all were in this to do the work – but we have to eat.
I think it’s very important for actors not to give up the dream, even though I don’t think it’s important to attain it.
Craftspeople:
There are craftspeople who believe you can actually see the love they have put into their work, or at least the results of it.
Over and over again, craftspeople spoke about respect for their material, as if the work was a compact, as though the material had to AGREE somehow to be used in a certain way for success to be achieved.
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Resource Links
The following links will help introduce the scope of the currently available
Internet resources for the arts.
Alliance for the Arts [http://www.allianceforarts.org]
The Alliance for the Arts is the leading organization that gathers, analyzes
and publishes information about the arts in New York—promoting New
York's cultural life and identifying the needs, contributions and issues
facing members of the artistic community.
Americans for the Arts [http://www.artsusa.org]
is the national organization that supports the arts and culture through
private and public resource development, leadership development, public
policy development, information services, public awareness and education.
Americans for the Arts brings together the energy, expertise and vision
of the American Council for the Arts and
National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, each with a record of leadership
in the arts community, and each with a commitment to documenting and shaping
public policies that affect the arts in communities throughout the United
States.
Anarchic Harmony [http://www.anarchicharmony.org]
is a tax-exempt organization that funds and manages research and projects
in the fields of music, opera, multimedia, Internet, theatrical architecture
and design, social and cultural economics. The bond that informs these
is a commitment to non-hierarchical art, work and association.
Art on the Net [http://www.art.net] is
a collective of artists helping each other to come up on the Internet
and share their works on the World Wide Web. Artists create, maintain
and share studios and rooms in the gallery where they show their works.
ArtsNet [http://www.artsnet.org/arts_links.html]
is an information clearinghouse of arts management resources available
on the net.
Arts Wire [http//www.artswire.org/arswire/www/awfront.html]
is the site developed by the New York Foundation for the Arts. There are
a number of interesting features worth exploring here.
The Boston Film/Video Foundation [http://bfvf.org/index.htm] offers its members access to equipment use,
a research library and a monthly newsletter with member news, job postings,
and current festival entry guidelines.
Center for Arts and Culture [http://www.culturalpolicy.org] promotes intelligent and informed debates
on those dimensions in American life where culture and policy meet. The
RCAC is a member of the Center for Arts and Culture network.
CultureNet [http://www.ffa.ucalgary.ca]
is a World Wide Web window on Canadian culture. It is a home and signpost
for Canadian artists and cultural organizations, and a jumping off point
for other Canadian cultural networks.
Independent Sector [www.indepsec.org]
is a national leadership forum, working to encourage philanthropy, volunteering,
not-for-profit initiative and citizen action that help better serve people
and communities.
The Institute for Studies in
the Arts [www.researchnet.vprc.asu.edu] (ISA) is an interdisciplinary
research center in the College of Fine Arts at Arizona State University.
The ISA provides an environment that supports individual inquiry and collaboration
among artists, scholars, and technologists to invent new forms of art
experience and processes for creating and teaching the
arts.
National Endowment for the Arts Publications [http://arts.endow.gov/pub] produces a wide range of actual and virtual
publications in-house and through cooperative agreements. Many of these
publications are available for free and can be ordered directly from the
Webmanager.
The National Endowment for the Humanities [http://www.neh.fed.us]
is an independent grant-making agency of the United States government
dedicated to supporting research, education, and public programs in the
humanities.
Princeton Center for Arts
and Cultural Policy Studies [www.princeton.edu/~artspol] improves
the clarity, accuracy and sophistication of discourse about the nation's
artistic and cultural life. Its programs and activities are designed to
create an infrastructure of well-trained scholars who have access to regularly
collected information about cultural organizations, activities and providers
and who produce timely research and analysis on key topics in arts and
cultural policy.
The Social Impact of the Arts
Project [http://www.ssw.upenn.edu/SIAP] is committed to developing
methods for studying the role of arts and culture in contemporary American
society. It has undertaken a variety of research projects in Philadelphia
which examine the relationship of arts and culture to other forms of civic
engagement, the connection of regional and
neighborhood participation, and the ways in which the arts affect neighborhoods'
quality of life.
Webster's World of Cultural Democracy [http://www.wwcd.org] is a virtual conference center and think-tank of
online information and networking established by The Institute for Cultural
Democracy (ICD) to encourage study and exchange of ideas about cultural
policy and cultural development practice.
World Wide Arts Resources [http://wwar.com]
- The comprehensive arts registry on the WWW.
Yahoo! Art [http://www.Yahoo.com/art]
is the original WWW Directory. This site has more than 35 categories of
arts-related links.