On any given day, Carrie Seid, a sculptor and mixed-media artist in Tucson, Arizona, has a couple dozen works that are “out,” meaning unsold but not in her studio. Some are consigned to commercial art galleries – there are five galleries in five different states – and others that are in the hands of art consultants (eight in five states). Then, of course, there are far more that are “in” her studio: completed, in progress or part of a public commission. At a manufacturing company, an inventory manager would be in charge of keeping track of where everything is but, in the sole proprietorship that is Carrie Seid Artist, she has to keep abreast of “where are my works, are they getting dusty, are any out on approval with collectors, has anything sold.”

Some artists rely on their memory to keep track of all this or use file cards or, if they have advanced to the 1990s, use an Excel spreadsheet. Seid had used a spreadsheet for some years before learning about the eight year-old company Artwork Archive, and now information on 112 of her works (“in” and “out”) are organized and managed in the Cloud.

Several thousand artists around the world now store images of, and information on, their artwork on the site, which costs between $6 and $19 per month, depending upon the number of images stored (100 objects at 10 separate locations for the most basic service, an unlimited number of both at the premium level). On a Public Profile Page, an image of each artwork will include the title of the piece, its dimensions and medium, date, subject matter, an inventory number where it is located and its price, as well as contact information for the artist. Artwork Archive is not only used by artists and collectors seeking to manage their inventory of artworks but by potential buyers for whom the site is an online source of available material. Justin Anthony, a co-founder of Artwork Archive, noted that many artists send links to galleries where they are interested in having their works shown. “It helps artists present themselves professionally,” he said.

Other pages indicate an artwork’s exhibition history, information about the artist, if, where and when a particular piece was sold, indicating the retail price paid and what the artist received, information about the buyer, even sales receipts.

Yet other services provide calendars (reminding users, for instance, when a proposal or an application to be in a particular show is to be submitted), charts that reveal where most sales are taking place and how one year compares to another, and storage of contact information on clients, suppliers and galleries. “It is a user-driven design,” Anthony said, with each artist’s pages of information stored in the Cloud, making it accessible from anywhere. He noted that security has always been a top priority and that the company protects users’ privacy, adding that there have been no data breaches since the company was formed in 2010. More worrisome for artists, he claimed, are personal computer hard drives that die, particularly when there are no back-ups, resulting in them losing information about their careers and work.

 Photo credit: Reel23Films

Sawyer Rose, a sculptor and installation artist in Fairfax, California, explained that she first heard about Artwork Archive from an artist who “kept losing track of inventory.” Some things were written down on cards somewhere, while other information was in the computer (she hoped). All pretty chaotic. “It helped me with inventory management,” Rose said. “A gallery would call me, saying ‘We have a client looking at a particular piece. What else do you have right now?’ I can find out right away, whereas before it would take me having to look here and there.” Additionally, scheduling the filing of applications – for shows, grants, residencies and other opportunities, when a particular piece would be back from one show in time to be in another show – consumed more time than it should have until she became an Artwork Archive subscriber.

Prior to Artwork Archive, Rose used an Excel spreadsheet, which she called a “hot mess. It had a file folder system that was reasonably well organized, but there were versioning problems, such as which image to use. That was solved with Artwork Archive.”

Excel is popular, but there have been other systems that artists have used. Lori Putnam, a painter in Charlotte, Tennessee, had been “a huge fan of Filemaker Pro,” but there were “some hassles. I’d get asked, ‘is a particular picture for sale and at what price?’ and it took me a while to find that out. When I made a sale, I had to manually enter all the information, which took time.” After learning about, and trying out, Artwork Archive, she made the switch, finding that the annual cost was between a quarter and a third of the price of Filemaker Pro, “because I don’t need to regularly update my software and licensing” anymore.

Artwork Archive is not the only online artwork inventory management system available to artists and collectors. Art Systems  has a StudioPro software program that “generates a choice of over 140 clear, concise, thorough, flexible and editable reports and documents in Microsoft Word — with images — in just a click. StudioPro’s reference module allows you to automatically format and cross-link provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography records with multiple artworks simultaneously, creating artwork fact sheets and a real-time catalogue raisonné. StudioPro works with other applications, including email, and facilitates sharing information with vendors, colleagues, or partners via Artsystems’ wide range of integrated solutions.” (Subscriptions start at $250 per month.) ArtLogic  stores unlimited information on clients, supplies, and “artworks, including location, purchase details, insurance values, condition, provenance, shipping, etc.,” as well as helps artists create invoices and specially curated Web pages for collectors (ranging in price from $49 to $160 per month). Collectrium is yet another, starting at $90 per month, and would appear to be more targeted to collectors of art and other objects who need to manage what they own, while Collector Systems is focused primarily on museum, art advisor, art appraiser and foundation client needs (from $85 to $150 per month).

By Daniel Grant

Early on in the newly released seventh edition of her How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist: Selling Yourself without Selling Your Soul (Allworth Press), Caroll Michels notes that artists may spend lavishly on supplies, equipment and studio space but not so much on what might help develop their careers, “such as travel, presentation tools, software, publicity and press relations, mailing lists, and such preventive medicine as engaging the services of professionals, such as lawyers, accountants, and career coaches.” Michels herself is a long-time artist career coach, and this book does far more than just explain the need to spend money on travel, presentation tools, lawyers, accountants and career coaches. It describes the narrow view of their own possibilities that many artists have at the outset of their careers (“their market is limited to their town or city of residence,” on the one hand, or only equating “success with having a show in New York”) and fears of what the larger world thinks of them (Is age 30 too old to start an art career? If my work sells, am I a sellout?) and offers a broader perspective. At $24.99, this book costs considerably less than a single hour of a career coach’s time, which is the point.

How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist is written in bit-sized portions, offering introductory remarks about specific topics – for instance, estate planning, healthcare, legal resources, software business programs for artists, sources of free or discounted materials and equipment for artists, bartering, affordable live-work spaces and copyright – and concluding with referrals to Web sites, organizations and other publications where readers may obtain additional information.

Obviously, artists have their own needs and concerns that cannot all be addressed in a single book with a lot of territory to cover. Michels looks broadly at the working lives of artists, identifying key issues in the development of their careers and pointing them in the direction of answers to their particular questions. Among those issues is the value of people like herself, career coaches who work individually with artists in order to guide them in the direction of, if not success then at least fewer obstacles.

“An artist’s career coach should serve as a backseat driver to help artists confidentially negotiate with art dealers, art consultants, and other members of the art world and suggest ways to resolve problems that might arise,” she writes. An obvious question that may arise for readers is whether or not this book is a 356-page advertisement for her own career coaching business. It is not, and Michels describes how to evaluate if a particular artist career coach is appropriate and when it might make sense to change coaches as one’s needs and careers evolve. It might have been helpful to include source information on where artists might find career coaches – is there an association? Do you just Google “artist career coach”? And what they charge for their services. There only are so many of these career coaches around the country, and it might occur to readers to wonder if it matters that a desired coach lives in another state and one’s only contact with that person is over or the phone or through email.

Readers also might appreciate specific stories she could tell from her own experience, of an artist who came to her claiming to need or want this or that, how she identified the artist’s essential problem in realizing career goals and led that person through various steps to achieving success – however success is defined. It isn’t giving away the store to let prospective clients know what is in store for them, because of all the services Michels describes (legal, accounting, medical, estate planning, software, governmental) her own is probably the one about which people have the least understanding.

Michels reveals her deep understanding of what artists at the outset of their careers – the principal audience for this book – are looking to find out by identifying and answering questions they may have: Where can I show my work? Do I need a gallery or dealer, or can I do that job myself? How can I find buyers, art consultants or organizations that might commission me? What should I include on my Web site/resume/blog/artist statement? How do artists and dealers find each other, and how might an artist approach a dealer intelligently?

She favors artists being in control of their own careers and sales, approaching the subject of dealers and galleries with a bunch of warnings. “Being an art dealer requires no qualifications or certification,” she writes, moving on to dealers’ “martyr syndrome” and “sales hanky-panky,” before offering practical advice on how to proceed. Gallery owners often want to direct the careers of the artists whose work they represent, which may bring them into conflict with a career coach. Perhaps, that isn’t what informs the cautions that Michels is signaling to readers, but certainly this cat can show her claws.

As opposed to when the first edition of this book appeared 30-plus years ago, the realm of suggestions and information in seventh edition of How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist: Selling Yourself without Selling Your Soul has grown significantly. Every chapter now concludes with a list of resources for where to find out more about what was just discussed. There is a lot to learn, and Michels offers a good starting point.

By Daniel Grant

During her five years of marriage to sculptor William King, the now 90 year-old painter Lois Dodd said that she “got to do all the womanly stuff…I always thought Bill’s work was great, so I was happy to support his career,” which also was probably the womanly thing to say during the 1950s. 

She met King when the two were art students at Cooper Union and, well, you know how these things happen. With friends and school and ambitions in common, they became an item, and it probably is that way in every field, then and now. What may be different now is the willingness of one or the other spouse – let’s say it, the wife – to put her own career on the back burner while he gets to advance in his. (It still may take place, but not as comfortably as in decades back.)

It probably helps to talk about certain issues in advance of tying the knot. Do they plan to collaborate or have separate careers? Will each artist be supportive of the other when that person’s career and work appears to be receiving more or less attention, or will competition become a problem? If both are working at home, is it okay for one to just walk into the other’s studio, or should permission be sought? When is it okay (or is it ever okay) to offer comments and suggestions about each other’s work? Are household and childcare chores going to be shared?

There are a number of reasons that people marry or divorce but, sometimes, it is because they are both artists. Another artist will understand the art one is attempting to create, will accept the lifestyle and serve as an in-house supporter as well as an experienced eye. Another artist may also be in-house competition and one’s fiercest critic, resentful of one’s success and scornful in his or her own.

There are various ways that artists attempt to resolve the tensions of both spouses being artists, such as establishing separate studios (for instance, he gets the garage and she gets an out-building), never visiting each other’s studios without asking first, using different dealers and generally staying out of each other’s careers. On the home studio side, one has the example of the house that Mexican muralist Diego Rivera had built for himself and his painter wife Frida Kahlo. There were two separate buildings, containing two separate living units and art studios, connected by a bridge on the second floor level. That bridge was narrow and somewhat rickety, which undoubtedly made the 300-pound Rivera hesitant about barging in on his wife. There were problems in their marriage, but getting disrupted while working wasn’t one of them.

“Marriage, whatever you are doing, is a negotiation from the get-go,” said sculptor Marc Mellon, who has been married for 30 years to sculptor Babette Bloch. “If you decide to have children, as we did, you have to work out who does what when. Who changes the diapers and who gets to be the artist?”

Fair to say, they did not have those discussions before getting hitched, but the nitty-gritty of two artists living under the same roof wasn’t on their minds at that moment. “We both knew that if we didn’t do art we wouldn’t be happy. We were compelled to create. Also, we knew we wanted to have children and have a house outside of the city.” Good, good. So, who’s going to mow that lawn? Who takes on the 3:00 a.m. feeding?

Marc’s career was somewhat more advanced than Babette’s, which tended to decide these matters when they came up. “Our first child was born two years and two months after getting married” – it’s impressive in itself that he remembers such things – “and a lot of the early decisions had to do with how I could keep working and do the stuff that brings in money while the other things get taken care of” (that’s where Babette comes in). “With the second baby, I helped out somewhat more. It got better and easier for her as I became more engaged.”

Becoming engaged meant figuring out some household appliances. “For a number of years, I claimed to not know how the washing machine worked,” he said. “I told her that if I tried to work it, our clothes may not come out clean.” Eventually, Babette demonstrated the operation of the settings and when or if to put in bleach. “Babette let me slide on that for five years.”

Babette, he added, “is super-creative in the kitchen…and in the studio,” which also lets us know who’s been flipping the chops all these years. “Men need to evolve,” Mellon said. “If we are with strong, smart, contemporary women, we must understand that they have the same goals that men have.”

Undoubtedly, every marriage requires tolerance and a sense of humor, which would be brought to the marital negotiations over who does what. The changing role of women in and out of marriage make it incumbent upon men to reassess older assumptions. Painter Mimi Gross noted that “the role of women has changed a great deal” since the start of her 13-year marriage to multi-media artist Red Grooms back in 1963 (she did not wish to elaborate), and Emily Mason noted that she married fellow painter Wolf Kahn in 1957, “before the women’s movement really got going.” Still, Mason said that “we worked things out pretty early on. Before I got married, my mother wrote me on a postcard ‘Keep your head: art first,’” and managing both a career and a home life proved not to be overly difficult for her.

“I thought it was important that I was home at 3 p.m. when the kids came back from school, but between 9 a.m. when they went off to school and 3 p.m. when they came home I could get a lot done.” She might have taken a page from sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who told me some years ago, “You have children for 15 years, not for 80 years. It’s just one episode in your life. There’s a lot more to life than that.” A less happy remembrance for Mason was telling her friend, the artist Biala, that she was pregnant with her first child Cecily and being told by the twice-married artist “Good, there still is time to have an abortion.”

Sometimes, it is just overly difficult for two married artists to have their own careers, so one has to put (her) career on hold for decades or longer. Sally Avery’s career as a painter remained largely nascent until her husband Milton Avery died in 1965, and when she began exhibiting her own work after that she used her maiden name Sally Michel in order to establish her own identity. During their marriage, “I wasn’t trying to promote my own work,” she said. “I tried to promote his work, because I thought he was a better artist than me.” Similarly, Bernard Bryson Shahn shelved her painting career for much of her 34-year marriage to Ben Shahn, not because of pressure from her husband but just because. “The marriage contract was just like that back then,” she said. “It was never the intention of my husband to stop from me from painting – in fact, he always encouraged me and others to express ourselves, and he never felt that there was only one way, his way, to paint – but one has obligations as a wife. I never intended to hold off on my career, but I just found myself in that circumstance.” It wasn’t until three years after his death in 1969 that she took up her brushes again.

Some artist-wives, such as Helen Sloan (John Sloan) and Emma Bellows (George Bellows) to name a few, completely give up on their art, never to pursue it again. Jo Hopper, wife of painter Edward Hopper, never fully gave up but was unhappy for years at the art world’s lack of interest in her painting. Gail Levin, an art historian and former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, noted that the museum “was given a number of her paintings along with the Edward Hopper bequest [in 1968], but most of her work was either given away or thrown out. Jo Hopper was not as good a painter as Edward Hopper, who was one of the greatest American artists ever, but she was as good as many a minor male painter who is currently in the Whitney’s collection. Edward Hopper’s fame was just too much for her career.”

That fame may have been a sore point throughout the Hopper marriage. Ben Shahn saw Jo Hopper as bitter and “rather jealous of her husband,” Bernarda Bryson Shahn said. “Ben used to complain that when he and others visited Edward Hopper, Jo was always trying to bring attention to herself and her work instead of his work. She was always bringing out her work into the middle of the room. I know of a lot of embittered wives of artists.”

Tensions are not necessarily lessened when an artist marries a nonartist. Janet Fish, a painter who first married and divorced an artist, then married and divorced a nonartist and currently lives with another artist, noted that “problems about being an artist are really symptomatic of other problems in the relationship. Men simply have more problems than women with competition. There is something in their upbringing that requires them to be the breadwinner. The bad relationships I’ve had have been when the man’s ego has been too tender.”

She added that “I know some women artists who say their husbands never come to their openings or to see their shows, as though they are trying to deny these careers exist.”

By Daniel Grant

Unzipping her booth tent the second morning of an arts fair, mixed-media artist Patricia Hecker of Bloomington, Indiana knew that someone had been there the night before. Her artwork was OK, but a cabinet had been broken into. “I’m sure someone was looking for money,” she said. Fortunately, she had made sure to take all cash and receipts back to the motel the evening before, so there was no loss on that end – just a damaged cabinet. Hecker mentioned the break-in to the fair sponsors, who had hired security guards and had otherwise required all of the participating artists to sign a contract in which they acknowledge that all property at the site is left there at the vendors’ own risk, but not to her insurance company. Why bother? The $1,000 deductible on her policy far exceeded the value of the cabinet, “and if you report a claim they’ll just raise your rates.”

Thefts are an occasional, sometimes regular, nuisance for artists and craftspeople who sell their work at fairs and festivals, despite the sincere efforts of the event sponsors and the artists themselves to stop them. They take place at night, when the artists aren’t around to watch their booths, and during the day when the artists are busy making sales and talking to would-be buyers.

Some thieves, like Hecker’s intruder, are looking for money, while others may be more interested in the truck in which the art was transported; a drill was stolen from the tent of Gregory Reade, a sculptor in La Jolla, California, when he participated in a fair in Scottsdale, Arizona, while the art was untouched. Richard Wilson, Jr. of Greenville, North Carolina, bitterly recalled someone stealing a $5,000 camera and lenses from his van. “They didn’t mess with the art, probably because they didn’t know its value.” The discovery of that break-in (“a real downer”) took place during the middle of a fair, “and I had to go back to the show. I didn’t want to be there anymore.”

David Bigelow, a printmaker in Ozark, Missouri, said that thieves have broken into his truck on several occasions, stealing the crates that contained his etchings – he has no idea what the robbers assumed they might be taking. The lesson he learned is: “Only eat at a restaurant when you can sit at the window and see your vehicle.”

Yet other thieves simply want a piece of art and not pay for it. “Two girls who had had too much to drink and had seen my work earlier in the day” crawled under the tent of Michael Baker, a sculptor in Salisbury, North Carolina, when he took part in a show in State College, Pennsylvania, grabbing one of his statues. Walking back to their Penn State residence hall, they were spotted by a campus police officer, at which point they dropped the sculpture (it wasn’t damaged) and tried to get away. Instead, they and the sculpture were brought to the campus police headquarters, where their parents were called, and Baker was called, too. “I was brought down and asked if I wanted to bring charges against them, but I didn’t want to do that,” Baker said. “The next day, the girls came to my tent, and I gave them a lecture on how stupid it was to be going to college and doing something like that. I hope they learned.”

No time of day appears to be more likely to see thefts than any other; fair sponsors around the country state that reports of stolen items are too rare to make an analysis (they often blame the artists for carelessness or a lack of vigilance), and insurers indicate that claims almost never take place. “We all know thefts happen, but we don’t really know with what frequency,” said Sally Bright, former board chairman of the National Association of Independent Artists, many of whose members show and sell their work at arts and crafts fairs. Her own experience of theft took place in the middle of a fair when a woman came into her tent, picked up an object and walked out with it. “I caught her in the act. She was mentally disturbed.”

There are different precautions to take during the day than in the evening. Bright recommended artists wear their money, such as in a money belt, and that they not let any other cash box, purse or register out of their sight. Having someone else in the tent, such as a friend or spouse, would provide another pair of eyes that could foil a thief, especially one who uses a partner to distract the artist. Art fair rules often prohibit the use of “proxies” – someone, such as a dealer or agent or relative, manning the booth in place of the artist – but a second person generally is allowed. Artists should not leave their tents unattended, and it would be unwise of them to ask neighboring exhibitors to watch their booths while they take a bathroom or lunch break. However, many fair sponsors offer “booth sitters,” volunteers who agree to spell exhibitors for brief periods of time, although these sitters don’t pitch the artwork in the tent and are not allowed to make sales in the artists’ absence.

Protecting the contents of one’s tent overnight is less clear-cut. Fewer people are around to spot and stop suspicious activity, and overnight security guards tend to be few in number. The two-day Greenwich Village Art Fair in Rockford, Illinois, for instance, holds 120 tents on the gated grounds of a municipal park and is guarded at night by two police officers. “The police officers are armed,” said one of the managers of the Art Fair. The odds are not in an artist’s favor: Store owners can lock their doors and pull down metal grates, but participants at fairs just zip their tents closed; even if they manage to put a lock on the zipper, the tent is just canvas, which any knife can cut through. “In the early years of doing fairs, I used to remove works every day from my booth,” Hecker said. “The logistics were against me, though,” as it required her to bring her van to the site every morning and evening, unpacking and repacking. “When you handle the works so much, you’re very likely to cause damage, especially when you’re doing it at the end of a long day.”

The end of the day (or the end of the fair) offers opportunities to thieves, who may have been looking at desirable objects in the booth and use the time that an artist is getting or loading the van to make a grab. Robbers also may have been paying attention to which artists have sold a lot of work on a particular day, following the artists out of the fair. “You should stay in areas where they are other people,” Bright said.

Insurance policies that are relevant to artists and craftspeople who participate in arts and crafts fairs come in two basic types: Business owners, or general liability, policies provide property (business vehicle, fire damage, loss of equipment not including computers), medical (slip-and-falls) and product liability coverage for artists in their studios and at an exhibition site (any damage caused to the facility). Art fair sponsors usually require vendors to have these policies, with liability coverage of at least $1 million. The deductible – the initial amount of money that an insurer is exempted from paying on a claim – is variable, ranging from $250 to $1,000, as is the level of liability ($300,000, $500,000 or $1,000,000). Policies with lower premiums usually have higher deductibles and lower liability limits.

For artists, losses from theft may not be recoverable, because of high deductibles, but just a part of doing business, and they should put their faith in vigilance rather than in insurance providers.

A U.S. district court in San Francisco turned back a challenge from a bay area Building Industry Association to Oakland’s recently enacted amendment to its Percent-for-Art statute that requires large-scale real estate developments in the city include publicly accessible works of art or pay a fee to the municipal arts agency. The February 5th ruling by Judge Vince Chhabria accepted a motion by Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker to dismiss the association’s lawsuit to stop the implementation of the city’s 2015 requirement that developers of both commercial and residential properties include artwork on their sites.

That statute compels developers of commercial projects to spend one percent of their budgets on public artworks, or one half of one percent in the case of residential projects, or else pay a corresponding sum to the city for its arts programs.

The Building Industry Association brought a lawsuit in 2015 against the city of Oakland on constitutional grounds, claiming that the municipal law violated both the First Amendment to the U.S. constitution, by requiring speech in the form of purchasing works of art, and the “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment, which limits a public entity’s ability to take control of private property for public use.

Judge Chhabria turned aside the Fifth Amendment objection, claiming that the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the “takings clause” as applying only when government officials sought to require something of a real estate developer regarding a specific individual property rather than a broad class of properties. He did not call the association’s claim as meritless but stated that resolution of this issue “should be in the Supreme Court, not the Northern District of California.”

The judge had less patience for the First Amendment objection to Oakland’s law, claiming that the ordinance is not “automatically invalid simply because it involves some degree of compelled speech. Plenty of laws involve a degree of compelled speech, and only some of those trigger heightened judicial scrutiny.” According to a statement released by the association in 2015, at the time that this expansion of the city’s 28 year-old public art law was enacted, charged that “[t]he First Amendment’s free-speech guarantees include the right not to give voice to someone else’s message.” However, Judge Chhabria ruled that “[t]he ordinance does not require a developer to express any specific viewpoint, because developers can purchase and display art that they choose.”

The requirement to include publicly accessible artwork in a residential or commercial project, or provide an equivalent amount of money to the city for its art programs, the judge claimed, has the positive goal of “improving the aesthetics within the city and bolstering real property values.”

The ruling noted that Oakland “is one of at least twelve cities in California that have ordinances requiring developers to display or fund art as a condition of project approval.” More generally, where artwork is involved, owners are finding increasingly that laws and trade practices are restricting what they are permitted to do with what they own. If it is a mural on the side of a building you own, you can’t just whitewash it or knock down the wall as part of an expansion. If the artist calls the sculpture “site specific,” you can’t just move it to some place that seems just as good or better. If the artwork needs cleaning or restoration, don’t just take it to someone to do the job but contact the gallery for recommended conservators and the artist for approval of the job. If the dealer you bought it from says not to sell it for at least five years, not to sell it at auction or not to sell it at all, better not.

“Restrictions on what you can do with things you have bought are foreign to the American concept of jurisprudence,” said New York art lawyer Susan Duke Biederman. “Under American law, when title changes hands, generally you can do what you want with what you own. The art world is different.”

And, because it is different, one of her jobs is to counsel clients who are considering the purchase of art, especially ones with less experience in collecting, about the protocols and legal restrictions of buying and selling. “A fair amount of my advising clients concerns the mores and wrinkles of the art market. I explain things and get wide-eyed looks. ‘Oh, my, really?’”

However, she is hardly alone in this. The art advisors who work with collectors, the dealers who sell to them, the lawyers who write up contracts to purchase high-end artworks from galleries all find themselves in the education field, explaining that works of art offer not only pleasure but hazards that laws and customs bring along.

“I operate on two modalities when working with clients,” said Manhattan art advisor Todd Levin. “There is the transactional, helping a deal take place, which really any trained monkey could do. Then, there is the educational, which takes the majority of my time, and much of that involves explaining what ownership means.”

He noted that purchasing an artwork isn’t just an individual triumph but “makes you a member of a community” – the art community – and buyers learn that they need to do as others do. Other art advisors and dealers use the terms “custodian” or “steward” of they art they bought: It’s yours for now but not forever. There is no ‘I’ in team. “Once we explain to clients how things are done in the art market and why they are done this way, they understand,” said New York art advisor Suzanne Modica.

Daniel Grant

Going to college (for art students and everyone else) is an opportunity to be exposed to a wide range of ideas, academic and practical pursuits, but by enrolling in a college both the student and the institution enter into a legally binding agreement. Actually, it is more than one agreement. Students sign contracts to pay tuition and all required fees, to behave in a certain way while attending classes or living in a dormitory (“I shall conduct myself in a manner which demonstrates respect for the University, myself, and my classmates” is one of six statements in the agreement that students at Robert Morris University in Moon Township, Pennsylvania are required to sign) and to abide by some spelled-out code of conduct while using school-owned computers and software. Additionally, there may be other legal documents to sign for those involved in athletics, internships and foreign travel.

For art students, there also may be other contracts to sign, such as agreeing to pay the cost of art materials provided to them (comparable to “lab fees” in the sciences), adhering to rules involving the safe use of art materials and tools (the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University requires the signing of a “shop access contract” for the wood shop, which states that students read and abide by all health and safety regulations) and when they seek to use an exhibition space to display their work. Students assigned private studios at the Ringling College of Art and Design agree in writing that they won’t sleep in these spaces or bring in a refrigerator, among 23 specific rules. In the thick student and faculty handbook at the Maryland Institute College of Art, there are pages devoted to limiting certain types of art speech – graffiti art on public property is “vandalism,” animals must be treated “in a humane manner when used in/as art work,” no setting off fireworks, displaying or using weapons, possession or use of illegal drugs or alcohol, no exposing others to “blood, urine, feces, chemicals or other hazardous materials” – as well as producing “works that involve physical/emotional stress (potential or real) to the artist and/or audience.”

Every independent art college and university art department has agreements for students to sign that limit certain behaviors or require them to take responsibility for something or other. For example, the exhibition contract at the Lamar Dodd School of Art of the University of Georgia describes the type of permissible use and required clean-up for those requesting a gallery:

Click here for sample contract.

Art students may have one more document to sign, ceding ownership of their work or effectively waiving a portion of their copyright claims for artwork they create while enrolled in the institution. As part of the registration process, students sign a limited release allowing the school to display their works in exhibitions, to use images of their work for promotional purposes (in printed publications and for the college’s Web site), and to retain the work temporarily for those purposes.

For example, the Department of Art in the University of Montevallo’s College of Fine Arts in Alabama “reserves the right to retain examples of student work for instructional purposes. The Department of Art reserves the right to reproduce examples of student artwork in its web page and any other promotional materials the department produces or approves.” Similarly, Pratt Institute’s Department of Digital Arts “retains the right to re-produce and distribute documented projects for promotional purposes only.” All of this is without compensation.

Art students aren’t alone in this type of thing. The film school of the University of Southern California claims ownership of the copyright of any student film made using school equipment, while New York University’s film school claims the right to purchase copies of and display films produced by its students. These students learn in their programs what copyright is and protects, and then get a lesson in how copyright may be lost.

Speaking of copyright, back in 2006, Paul Chan was a visiting artist for the MFA program at Northwestern University and looked at one student’s work that was a banner with the words “mission accomplished” on it, referencing the well-known 2003 photograph of President Bush on an aircraft carrier that had a banner with those words on it. Several months later, Chan was asked to contribute a work for a benefit auction at a Hong Kong arts center, and he recreated the student’s banner but with his name on it. He displayed the same piece at a group exhibition in London a few months after that, but did email the student to say that he would share credit and any sales revenues from the piece with her, which came as a surprise to her as she had been unaware of his actions. Chan settled a legal claim not long thereafter.

Just so you know.

Daniel Grant

There is much to be learned from instances in which an artist wins a moral rights lawsuit involving the Visual Artists Rights Act. That piece of federal law, enacted in 1990 as an amendment to the U.S. Copyright Act, permits the author of a “work of visual art” the right

(A) to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation, and any intentional distortion, mutilation, or modification of that work is a violation of that right, and (B) to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature, and any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of that work is a violation of that right.

Some artists have prevailed when they brought action against a perceived wrong. For instance, in 1997, Jan Martin won the first lawsuit filed under the law, after his sculpture “Symphony #1” was demolished by the City of Indianapolis, Indiana, which sought to make changes in a downtown neighborhood under an urban renewal plan and did not think to inform the artist of its intentions or allow him to retrieve his work. (The artist was awarded $20,000 in statutory damages in addition to attorney’s fees and other costs.) Four years later, sculptor Audrey Flack sued when a nonprofit group that had commissioned her to erect a monument in the Borough of Queens, for which she created the bronze casting molds and a 35-foot tall clay head, allowed the molds to become damaged and then unbeknownst to her hired one of Flack’s assistants to resculpt the face rather than Flack herself. (She brought a VARA lawsuit against the group, which filed to dismiss the action, but that motion was denied, leading to an out-of-court settlement in the artist’s favor.) In 2008, artist Kent Twitchell prevailed when he brought a VARA lawsuit against 13 defendants, including the U.S. government, for destroying his moral “Ed Ruscha Monument” in 2006 by whitewashing the side of the building in Los Angeles where it had been painted back in 1987. (The two sides settled out-of-court for $1.1 million.)

The courts established that Martin’s work was of recognized stature, deserving VARA protection; that Flack was the “author” of her work, that no one else could change her work, and that the hiring of her assistant to make repairs constituted “gross negligence;” and, that Twitchell had a right under the law to remove his work and to be given notification of changes that were planned for the building.

Photo by Tasayu Tasnaphun

 

There also is something to be learned when artists lose moral rights lawsuits, because artists must never forget that they must know what the law is and not just make assumptions. There have been more losses in artist-filed VARA lawsuits than wins, and the most recent defeat for an artist was handed down on November 14th by a district court in New York when it ruled that Steven Tobin’s “Trinity Root” sculpture, which had been installed outside downtown New York City’s venerable Trinity Church in 2005, as a memorial to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, was removed in 2015 and transported to a church-owned site in Connecticut. A certain amount of damage took place as a result of the move.

The sculpture was inspired by the sycamore tree in front of the 320 year-old church, which bore the brunt of the falling debris on September 11th, preserving the church from more extensive damage. Tobin, a sculptor who lives in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania, convinced the then-rector of the Episcopal church, Rev. James H. Cooper, to permit him to excavate the stump and roots of the tree so that he could create a bronze memorial, which would be sited at the site of the church. Tobin was not paid by the church, but he agreed to pay the entire cost – estimated in the lawsuit as over $1 million and requiring the artist to take out a second mortgage on his home – of creating “The Trinity Root,” which is 15 feet wide and 13 feet tall, weighing three tons. Tobin was assured by Rev. Cooper that the artwork would remain in the courtyard permanently.

There was a formal agreement between the artist and the church in 2004, stating that “Tobin hereby transfers and assigns to Trinity by charitable donation all right, title, and interest to the Sculpture.” In addition,

In the event of any termination of this Agreement, Trinity will own the Sculpture…and will have the right to complete, exhibit and sell the Sculpture if it so chooses…. Tobin understands that Trinity has not promised the public exhibition of the Sculpture, and that Trinity may loan the Sculpture to third parties as Trinity deems appropriate.

That promise to keep the sculpture in the courtyard permanently was not in writing, however, negating any claims of breach of contract. Tobin was notified in advance of the decision by the church, now under the leadership of a different rector, to move “Trinity Root” out of state, and he objected, claiming that the artwork was “site-specific” and that moving it to a location unrelated to the events of 9/11 diminishes the sculpture and thereby the sculptor himself. However, the district court judge pointed to the contract signed by the artist in which “the Agreement provides that it ‘constitutes the entire agreement between the parties…and may only be amended or modified by a written instrument executed by the duly authorized representatives of the parties.’”

On Tobin’s VARA claim that moving the artwork represented a distortion of it, Judge Lorna G. Schofield ruled that “Trinity Root” was not treated with any degree of “gross negligence” and affirmed what other courts around the country have held that the federal law “does not apply to site-specific art at all.”

The lesson for artists from all this is to read and abide by the terms of the contracts they sign, as well as not to assume that they are somehow above the law.

By Daniel Grant

Don’t get Harriete Estel Berman started on the subject of artists having contracts with the galleries that represent their work. The San Mateo, California sculptor doesn’t converse on the subject; she proselytizes. “In no other field than art do people regularly work without a written contract,” she said. “If I agree to work with a gallery and they don’t hand me a contract, then I provide them with mine, and we go from there. If they say no to a contract, end of story. I’ll work with some other gallery.”

That may not be the end of story for every artist. The power imbalance between artists – especially younger, emerging artists who will forego standing on principle in order to have some gallery show and possibly sell their work – and their dealers often forces artists to accept otherwise unacceptable arrangements of which the absence of a written agreement is but one element. To a degree, artists can only hope that success in selling their work will provide them with greater leverage for negotiating better deals later on. Still, it is useful to have a firm idea from the start of what one’s arrangement is with a dealer and what one might negotiate for in the future, which includes putting it all in writing.

Quite a few art gallery owners will say no to contracts, for a variety of reasons. A legal document will require them to pass it by their own lawyers, which adds to cost and a sense of suspicion: If you believe I would sell your work and then not pay you we shouldn’t be working together. They view a contract in the way that a fiancé might look at a pre-nuptial agreement, as the first step toward inevitable divorce, while dealers prefer to see their relationships with artists as a marriage.

“Most of the time they just say they prefer not to work with contracts. Nothing specific, they just don’t want to deal with it,” said Los Angeles artist Eric Merrell, who noted that he has “walked away from galleries that balked at the idea of using consignment forms. This is always one of the first questions I ask a potential gallery.”

A written agreement between artist and gallery just strikes him as common sense. “If it was all verbal and I just told them the sales price when I dropped off the painting, we could both potentially remember different figures,” he said. “It’s a recipe for misunderstanding.” He added that a consignment agreement is “primarily a statement of common understanding. I know too many artists who have been taken advantage of by galleries.”

Not all dealers are right for all artists, and one of the most useful ways of determining if the fit is right or not is discussing the terms of their business partnership: How often will my artwork be exhibited? (In group shows only? In periodic solo exhibits?) What is the gallery commission? (40 percent? 50 percent? More?) What type of discounts on the price can be made without obtaining the artist’s approval? (Five percent? Ten percent? Twenty percent?) What kind of advertising and promotion will be done for my exhibitions? (Will these costs be borne by the gallery or shared by both artist and dealer?) Will there be a catalogue for each exhibit and, if so, how will the costs of the publication be borne or shared? How soon will I be paid after a sale is completed? (Thirty days? Sixty days? Ninety days? Later than 90 days?) Who pays for crating and shipping artwork from my studio to the gallery? Who pays for insurance of my work while in transit from my studio and when it is in the gallery? Is the gallery owner the exclusive agent for my work? (May I sell from my studio? May other dealers – locally or in other parts of the country – show and sell my work?) How long will this agreement be in effect? There is a lot to talk about, and the best follow-up to this discussion is a written document that details what has been agreed to.

Frequently, artists and dealers have a short-term agreement – a sort of trial marriage – to determine whether or not they work well together, and this may be renewed or expanded later on.

Written contracts may solve a lot of problems, but dealers frequently make sour faces whenever an artist offers one. “A lot of the relationship between the artist and the dealer is based on trust, and you can’t pin that down in a written contract,” one prominent New York City dealer said. “In fact, the written contract may imply a lack of trust.” One might say that dealers who profess to scorn contracts are disingenuous – they certainly sign contracts with banks, landlords and collectors – but the old rhetoric dies hard.

Fear of contracts is in no way peculiar to art dealers. Jason Horejs, owner of Santa Fe, New Mexico’s Xanadu Gallery, which does sign consignment agreements with the artists it represents, noted that collectors who seek to privately commission one or another of the gallery artists will get “cold feet” when asked to sign a document. “Clients become uncomfortable with the written-down details. We tell clients that the deposit is nonrefundable, but if there isn’t 100 percent satisfaction the deposit can be used toward another piece. They say, ‘What, you mean I can’t get my money back if I don’t like it?’ So, now we just work on a handshake basis.”

Some dealers aren’t so contract-averse. “People are of good cheer and good feeling when you start a relationship,” said Louis Newman, director of LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, “but it’s good to have a blueprint of what everyone agreed on if anything goes wrong.”

He noted that, earlier in his career, the contracts he signed with the artists he represented were “relatively formal, with some legalese,” but these days his agreements are in the form of “letters of intent, with the basic nature of the relationship spelled out in everyday English. It still provides the artist and the gallery the same level of protection without scaring anyone.”

Written agreements can be broken as easily as verbal ones. Verbal agreements are legally enforceable, although disputes may be settled much more quickly when there is a clear agreement in writing signed by both parties. Certainly, the legal costs would be less, if the dispute reaches that stage, because it takes less time to enter a legal document into evidence in court than gathering hours and hours of conflicting depositions by both sides, disputing what was said when by whom.

The threat of “turning off” a dealer may well make an artist reluctant to present any written agreement to his or her potential agent. However, artists and their dealers should discuss with some specificity how they will work together – it could be at one meeting or over the course of weeks – and this set of agreements could be written up by the artist in the form of a letter or email that the artist asks the gallery owner to approve. (An emailed “OK” to such a communication is legally binding.)

A form of marriage the relationship between artist and dealer may be, but marriages are recognized in law with each side having rights. An artist-dealer relationship that has no written expression of the nature of the relationship is perhaps more comparable to “shacking up.” Artists may still be able to pursue their legal rights in the event of a falling-out, but it likely will take longer and cost more to sort out.

By Daniel Grant

If people chose where to live based on the likelihood of natural disasters, few would choose to settle the earthquake-prone West Coast or the hurricane-plagued Gulf Coast and Carolinas. However, California and Florida are the first and fourth most populous states, with tornado-alley Texas coming in second. Clearly, artists, art dealers and collectors are willing to take their chances with the environment, and the artworks they made, exhibit or own will have to suffer along.

Suffer, but not necessarily perish if a disaster strikes. There is a variety of precautions that homeowners may take to mitigate the potential for damage:

Floods

No matter how well sealed the basement, artwork should never be stored or placed below ground-level, especially for those living in flood zones. Even on the first floor, all artwork (such as sculpture) should be elevated at least 12 inches off the floor. Similarly, because flooding usually is accompanied by power outages, back-up generators (that may power smoke, humidity and break-in alarms) also need to be sited above the highest expected flood level.

Individual artists in New Orleans certainly learned some of these lessons seven years earlier during that city’s devastating Hurricane Katrina. “I was very fortunate,” said New Orleans sculptor Lin Emery, whose studio and most of her sculpture and sculpture-making equipment were submerged in five feet of water by Katrina. Lucky for her, at the time of the storm, Emery’s most recent work was on exhibit at the city’s Arthur Roger Gallery, which is located in New Orleans’s Warehouse District and was spared significant flooding or even a lengthy power outage. Lucky for her, too, her show sold out within the first week and none of the buyers reneged on their purchases. She also deemed herself fortunate in the fact that, although her studio was lost, her house is located elsewhere in the city and only suffered relatively minor wind damage to the roof.

A New Orleans painter, Alan Gerson, discovered that there was six-and-a-half feet of water in his studio following the breaching of the levees, resulting in the destruction of five paintings. However, another 30 paintings were only damaged and reparable (“Down here, we call the water marks ‘Katrina patina,’” he said), and he has stamped all those works on the back with the letter “K” to indicate which pieces had suffered. Additionally, there were a number of other artworks stored on racks just above the water line that came out unscathed.

Like Emery, Gerson’s studio was located in the downtown, called MidCity, away from his house, which only suffered wind damage. Like Emery, too, he did not have any insurance on his studio, suffering a loss of perhaps $20,000 (Emery had no insurance on her equipment, although she had some coverage for the artwork in her studio).

Quite a few art galleries in Manhattan’s flood plane suffered from water damage during 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, as did low-lying homes with art collections on the Jersey Shore in New Jersey and Long Island, New York, resulting in an estimated half a billion dollars in insurance claims for artworks.

“We still have a basement, but we no longer use it for storage,” said Elisabeth Sann, associate director of the Jack Shainman Gallery, which had suffered extensive water damage to photographs stored below street level. The basement’s current use is for “private viewings” of artwork and otherwise is mostly empty. Some ground-floor galleries in New York City moved. Jack Shainman did not, although it added two new spaces, up four blocks to an address where there are “anti-flooding valves” and at a 30,000 square-foot converted schoolhouse in Kinderhook, New York where there are exhibitions and where almost all the gallery’s inventory will be stored.

Katja Zigerlig, manager of the fine arts department of the insurance company AXA, recommended creating a protective storage area in one’s home, such as a closet. In this closet might be waterproof crates, plastic wrap and moisture-absorbing materials — paper towels, cotton rags or the higher efficiency products that museums keep on hand and which they purchase through laboratory supply companies.

Flood coverage is usually an exclusion on homeowners insurance policies, but most homeowners and renters may purchase additional protection against flood-related damage from one of the 86 companies offering this kind of insurance through the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program (https://www.fema.gov/national-flood-insurance-program). Rates are set based on where one lives or works. The average annual premium is $400, providing approximately $100,000 in coverage. The maximum coverage one may purchase is $250,000.

Hurricanes

Similar to floods, hurricanes deposit a considerable amount of water on and around a house, and all of the same types of precautions apply to them as to floods. A hurricane, however, is also characterized as a windstorm that may blow a tree onto one’s roof, blow the roof off the house and send projectiles (mailboxes, lawn furniture, tree branches) through the windows. Well before hurricane season, one should trim all tree limbs that overhang a roof, “and you might want to get a tree service in to see if any parts of the tree are weak and likely to snap off in a storm,” said Thomas Blanchick, director of the Williamstown Regional Conservation Center in Massachusetts. The roof itself should be securely attached to the walls by special brackets that are designed to withstand up to 150 mile per hour winds; each tile in a slate roof should be individually secured. Any outdoor sculpture should be bolted to a cement base and stand apart from any trees. There is usually enough warning before a hurricane strikes to allow time to bring indoors lawn or pool furniture.

Besides the roof, windows tend to be the weakest areas of a house, but there are ways to make them less vulnerable. Traditional, colonial louvered shutters may serve as a barrier, although most of these shutters are purely decorative rather than functional. Nailing a sheet of plywood over a window frame will work; however, because they are bulky, numerous sheets of plywood are not easy to store, and there is likely to be a long line at the hardware store for plywood as soon as a hurricane watch is issued (with the possibility that the store will run out). Additionally, in one’s haste to nail the boards on, some may not fit well and allow damage to occur.

There are various types of hurricane glass and hurricane shutters that one may purchase. This glass, which is a sandwich of glass and plastic, may crack when hit by a projectile but not shatter, similar to a car windshield. Hurricane shutters are made of wood or metal, and certain types are rolled down from above a window or folded up accordion-like and stored on both sides of the window. There are also metal removable panels that can be hooked into place.

Some homeowners policies regularly cover hurricane damage, while others require a separate rider — usually a 15-20 percent increase on the regular insurance premium. Deductibles also vary, from one to five percent (the highest for houses right on the water).

Earthquakes

Whereas there is usually some notice before a flood or hurricane takes place — allowing time for buying food, boarding up one’s house or evacuating — earthquakes are not predictable. “You never have time to prepare,” said Scott Reuter, a former preparator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Pasadena, California and now a private consultant to insurance companies, museums and art collecting homeowners. “You have to be prepared for it to happen every day.” He noted that new homes should be built, and older homes retrofitted, to the most stringent earthquake codes. Unlike hurricanes, however, protecting the outside of the house cannot substitute for securing the art within the home. “It would be a shame if the building withstood a quake but an art collection did not.”

Wall-hung art should be placed on two hooks, rather than one — in the event that one hook fails — which are rated to hold double the weight of the artwork. (The hardware stores where one purchases them has them sorted by carrying weight.) The hooks should also be connected to the wall studs, and the picture wire should be braided, rather than a single strand, and also rated for twice the weight. Pictures are usually attached to the wire by eye-screws in the back of the frame, sited at the upper fourth or third of the piece. In the event of an earthquake, however, the lower part of the picture is likely to swing out and knock against the wall one or more times. Reuter recommended also attaching a wire connecting to an eye-screw at the bottom of the frame to a screw in the wall as a way of cutting down on movement.

Sculpture poses a more difficult challenge, since it is rarely affixed to a wall. If the piece is hollow, one may place a metal mount inside, which is secured to a pedastal or the floor; additionally, many bronzes have screw holes made by the foundry, enabling the piece to be attached to a base. It is also possible to drill a hole into th nondecorative base of a marble sculpture, permitting it to be screwed into a base. Smaller pieces may be “glued” down to a surface by means of what is called museum wax, which is available at many hardware stores. This was is removable, although not easily. Sculpture pedastals might also need to be attached to the floor or held in place by restraints.

The downside of these solutions is that drilling a hole into a work of art or attaching a hard-to-remove wax at the base has the potential of lessening the value of the art. Some waxes also may leave a permanent stain on the base of a wooden sculpture.

As with hurricanes, insurors of homes in earthquake zones regularly require separate riders, costing between 15 and 20 percent of the normal homeowner premium and requiring a two percent deductible.

Tornados

The bad news about tornados is that, first, one may only have an hour or two notice and, second, there is practically nothing one can do to secure an art collection or the house itself against the high winds and flying objects. Taking valuables (and oneself) down to the basement is one’s only recourse. Tornados are most prevalent in the Plains states, since they need wide expanses of flat land for the two air fronts to meet. Hills get in the way of this process and lessen the chances of tornados forming.

Lessons (to be) Learned

If Superstorm Sandy presaged some consequences of global warming on coastal areas, it also changed the “insurance climate,” according to Nicholas Reynolds, vice-president of Berkley Asset Protection, one of the main providers of insurance coverage to Manhattan art galleries. “Premiums have gone up for all galleries, but most of all for ground-floor galleries in Chelsea, 20, 25 or 30 percent.” He added that “no one is providing flood insurance” for galleries using their basements for storage, and galleries that have not developed a disaster preparedness plan “may receive a policy but one that excludes coverage for floods.”

An acceptable disaster plan, he and others in the insurance field noted, includes specific procedures for getting valuable artworks and other valuable property to safe locations (upstairs or to an art storage facility), staff training, emergency supplies (such as fans, mops, brooms, storage bins on wheels and gasoline-powered generators) on hand and a list of contact numbers (for security alarm services, utility companies and one’s insurance broker, as well as gallery staff). “Sandy is now a benchmark,” Reynolds said.

A disaster plan details what actions the gallery is to take when a hurricane warning is announced in order to protect artwork and other property, allocate specific responsibilities to various gallery staff and indicate how damaged objects are to be treated in order to begin the restoration process. “Do you freeze wet works on paper? Should you try to dry out a wet canvas?” said Claire Marmion, president of the Haven Art Group, a privately held fine art claims adjustment and management firm who has led disaster planning workshops for art galleries and fine art storage facilities. “We call this ‘triage,’ creating a plan so that within the first 12 to 24 hours you can start to make things better.”

William Fleischer, an insurance broker with Bernard Fleischer & Sons, which works with a number of Chelsea art galleries, stated that a growing number of policies are written with “stop limits” or caps on the amount of damage that an insurer will cover. Lowering the cap by 25-50 percent may keep the insurance premium from rising. “Galleries have realized the value of risk management and risk tolerance.”

Box

Disaster plans are being required by insurance carriers not only of commercial art galleries but, increasingly, also of private collectors with significant holdings. In short, they identify the worst problems that may occur and what to do about them. They may be developed in-house or with the help of an outside consultant (cost: $200 per hour). Among the key elements of such a plan is that it be in writing and kept on hand at the gallery.

• Specific tasks – such as, who contacts the storage facility site and who assesses damage to artworks and other property – should be assigned to individual studio staff members, and there should be training and periodic practice sessions.
• It makes sense to ask for suggestions from one’s insurance carrier for an effective plan to protect artworks.
• Develop a system by which staff will be able to communicate with one another in the event of power outages and downed telephone lines (Crozier Fine Art, a company that operates a series of fine art storage facilities in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, used short-wave walkie-talkies).
• Pay attention to hurricane warnings and take action immediately (the mayor’s office in New York City issued a warning 72 hours in advance of the arrival of Hurricane Sandy as did insurers of artworks).
• Purchase emergency equipment in the event of a power outage, such as a portable generator and flashlights, as well as extra wrapping and packing material for a large number of objects that might need to be moved quickly. (Cost: Several hundred dollars)
• Remove all stored items from basements.
• Rent an upstairs storage area or put a retainer on a fine art storage facility outside of a flood zone.

By Daniel Grant

“I have the reputation of being pretty loyal to my artists, regardless of whether they sell or not,” said Andrea Rosen, a Manhattan gallery owner who specializes in mid-career artists. Still, earlier this year, Rosen informed all the artists she represented, around a dozen, that she would no longer be their dealer, that her focus was shifting to representing the estate of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Dead men pay no rent, but the artists she was talking to did and, out of the blue, they found they had major decisions to make. Who is going to exhibit my work in New York? How do you approach a gallery? How much do I have in the bank? (How long can I go without another dealer?)

Artists switching from one dealer to another gets a fair amount of press, especially when it is a big name artist and the prospect of “poaching” (new dealer) or opportunism (artist) is involved, but gallery owners regularly pare down their roster of artists they represent for a variety of reasons, of which choosing a dead artist over live ones is but one more.

Most often, it is because an artist’s work isn’t selling,” said Robert Fishko, owner of New York’s Forum Gallery. “I’ll tell the artist, ‘if we can’t sell your work, we’re not the right gallery to represent you.’” Put a different way, another Manhattan dealer noted that “after two exhibitions, we may have to reevaluate the situation.”

For New York City dealer Maxwell Davidson III, the breaking point is apt to be the quality of the artist’s work. “If the quality of the work is not as good as it used to be when you first started representing the artist,” he said. “we’ll move quickly.”

A lot of potential problems. The artist’s work ethic or the ability to produce enough work for the gallery to have regular exhibitions may decline. The artist may become irascible or refuse to help promote sales and exhibitions. Andrea Teschke, a partner at Petzel Gallery in Chelsea, complained of “artists who assume that gallery staff is at their beck and call and who use budget lines irresponsibly,” while Seattle, Washington gallery owner Greg Kucera referred to a particular artist who was “calling me up and bitching at me every day.” He also mentioned an artist who developed “substance abuse issues that made me not want to work with him anymore.”

At New York’s Alexander and Bonin gallery, the problem may be that the artist was a good fit with the gallery at a certain point, “but then the artist makes major changes in his work that doesn’t suit our program or our collectors,” owner Theodore Bonin said. “A mutual parting of the ways,” he added. Like a no-fault divorce, but still a divorce.

Andrea Rosen notified all of her artists by email, just ahead of informing the media of the change in focus of her gallery, following up with telephone calls or face-to-face meetings. Some of the artists she had represented asked if the dealer might contact other galleries about representing their work, and her reply to all was that she would see what she could do. Don’t hold your breath.

Not every dealer who severs the relationship with an artist is willing to contact other gallery owners on behalf of the artist. “If an artist asks me to contact a dealer on his behalf, I will,” Fishko said, “but I discourage them from asking me.” How do you give a rave review about someone you don’t want to work with anymore? Edward Winkleman, a former Manhattan gallery owner who, back in 2007, reduced the number of artists he represented, noted that he made calls to dealers on behalf of “several of the artists, although I don’t think it necessarily helped.”

Being dropped by a gallery may stain an artist’s reputation, at least briefly or until one is picked up by another gallery, to the degree that it raises questions: Was the artist somehow at fault (not producing enough work, not turning in the best work, producing artwork no one wanted to buy, making private sales behind the dealer’s back, not conducting him- or herself professionally, having an irritating personality) or else why would the dealer decide to let that person go? “You do have questions about why an artist was let go,” said Sique Spence, director of the Nancy Hoffman Gallery. “I might call the previous gallery to find out.”

Art galleries open and close all the time (dealers retire, get sick, die or go bankrupt), and artists migrate from one to another for a number of reasons involving the advancement of their careers. Judy Pfaff, for instance, left the Holly Solomon Gallery after 13 years, when the dealer moved from her more spacious downtown address to a fifth floor location on 57th Street “where I couldn’t get things in and out. There was only a passenger elevator.” San Francisco’s Hackett-Freedman Gallery recently morphed into the Hackett-Mill Gallery at the same location, focusing more on artists’ estates (including those of David Park and Emerson Wolfer) and the secondary market, and less on contemporary Bay area artists, which had been its original interest. Artists who used to think about networking and meeting so-and-so who might introduce them to someone else but have been content for years to just pursue their art in their studios and let their dealers do the hobnobbing suddenly find themselves having to relearn how to “schmooze.” For some artists, it is a catastrophe, while others find dealers are contacting them. Lizzie Fitch, a California artist who makes videos with her long-time collaborator Ryan Trecartin and who was let go by Andrea Rosen, stated that she still had relationships with two other galleries, although neither of these galleries is located in Manhattan. “It’s shocking. We hadn’t expected it, and we’re still just processing it.”

When Los Angeles’ ACE Gallery declared bankruptcy in early 2016, sculptor De Wain Valentine was contacted by two galleries “almost immediately,” including one in London, and the New York gallery, David Zwirner, arranged a one-person exhibition of his artwork from the 1960s and ‘70s. Still, he said, the closing of ACE “played havoc on my career, because the gallery still had eight works of mine that I had trouble getting back, and the gallery also owed me money from past sales.” He hired a bankruptcy lawyer in Los Angeles who had to “stand in line, because there were so many other creditors” petitioning the bankruptcy court. For this 80 year-old artist, the largest problem may have been that all the hassles resulting from the closing of the gallery “took away time from my work.”

By Daniel Grant

Artists may receive money in a variety of ways, including awards and prizes at shows, project grants, scholarships and fellowships. The prize money or the monetary value of an award (the cash value of a gift certificate, for instance) that an artist receives at a show is taxable at normal state and federal rates. The same taxability is true for money received through project grants from a private or governmental agency. On the other hand, there is no tax on fellowships and scholarships if the artist is studying for a degree at an educational institution (including tuition, lodging, equipment and travel expenses), nor is an award taxable if it comes from a governmental agency or school. If the award is contingent on the recipient teaching or offering demonstrations or some other part-time service, however, a portion of the fellowship or scholarship will be taxed.

The sale of one’s work, of course, also occasions the payment of taxes to state and federal agencies on either a monthly, quarterly or annual basis. Those artists who sell their work at retail or wholesale shows in the state where they live or out-of-state are required to apply for a resale tax number both in their home state and where the shows will be held. Usually, one applies with a state’s department of revenue, and the cost of registering to sell work is in the area of $10, although some states have no charge. In some cases, registration is for one year, although some states permit applicants to receive a two-day or weekend resale tax number. Most show promoters require a state resale tax number as a condition of taking part in the event. The artist will receive from the state information about how much sales tax to collect (generally, between three and eight percent) and how to pay it – often, a coupon book is enclosed (the coupons are to be mailed back with sales tax receipts). Usually, applicants receive their number and paperwork from the state in a couple of days.

When selling out-of-state, one must pay that state’s sale tax (and not one’s home state sales tax), an amount which, in most cases, may be deducted on one’s federal income tax form. If the state one is selling in has no sales tax, no sales tax need be paid to one’s home state either.

Click here to see a list of where to apply for resale tax numbers around the United States

However, there is more to be said about artists and taxes than just whom and how much to pay. In some states, artists may receive a tax break. Since 1998, artists in Rhode Island are given tax incentives to live and work in specific areas. In setting up these districts, the General Assembly declared that “the development of an active artistic community, including ‘artists in residence’…would promote economic development, revitalization, tourism, employment opportunities, and encourage business development by providing alternative commercial enterprises.” The law exempts artists who live and work within the districts from state income tax on all income generated from their creative works. Once an artist requests and is approved to participate, no sales tax will be assessed for any art work sold within the city’s arts and entertainment district for one-of-a-kind art work or limited production works of art. (Art galleries in these districts are also exempt from collecting the sales tax.) In order to participate, artists need to apply for income tax and sales tax exemption from the Rhode Island State Tax Administrator; the administrator will then send out an evaluator from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts to assess the applicant’s artwork and determine whether it qualifies as “one of a kind” and “limited.” The state’s definition of “one of a kind” reveals the categories of artists that are covered by the legislation: “a book or other writing; a play or the performance of said play; a musical composition or the performance of said composition; a painting or other like picture; a sculpture; traditional and fine crafts; the creation of a film or the acting within said film; the creation of a dance or the performance of said dance.”

There are approximately 300 designated arts and cultural districts throughout the United States, but Rhode Island is only the second state to legislate tax-free zones for artists in them; Maryland is the other. In some arts districts, cities have authorized zoning variances to permit artists to live and work in area buildings – tax credits to developers are often used to keep rents or purchase prices below market value – but Maryland and Rhode Island are unique in their willingness to provide tax havens to artists as an inducement to repopulate the downtowns.

One more art and tax issue of interest: The state of Maine accepts works of art in lieu of the payment of state inheritance taxes.

By Daniel Grant

When asked their professions, painters and sculptors generally describe themselves as artists, omitting the fact that most of them do something else that actually pays the bills. It makes perfect sense. Using the shorthand of “artist” projects a sense of seriousness and dedication that otherwise might be lacking if they went into detail about chasing sheetrocking jobs and adjunct teaching here and there or whatever keeps a roof over their heads and clothes on their backs. Still, hunting up paying jobs or shorter-term “gigs” is a well-understood facet of their lives and careers as is, sometimes, the pursuit of payment after the work is done. Payment can be the larger challenge.

“Many, many artists are freelancers and come to us because they haven’t been paid,” said Amy Lehman, director of legal services at New York City’s Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

The City of New York recently has offered these artists, and freelancers in general, some help, having passed last fall a “Freelance Isn’t Free” law that provides protection for a wide array of workers, such as filmmakers, graphic designers, home contractors, independent artists, photographers and web designers. (Lawyers, medical professionals and sales representatives are specifically excluded.) The law requires any job valued at more than $800 involving an independent contractor to be written down in the form of a contract, listing the specific services to be rendered, the rate and method of payment, the value of the work and when the freelancer is to be paid.

The law also prohibits any form of retaliation or intimidation on the part of the individual or company hiring the freelancer, such as damaging the independent contractor’s chances of finding similar employment in the future, and the statute applies regardless of the freelancer’s immigration status. Freelancers have two years to report a failure to be paid to New York City’s Department of Labor Standards (they are allotted six years to report some form of retaliation), and the agency will then send a certified letter to the employer who must respond to the complaint within 20 days. After the employer’s response is received, the Department of Labor Standards will issue a ruling on the merits of the complaint within 20 days.

Failure to abide by the provisions of the law may entail financial damages to the employer, such as a $250 fine for failure or refusal to provide a written contract to the freelancer, and civil penalties can reach up to $25,000 if the Department of Labor Standards finds that the employer has engaged in a “pattern or practice” of violations.

“Too often, employers do what they think they can get away with, which includes not paying their contractors,” Lehman said. “They may assume that artists don’t have the resources to bring them to court. Now, there is a tool for people to use to enforce their rights.”

This is the first of its kind law in the United States, putting the power of the government behind the rights of freelancers. According to the Freelancers Union, a nonprofit organization in New York, one-third of the city’s workforce are freelancers some or all of the time; nationally, 35 percent of the nation’s workforce – or 55 million individuals – are independent contractors of one type or another, a number that is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2020.

A failure to be paid promptly or at all is not news to artists, many of whom have war stories to tell. Camille Przewodek, an artist in Petaluma, California, filed a case in small claims court some years ago against a clothing manufacturer who refused to pay her for some advertising illustration. “I won the case, because the guy didn’t show up at court,” but collecting the debt took longer, finally requiring the Los Angeles sheriff’s office to seize the manufacturer’s bank account in order for her to receive the $5,000 owed. “I only got paid, because the client forgot to empty his bank account.”

North Salem, New York artist Tom Christopher was not as fortunate, never receiving payment for a portrait he was contracted to paint of actor Leon Askin, who was best known for the German character he played, General Albert Burkhalter, on the television series “Hogan’s Heroes.” The portrait was for the California Museum of Science and Industry. “The…guy never paid up,” he said. “That fat guy with the stupid German accent kept promising to pay me ‘next week,’ and then he just stopped answering my calls. I called the director of the museum, who claimed to ‘know nothing,’ just like Colonel Klink in the TV show. The whole thing was nutty, and I wrote it off as a bad debt.”

Christopher did learn from the experience not to take any job – and most of his freelance work has been in advertising illustration – without first receiving a deposit of between 30 and 50 percent. “You can completely trust the person hiring you,” he said, “but that person may get fired or transferred, and the next person may have something else in mind that doesn’t include you.”

Getting money up-front means that an employer has “some skin in the game” and is more apt to follow through on a project and pay a freelancer in full, said San Clemente, California-based artist career consultant Maria Brophy. “If a client says that he needs the job done by Friday but it takes the accounting department two weeks to cut a check, tell him to pay the deposit through a corporate credit card or to write you a personal check, and let him get reimbursed by accounting.”

Whether protected by New York’s Freelance Isn’t Free” law or not, artists and other independent contractors around the United States should require a written contract as part of the agreement, stipulating the work to be done, the price of the job and when and how payment will be made. Payment within 30 days is optimal, although 60 days is more apt to be the norm. Above 90 days is unconscionable, and contractors may ask that a late fee be included in the agreement. (Good luck getting that.)

Perhaps, just good luck. Amy Lehman herself noted that she herself was once stiffed by a client. “The person just closed up shop and moved out of state. I couldn’t file an action against him, because I didn’t have an address. After a while, I just decided that I was never going to get paid.”

By Daniel Grant

Instead, Graves’ idea of the type of foundation she wanted was modeled on those set up by Adolph Gottlieb and Lee Krasner, whose primary purpose is to provide grant awards to artists in need.

Perhaps some readers who are in the position to be helpful not only to their heirs but to the larger artist community might want to do the same.

Fifty or even 30 years ago, there were not so many artists’ foundations. However, “post-1960 artists have done much better than many earlier artists who often didn’t have the wherewithal to set up a foundation,” said Sanford Hirsch, executive director of the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, which has been providing individual support and emergency grants to artists since 1976. There are more now, set up by the artists in advance or by their families. The grant program at the George and Helen Segal Foundation was designed by the artist’s widow and daughter based on his “wish to be helpful to artists,” said Rena Segal, the sculptor’s daughter and vice-president of the foundation. The will of painter Joan Mitchell indicated a desire “to support painters and sculptors,” according to Shervone Neckles Ortiz, a program associate at the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

Nancy Graves specifically wanted to help artists like herself, and her foundation’s grant program offers financial assistance to artists looking to experiment with materials and methods, “who wish to have the opportunity to master a technique, medium or discipline that is different from the one in which he or she is primarily recognized,” according to the foundation’s Web site. Graves herself “was criticized for working in different media, whether in sculpture – she first created polychrome pieces and later produced the colorfully painted works for which she may be best known – and in other media, such as photography and film, sets and costume design, as well as painting, the medium in which she earned her MFA,” said Christina Hunter, director of the New York-based Nancy Graves Foundation. “She wanted to encourage artists to do the same.”

With little time to live, Graves “wanted to help artists in whatever way she could,” Hunter stated, noting that the artist donated her 5,000-book library to the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, New York and her art materials to an art school in Santa Fe. In terms of her money, however, she “knew there was a need for more individual grants to artists.”

The Aspen Institute, a policy research organization in Washington, D.C., has identified 363 artist-endowed foundations with $3.48 billion in aggregate assets in 2010. Between 1996 and 2010, those assets have increased 360 percent, which reflects the number of new artist foundations that have come into existence during that period of time. Christine J. Vincent, a director at The Aspen Institute, claimed that it isn’t only artist-endowed foundations that have arisen to fill a gap in fellowship support for artists, citing the Los Angeles-based United States Artists, which was started by four foundations (Ford, Prudential Rasmuson and Rockefeller) in 2005 and provides fellowships of $50,000 apiece to 50 artists around the country in eight disciplines. Another is the New York City-based Creative Capital, which was given its initial support in 1999 by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and provides project grants of $50,000, as well as professional development services, to artists throughout the U.S. “There are many more programs supporting artists since the early 1990s,” she said. “It’s a trend, and artist foundations are part of that.”

By Daniel Grant

Krista Anderson, Histories, 2016. Found objects. 12 x 6 ft.

Art installations can make a big statement, but they also can be a big headache. Three-dimensional artworks, often sprawling over a large room, installations are intended to transform a viewer’s perception of an interior space.

The largest problem with them is that they rarely sell. “It’s almost impossible to sell a whole installation,” said Vanessa Rubinick, manager for the Hauser & Wirth art gallery in Zurich, Switzerland. Installations are too big and ungainly for all but another art gallery or museum to put on display, and they tend to cost more than the type of artwork referred to as “houseable.” So, after the gallery exhibition is over, most installations are disassembled and returned to the artist’s studio. (The gallery owner has to hope that some of the visitors are so interested in the installation that they inquire about buying more manageably sized and priced pieces by the artist, which they may have in a back room.)

That’s a lot of work for nothing. Perhaps it makes sense then that some of the numerous disparate elements that make up some of Terence Koh’s installations may be sold as individual artworks. “It’s not that unusual,” said Ron Warren, director of the Mary Boone Gallery, which represents the artist. He noted that individual elements from a large installation are priced just as “any other single work by the artist.” It is not the gallery’s decision but the artist’s to divide up an installation, and which individual pieces or groupings of objects will be sold as separate artworks. He claimed that the artist also titles these saleable pieces. “He gives them generic titles.” For instance, various pieces of the large-scale Koh installation “White Light,” which was exhibited in its entirety at the Kunsthalle Zurich in 2006, were sold to various private collectors at the time.

Koh is not alone in this practice. With artist Jason Rhoades (1965-2006), “some large-scale installations have been sold in pieces, as they were meant to be,” said Julia Joern of the David Zwirner Gallery in New York City, which represents the Rhoades estate. The same is said of sculptor Matthew Barney, who “installs” groups of individual artworks – they are used as backdrops for his performance art films and still images – that are not identified as separate works of art but are sold that way.

Not every artist’s installation lends itself to being split up, and some artists (or their dealers) may decide that a large multi-part artwork is an all or nothing deal. “I couldn’t sell one part of one of my installations, because it wouldn’t make any sense apart from the rest of it,” said sculptor Tim Hawkinson. “With my installation ‘Uberorgan’” – an almost 300 foot-long bagpipe – “it was all one big mechanism, so you couldn’t take it apart.” However, many of the elements in Tom Burckhardt’s 2005 full-scale replica of an artist’s studio (“Full Stop”), which was exhibited at DiverseWorks in Houston, Texas and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, were sold to numerous collectors. “My concept was that these were representations of rather autonomous objects and could function as stand alone pieces that recall the whole in their after life,” Burckhardt claimed. “My piece lent itself to being separated in the way that a painting, video, or sculpture just can’t be.”

Another artist who sometimes sells portions of her installations is Sandy Skoglund, who creates colorful and surreal installations – filled, for example, with hanging baby dolls or toy fish – that she photographs, and it is from the sale of photographs that she earns most of her income. “I have also sold small installations as well as large installations to collectors and museums,” she stated. “Of course in the case of the large installations, it is mainly museums that would collect this type of work.” However, she also sells through art dealers “individual elements, individual figures, and small fragments that are broken away from the large installation.”

Opinions on the practice of selling components of an art installation are all over the board. “I have never heard of an artist’s installation being treated like a buffet,” said Miles McEnery, one of the partners of Manhattan’s Ameringer|McEnery|Yohe gallery, and Andrew Fabrikant, director of New York’s Richard Gray Gallery, called such a practice “ridiculous. The dealer wants to chop it up to sell in sections, and the artist agrees to that? Nobody is being serious.” Think of some Renaissance-era altarpiece triptych being broken up: Panel three may not make much sense in telling the biblical story without the other two.

On the other hand, multi-media artist Sean Foley, who sold a component of a larger installation to the Portland Museum of Art in 2009, sees nothing wrong with selling art “a la carte.” “I’m of the iTunes generation, where you can go into an album and pick a song out and just keep that.” For her part, Skoglund claimed that she views the elements of her installations “as sculptures within a larger sculpture.”

Brooklyn artist Judith Hoffman also noted that selling elements from an installation solved some of the “practicalities. The storage of these big pieces is cumbersome and expensive. When I was in art school, we never talked about the problems of moving, installing, de-installing and storing great big works of art, but now I know, and it has started to inform my production.” Her large works are built to be “collapsible,” in order that they can be moved more easily, and she has also moved from metal and wood to lighter weight materials – paper, in many instances – because they are “easier to carry.” And, she is willing to sell elements of these large works, because “I want to make money.”

That practicality is not new. Back in 1938, the then unknown Mary Anne Robertson “Grandma” Moses had some paintings displayed in a local drugstore window, where they were spotted by New York art collector Louis Caldor. Caldor wanted them and wanted even more, and Moses’ daughter-in-law told him that “Grandma” had another 10 at home. In fact, the artist only had nine paintings, but she sawed one large picture in half, reframing it to make 10. Problem solved. Today’s installation artists face a not completely dissimilar problem, wanting to satisfy art collectors ready and eager to buy, even if splitting up the larger works results in into something smaller that may not tell as much of a story. Perhaps the real story is the fact that art installations seem like a good idea only to people who don’t buy art.

Daniel Grant

A.I. Friedman, the Manhattan art materials store, never had a lot of products for sculptors – there were some small tools for carving, some Sculpey and a limited number of small bags of plaster – but its closing on April 30th after 80 years in business means that yet one more venerable brick-and-mortar supply company for artists to visit, shop and learn about new products is gone. New York City, where there are perhaps more visual artists per capita than anywhere else in the world, has seen a spate of these closings in recent years. In 2014, Pearl Paint closed its doors for good after 81 years, and both New York Central Art Supply (founded in 1905) and Lee’s Art Shop (founded in 1951) closed last year. In 2006, Peter Leggieri Sculpture Supply was shuttered after 17 years.

Certainly, this isn’t the end for sculptors in New York or anywhere else. The 20,000 square foot The Compleat Sculptor, which was founded 22 years ago, is still in operation at its west SoHo location, and there are some others dotting the map around the country. Beyond that are the various chain art supply shops, Dick Blick, Jerry’s Artarama and Cheap Joe’s, among them, which artists may visit or browse the product selection online.

One-quarter of The Compleat Sculptor’s sales these days are transacted online, up from 10 percent just five years ago, said the company’s president Marc Fields. “I ship all over the world,” he said, adding that a sizeable percentage of his walk-ins are visitors from different states and foreign nations. “People love to come in and wander. You can’t feel things, like the weight of a tool, when you’re buying online. People want to see what new products we have and ask questions – ‘what kind of glue should I use for this?’ ‘what tool do I need for this?’ – and there are people here who can give answers. I can answer questions.”

The store’s Web site tries to approximate the experience of actually being in the store, as the home page is regularly changed to highlight products that are “trending, new things that people are asking about and buying,” and there is both email and call-in technical support.

Fields noted that his greatest challenges in keeping a storefront open is competing on price and shipping costs with the big franchises and the cost of rent in New York City. “With rent and salaries and utilities and whatnot, my monthly break-even number is $250,000, or $3 million a year,” he said, which is 20 percent more than five years ago. “That’s a lot of $5 clay tools I have to sell.” If someone orders a 50-pound bag of plaster online or over the telephone, he loses money, since the cost of shipping is $30 for that $30 bag. “I recoup with larger orders,” and fortunately for him most of his customers are buying more than one item at a time.

Competition from online distributors, and particularly Amazon and Amazon Prime, has led to a drop in sales of certain items at Sculpture Depot in Loveland, Colorado, according to the owner of the art supply store, Karen Richardson. “There are items I have sold frequently in the past and then find that sales totally stop, because they are being offered on Amazon at prices below what I can buy them for,” she said. “With books and videos, certain tools and smaller things, if they are on Amazon I lose sales.” Sculpture Depot remains profitable, but perhaps a bit less profitable than a generation ago, due to Internet sellers that have lower shipping costs. To counter the effect, Sculpture Depot also has expanded its Web presence, with online sales accounting for half of its gross income. Additionally, Richardson said that the store has reduced its shipping costs by sending smaller packages by parcel post, which takes longer to reach customers. “Out clients understand that and are willing to wait.”

Adapting to a changing environment also has been important for Stone Sculptors Supplies in Sebastopol, California, which opened its doors in 1986 and now does 90 percent of its business online, according to sculptor and co-owner Karen Ryer. “We have lowered our prices to beat the competition from ‘knock-off’ tools, especially rasps and chisels,” she said.  “That means a bit of stress for us, since we refuse to compromise on quality.” She added that “foot traffic” never has been significant, and the store no longer sells actual stone (“we have discontinued the stone end of the business given our age and the difficulty of keeping good stone cutters”) but only tools and other supplies. “I think the personal touch of face to face sales is the real way to make a good living, but when it comes to stone, that is almost impossible.”

For artists, the loss of brick-and-mortar art supply shops is only a partial loss, in part because the businesses that sold materials specifically for sculptors always have been few in number and far between. Well before the advent of the Internet, sculptors were accustomed to purchasing materials through mail order catalogues. “Most art supply stores cater to painters and people who do crafts,” said sculptor Mark Hopkins of Loveland, Colorado. “There’s no loss for me in stores going out of business, because the Internet has opened up a lot of avenues for getting things.”

Still, given their druthers, many sculptors prefer the experience of going into a store than looking at a computer monitor. “I like to go down to the store and talk to an actual person about what this product is,” said Dan Ostermiller, a sculptor in Loveland, Colorado, which is also the home of the store Sculpture Depot. “I have to put a tool in my hand. Some tools don’t feel right and, if I already have paid for it, then it’s a waste of money because I won’t use it.” Less than 10 percent of his supplies are purchased online, “and I only order things online that I am familiar with,” for reasons of price. But not always price. Sculpture Depot, for instance, does not sell the chemicals he mixes to produce the patinas for his bronzes, so he needs to look elsewhere. “The prices of the chemicals themselves aren’t so high, but I get hammered on the shipping for them. The shipping may be more expensive than the product.”

Paige Bradley, a sculptor in Stamford, Connecticut, has more of an even mix of buying online and in stores. “I am not going to pay to ship gallons of rubber or resin,” she said. “I am not going to pay to ship 50-pound bags of plaster, stone, or clay.” For these and some other materials, she will drive into Manhattan to shop at The Compleat Sculptor and Jerry’s Artarama. “I love the feeling of walking into Compleat Sculptor or Jerry’s,” noting that at both stores “you can find a library of magazines and books that are about the current art market and new technologies in the trade. This is where you find tools made in Italy and paper worth $25 a sheet made in Germany.” At other times, she makes purchases online, such as “from Amazon because the prices are so good. I get my general and specialty hardware off McMastercarr.com and my armatures from specialty sculpture websites like sculpturedepot.com and compleatsculptor.com.”

The loss of one or even a number of art supply stores may not make all that much difference in the lives of artists, because there are other places and other ways to get what they need. “The only thing that scares me is if places like A.I. Friedman going out of business is a sign that people aren’t buying art,” Ostermiller said. “That I worry about.”

By Daniel Grant

It is rare that an artist retires, so when sculptor Rob Fisher died suddenly of a massive heart attack at age 67 in 2006, he left five large-scale commissioned projects uncompleted. In most contracts to produce a new work of art, there is a clause to cancel the agreement in the event of the death of the artist, but Fisher’s family looked to maintain and extend his legacy. Over the ensuing six years, his son Brett and daughter Talley took over the process of completing these commissions and even to begin new projects that they themselves designed, however still under the imprimatur of Rob Fisher Sculpture.

“Those [older] contracts were made with Rob Fisher Sculpture, LLC so we needed to keep operating under the company name,” Talley said, who has a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Oregon and worked closely with her father in the last years of his life. “As I began to create my own artworks, I found it very rewarding. I plan to continue on this path, independently. I have created almost 30 of my own designs. The task of changing the name of the business is daunting and will require an enormous amount of work, lawyers, etc. We simply haven’t gotten to it since I’ve been so busy.”

There are many ways in which an artist’s heirs may carry on that person’s legacy, of which producing new work under the now deceased artist’s name is one. Talley Fisher’s entry into the art world is not wholly unique. After sculptor Harry Bertoia died in 1978 at the age of 65, his son Val, who earned an undergraduate degree from Indiana Institute of Technology in mechanical engineering and worked for his father for the last six years of his life, “took over the business.” That business now largely consists of making replicas of his father’s smaller-scale sound sculptures, as well as producing his own sound sculptures. “In some cases, people who bought Harry’s work buy mine,” he said. “People are interested in my work, although at lower prices. In a dark room, you can’t tell a Val Bertoia from a Harry Bertoia,” although he acknowledged that the designs are different, based on “different curvatures” of the metals used. The remaining part of the business is offering tours of Harry Bertoia’s studio, making repairs to the older artist’s work and authenticating pieces done by the artist.

Similarly, Mira Nakashima, an architect by training, took over the furniture-making business of her father, George Nakashima, after he died in 1990, fulfilling his orders, creating replicas of his best-known pieces and even expanding the Nakashima studio’s offerings with new designs of her own.

Most artists’ heirs protect their parent’s or grandparent’s legacy in more prosaic ways, for instance, through establishing a foundation that makes the artists’ works and archival material available for exhibition and scholarship. Artists often own the largest collection of their own works and heirs need to determine what to do with this vast quantity of material. Lee Krasner, who managed her husband Jackson Pollock’s estate until her death in 1984, provided an even flow of works onto the market in order to keep prices high and avoid a deluge.

On the other hand, the widows of sculptors Sir Jacob Epstein and Julio Gonzalez inadvertently hurt the market for their late husbands’ works when they began recasting their pieces – failing to keep good records on how many reproductions were made in Epstein’s case, failing to label the recasts as posthumous with Gonzalez. The families of painters Raoul Dufy and Thomas Hart Benton helped depress the prices for their paintings by dumping a large number of them onto the market after their deaths.

The responsibility of artists’ heirs is to continue to promote the artwork, which maintains the visibility of the artist and market for potential sales. That requires them to keep good records of the pieces that have been completed and any projects that are in the works, maintain archival material (letters, receipts, commission agreements, photographs) for the benefit of dealers, curators and historians, as well as to clearly identify where a parent’s work ends and theirs begins. Certainly, what the heirs and dealers of a deceased artists do not want are actions that add confusion to the artist’s market and reputation.

By Daniel Grant

Casting Iron at Carrie Furnaces at the 26th International Sculpture Conference in Pittsburgh.

Cynics like to claim that a studio art degree is training for a life of unemployment, but many graduates of BFA and MFA programs find that they can put their technical skills to use, even if not directly towards their own fine art careers.

For instance, Sheryl Hoffman’s main interest at Cleveland State University (where she earned a BFA) and at Ohio State University in Columbus (where she received an MFA) was her sculpture, but the process of creating her mixed media pieces required her to learn welding and various casting techniques (plaster, sand and wax), which enabled her to find work in sculpture foundries after graduation. “While I was waiting for a teaching job to come along, I took up casting, because I knew how to do this,” she said. For eight years, she worked at several different Ohio-based foundries–Studio Foundry in Cleveland and David R. Kahn in Athens, among others–working with artists in their studios to create rubber molds of their work, then at the foundry making waxes and the investment that resulted in editions of their artwork. During those years, she earned between $20,000 and $30,000, depending upon how many jobs came in.

There may be two or three thousand foundries in the United States, although only a fraction of them are involved with the creation of fine artwork, that is, using the lost wax (cire perdue) method of casting. Most others produce industrial, utilitarian objects (grill-work and railings, for example) or plaques, emblems, medals and building reliefs, which require little experience or training and pay accordingly. “It’s not necessary to have an art degree if all you do is pour metal,” said a customer service representative for Sheldow Bronze Corporation in Kingwood, West Virginia. The company employs four artists among its 150 employees to sculpt bas reliefs, emblems, medals and plaques as well as draw flat reliefs and generate designs on a computer.

At some foundries, there is a prejudice against those with fine art backgrounds, because owners want employees who see the job as a career and not as a gig. “We work with artists,” said Domenico Ranieri, owner of Ranieri Sculpture Casting in Long Island City, New York. “We don’t hire them.” Michael Petrucci, president of Fine Arts Sculpture Centre in Clarkston, Michigan, noted that the “problem” with artists as employees is that “they tend to be creative. In this job, you need to follow someone else’s work, and you don’t want them to put their own touches on things. We don’t want creative work here.” Working with other artists’ designs may be difficult for those people who are bursting with enthusiasm about creating their own work: selflessness is not the first attribute ascribed to artists, but art foundry work requires patience, maturity and tolerance as well as technical skills. Dick Tuna, former owner of Mesa Bronze in Center Point, Texas, noted that he has had to rein in employees with art backgrounds who “want to correct an artist’s work.” Bill Gold, owner of Excalibur (foundry) in Brooklyn, New York, said that he “once had an employee who was an artist. He worked on one piece that came in, making one copy–it was very good. I told him it was an order for eight copies and he had to make seven more. He told me, ‘I’m an artist. I don’t do production work.’ I had to let him go.”

The complaint against artists by another former foundry owner, Wally Shoop, Sr. of Shoop’s American Bronze Casting in Osceola, Wisconsin, was that “foundries know they will be temporary; one year is about as long as artists tend to stay. Who wants to train people who are just going to leave?” That view of artists also extends to most people with college degrees. Phyllis Borges, a sculptor and former owner of Mystic River Foundry in Mystic, Connecticut, said that “I prefer not to hire college graduates. They think they know everything (I have to teach them everything), and then they leave.” The current owner of Mystic River Foundry, Sher Hertzler, stated that periodically she is contacted by young people who tell her “’I am an art student and have a semester off, and I want to hang around the foundry and see how things are done.’ Well, I don’t want people to come here and hang around. They get in the way, and they can get hurt. Everyone here has workmen’s compensation, and I’m not going to pay for that for someone who is just hanging around for a semester.”

The salaries that foundries pay is wide-ranging but generally on the lower side. Shoop’s American Bronze Casting pays between $35,000 and $45,000, and “our newest employee has been with us for 11 years,” said John Shoop, the foundry’s president, and Mystic River Foundry pays its “jack-of-all-trades” employee $21 per hour. Ranieri Sculpture Casting pays its employees between $15 and $30 per hour, according to foundry manager Ralph Ranieri, but they also receive health insurance and a pension. Salaries in the Southeast and Southwest are generally lower than in other areas of the country.

A distinct benefit of working in a foundry for a sculptor is access to tools and equipment, which some owners will allow their employees to use on their own time for free or at a greatly discounted rate. The difference between whether one does or does not continue to be a sculptor is often access to a large space and equipment; certainly, one’s skills will be enhanced by an ongoing exposure to the processes involved. Different foundries, of course, use specific processes, and artists should look for those that correspond to their particular interests and experience. Both the National Sculpture Society and the International Sculpture Center have information on their Web sites about foundries around the United States. Neither site is inclusive of every foundry, but each offers some, and it would be advisable to look at both. The National Sculpture Society’s Web site and the International Sculpture Center’s Web site list foundries alphabetically, with links that describes the types of sculpture processes used at each foundry. One might also examine the Design-Production Link database at the Industrial Technology Assistance Corporation, which includes design and production services available to manufacturers.

Training is part of employment situations at most foundries, especially those that do not require or desire college degrees or an artistic background. There is plenty to learn, especially at the minority of foundries that cater to artists, including a wide variety of casting processes, as well as patination and conservation, eventually learning how to work on projects with professional artists. One also learns that foundry work is unrelenting hard, sometimes hazardous work. Sheryl Hoffman noted that, after eight years of foundry work, she “couldn’t breathe anymore because of all the silica, and I couldn’t lift another 100-pound bag. I decided to go into another line of work” — in her case, coordinating special events at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

By Daniel Grant

Mark Hopkins, a sculptor in Loveland, Colorado, was offered a commission by the director of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, but the proposed subject was a bit odd. “He wanted me to do a sculpture of Noah’s Ark, including a dinosaur or two,” he said. (The Creation Museum “brings the pages of the Bible to life,” according to its Web site.) “I thought, ‘that’s ridiculous.’ I told him, ‘it will look like Dinotopia.’ It just wouldn’t make any sense, so I rejected the idea.” But he said it nicely, diplomatically, “something like, ‘Let me think about that for a while,’ because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.”

Art requires a lot of different skills, but tact is one that most art schools do not teach. Like turning down a date, an inappropriate suggestion to an artist needs to be handled in a way that makes an awkward situation not so terrible.

Many, perhaps most, artists get suggestions from people – their dealers, their collectors, their (artist) friends and spouses, someone who shows up at an exhibition opening – for new subjects. “People say to me, ‘I know an interesting person you’d want to paint,’” said Jamie Wyeth. “Well, I’m not interested in painting interesting people, thank you very much. I don’t say that to them. I say something like ‘fine’ or ‘Oh, great!’ and just forget about it.” He doesn’t want to be rude, either.

Sometimes, the recommendation isn’t for new things but old ones. Dealers have told Northampton, Massachusetts artist Scott Prior, “’this painting I could have sold 10 times,’ and I guess the suggestion is to keep doing the same thing.” Other people come up with ideas for him, based on other interior or exterior views he has done at some point in his career: “You should paint my summer place. You’d love the view from the deck.” Things like that. Prior takes a deep breath, also wanting to be agreeable, and says “something like ‘Oh, that’s interesting’ or ‘I’ll have to check that out,’” hoping that the subject gets changed.

Where do an artist’s ideas come from? From dreams or their own experiences or someone else’s art? Quite often all of the above, no doubt. Sculptor Petah Coyne claimed that “travel gives me so many ideas. The world is full of amazing visuals.” Julian Opie, a British sculptor, claimed that “I get loads of ideas from past artists, from history.” Artist Tula Telfair stated that she isn’t particularly interested in other people’s ideas because she has so many of her own, based on themes she has pursued in earlier imagined landscapes. New ideas have to get in line. Still, the suggestions from other people keep on coming and, at times, they get taken up. Painter Eric Fischl noted that a dealer of his work in Germany “suggested I should explore making paintings based on the bullfight.” He liked the idea and pursued it.

Fischl isn’t a sports or animal artist, but the subject allowed him to explore a long-standing theme in his work, the rituals of masculinity, but this time seen from a different vantage point: The toreador faces down the brute force in himself.

Telfair said that she “once had a dealer who kept telling me what I should do. He seemed like a frustrated artist,” but most suggestions are meant well and reflect the fact that these viewers are connecting to the art in some positive way, something that triggers their own ideas or memories.

A different type of suggestion occurs with sculptor Alan Magee, who has incorporated old dolls and household objects into his work as though these were archaeological finds. “People who know my work have given my gifts of metal objects and other things they have dug up in a field,” he said. Fellow artist Lois Dodd “gave me a rusted metal cup she found under her barn, because she knows I like these kinds of things.” And, he does like these things. “They act as a provocation to me. They seem to be saying, ‘What do I remind you of? What can you do with me?’”

That wasn’t the only time. Magee must be known for taking inspiration from what otherwise would go to the town dump, and he recalled that a writer friend, Barry Lopez, “sent me this heavy gracefully bent screw from the ruin of a remote mining site in Alaska.” The resulting artwork, called “Timepiece,” he said, “was shaped by thinking about Barry and his work, about the reach of time (history and prehistory) in his books.”

By Daniel Grant

Installing “Magnetic North,” c 1970-71. Image Courtesy Rory Connell

Now that it is winter, and the east coast of the U.S. is likely bracing for another portmanteau of snow, we’ll take a moment to recall the time the Washington Monument was turned into a sundial.

Featured briefly on the CBS Evening News on Monday, February 11, 1974, sculptor Yuri Schwebler, visibly cold, stands by and somewhat awkwardly discuses his motivation to ray lines away from the base of the Washington Monument to transform it into a sun dial. As his response ranges from articulate to school-boy giddy, it’s clear his motivation is sincere: sincere-enough that in 1971 he filed a permit with the National Park Service and waited three years before the snow was just the right depth to make the work.

“The Washington Monument Sundial Project,” 1974

 

I lived in DC for a decade, and learned of Schwebler through a friend who had a work in her home: a ruler bisecting the boundary of an irregularly shaped box, with a plumb bob dangled taut in the middle. It was handsome for its craft, Cornell-like, and maintained the same sense of mysticism and lyricism in its juxtaposition of elements. Despite its stark minimalism it suggested larger ideas, as if the artwork itself might be capable of measuring the tilt of the earth’s axis over the span of a year.

He was an artist whose work I admired, though I knew little about him or the work.

So, since I’ve been kicking around the subject of archives lately, I thought I’d look at the Archives of American Art (AAA) to see what there was about him.

Nothing under Schwebler in the Index of Collections.

A broader search of AAA’s website revealed little more: one folder in the estate archives of Henri Gallery—a once popular gallery in D.C. from 1957–1996 where, according to a few people, he never exhibited. A general web-search revealed a little more. There were several archived New York Times articles about an exhibition, “The Studio,” at the Hudson River Museum in 1981. The catalog for that exhibition could be found, in its entirety, on Google Books.

Installation view of “Six Sculptures Between the Number Three and Four,” ArtPark, 1976

 

And then, there was his obituary from the Washington Post. Schwebler committed suicide in 1990.  I wouldn’t hear about him for the first time for almost 20 years.

Reading the articles in the Times, it was clear writers respected and were challenged by his work. His CV in “The Studio” catalog made it clear that he had a significant career in DC, with numerous gallery exhibitions as well as exhibitions at the Phillips Collection and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. He earned an NEA fellowship in 1975, had a sculpture included at ArtPark in 1976, and was included in the 10th Paris Biennale of Young Artists in 1977. Yet, his CV ends in 1981. And a quarter-century since his death, he has been nearly forgotten, with exception to some mentions in a few blog posts, and the answer to a question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

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Knowing some nearly forgotten, obscure artist was an answer to a question on a syndicated game show seems like scraping the bottom of a shallow barrel. And, were it not for his nephew, that factoid might remain equally forgotten. Rory Connell’s sister was watching daytime TV a couple years back when she heard the question and answer. She immediately let her brother know. Since then, he’s been hoping to find a screen shot of the question from the October 20, 2014; it’s not often his uncle, Yuri Schwebler, gets mention in popular culture.

Connell, a disaster planner who consults with mass transit agencies, was 13 when his uncle committed suicide. He’s one of the few living family members who could reveal any history about his early life.

Schwebler was born in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia in 1943. Throughout the first parts of his childhood his father had either been conscripted into the Wehrmacht— serving in Germany’s army—or a P.O.W. in a Russian labor camp, where he was tortured and had both legs broken. Once reunited with his family, Schwebler was a boy, and Connell suggested his uncle and grandfather had a strained relationship. Two sisters were born after the war, and the family emigrated in 1956, settling in Delaware.

Installing “Magnetic North,” c 1970-71. Image Courtesy Rory Connell

 

“I wanted to be an artist as a kid,” Connell noted. ” [Yuri] was obviously a role model. He wasn’t the kind of artist I saw most places.” Although Connell had an interest in drawing, he was aware of the type of work his uncle made, having seen the edition of the Washington Star that featured Schwebler’s sun dial. “He was more interesting and conceptual. And that appealed to me a lot.” Over the years he has seen the Cornell-like constructions of plumb bobs and broken glass. He was familiar with a project where Schwebler went around DC with a can of spray paint and a hard hat, demarcating landmarks and objects that pointed to magnetic north. But, at the same time, he didn’t really know his uncle all that well, referring to him as somewhat estranged from the family

Installing “Magnetic North,” c 1970-71. Image Courtesy Rory Connell

 

After Schwebler’s death, the family was invited to his home by his partner. “He had a really nice studio,” Connell recalled. On the tour, they passed Schwebler’s drawing table in his studio: there was a pencil. “And it said, “Yuri Schwebler, #2, This is Not a Drawing Tool.” And, I thought this was amazing!” Connell asked Schwebler’s partner if he could have the pencil. She said no. The tour progressed. Later in the day, after they returned to the car, Connell’s father handed him the pencil saying, “Here you go. I just grabbed it. Obviously there are a lot of these pencils around.” A couple of months later, the family attended a memorial service for his uncle in DC. Schwebler’s partner gave a long speech about Yuri, and his life, according to Connell. She recounted the time that she met him at a party and said that “he gave me a pencil as his calling card.” As Connell remembers, she then stared at him. Of course, she had no idea that Connell wasn’t the one who took it. And, up until then, Connell had no idea the larger significance of the pencil.

In later years, Connell picked up other things along the way: photocopies of articles, a brochure from an exhibition entitled “Not a Plumb Bob in Sight,” and the printer press for the Washington Star-News when the sun dial was featured on the front page. Some are artifacts handed down from his grandmother, others the fruit of sporadic searches. Finding the catalog for “The Studio” is as easy as looking on Amazon for a copy. But he’s never taken the time to do a deep dive.

At least, not like this search for an archive.

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Archives can be tedious things. There are the records of sales, and the contracts, and all the notes of provenance that bored students in history classes have to recall on exams. Then there are the more interesting elements: the letters and notes and various scribblings that dive into the relationships between people and the meaning behind works. It’s where the personality really lives: Nam June Paik mailing the desiccated remains of a goldfish; Salvatore Scarpitta writing overworked motorsport poetry to Leo Castelli; Rockne Krebs labeling every box “stuff.” Were it not for an archive of papers, David Foster Wallace’s final book, “The Pale King,” would not exist. The lack of a Schwebler archive nagged at me to the point that I wondered if such an archive could be found, or at least constructed.

Installation from “Tool Alchemy” at Protech–Rivkin Gallery, 1972.

 

Therein lies at least one, minor technical issue. “It is a basic principle of archives to maintain the provenance of the papers,” Liza Kerwin emphasized. As deputy director of the Archives of American Art, she’s the one in charge of how the donation of papers is managed. For example, let’s say you had correspondence with Mark Rothko, and wanted to donate them to AAA, “those would be your papers, not Rothko’s,” Kerwin declared. “Those would be the papers you acquired, kept, and saved.” So, in the end, if anyone were looking through the alphabetical index, they’d find nothing under Rothko. But if they did a search on the AAA site, the spiders would find mention of Rothko’s name in the summary of your collection of letters. Meaning: any archive I could find, if it were donated to AAA, it likely wouldn’t become a Schwebler archive—it would be an archive of the donor.

For several months after speaking with Connell, I followed what breadcrumbs I could find: responses to videos; names in articles and catalogs. I communicated with over a dozen people, and received suggestions to find at least a dozen more. There were rabbit holes that lead to nothing, unanswered e-mails from possible leads, and the deflating truth that, over the span of forty-odd years, a lot (but, not all) has been lost to fires, floods, moves, dumpsters, and simple misplacement.

That’s not to say I’ve spent half a year chasing windmills. Those who shared memories of the artist reflected with some fondness on the man several described as mercurial, and of the alchemy within his work.

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Former critic for the Washington Star, Ben Forgey, recalled stories Schwebler told him of creating sculptures in California in the late 1960s. Made from stones found on the beach, they were placed in such a manner so they would be destroyed by the tide. The first article Forgey wrote about Schwebler was of a project akin to those beach sculptures. “Alley To Which The Sun Was Tied, 23 Aug. 1971 5:49 to 6:41” existed between the times listed in the title, remembered only by a spray-painted outline and label. According to Forgey’s description, the sun crept into the darkened alley and rested, filling the alley. Within an hour, the bird had flown.  “He actually went around looking for alleys where the configuration of buildings would frame the sunlight in a particular way,” Forgey recalled. In the same article, Forgey makes note of Schwebler’s Magnetic North piece (mentioned by Connell).

Private commission for Frederick Kellogg, 1978.

 

As Forgey noted, these pieces were during the same six years Lucy Lippard was working on what became “Six Years: Dematerialization of the Art Object,” which tackled what eventually became known as the masterpieces of Conceptualism.   “Yuri was out in front of that movement,” reflected Forgey. However, he may have been the only artist to execute such ephemeral works in DC; without a connection to the art spheres of New York or LA, he may as well have been making the work on the moon. “He wasn’t mentioned in that book. She didn’t know about him.”

Not all of his projects were as ephemeral as a sliver of sun trapped in an alley, or a shadow moving across the snow. Art historian, and Editor of the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Neil Printz, worked under Walter Hopps during a brief fellowship in the 1976. He recalls Schwebler as one of the first artists he met in DC. But Printz’s more indelible memory of Schwebler was when he was assistant to Nina Felshin, the American Commissioner for the 10th Paris Biennale of Young Artists. “There was no financial assistance from the national government,” Printz remembered, “and it seemed like every artist at the time had site-specific pieces or were engaged in performance artworks.”  Part of his job was raising funds for room and board for the artists. Schwebler had a piece entitled “Dix X,” or Ten Exes, a series of wires that criss-crossed in the court yard of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Each wire was to include a plumb bob that (for reasons unclear) had to be made Paris. “I don’t remember how we did it. My French was so poor, but I remember talking with several foundries trying to get plumb bobs made.”

Installation of “Dix X,” 1977.

 

Notions of impermanence also extended into performative spaces. “I can’t fully recall who recommended me,” remembered Holly Fairbank by e-mail, “but we met at a coffee house off of Chambers Street and started our collaboration from there.” Fairbank, who is currently the Executive Director of the Maxine Greene Center, was a graduate student at the time when Schwebler asked her to collaborate on a dance piece for the exhibition. Boiled down, Schwebler’s exhibition, “The Studio,” interpreted how he envisioned the studios of influential artists like Giacometti, Brancussi, and David Smith, but intertwined with the realities of New York City. “At that point in time, space in SOHO for dancers and dance-making was in high demand and we often “shared space” with other artists,” Fairbank noted. The concept for the piece included a recording on an answering machine (new technology at the time), with dancers needing to move the materials in the studio for their rehearsal. “[Kinetic sculpture] did of course come up, but we were also thinking about it as performance art. And at that time dance companies (like Cunningham and others) were performing in art galleries and there was a lot of cross-over/cross-fertilization between disciplines.”

Performance of “Shared Space,” 1981. Image Courtesy Holly Fairbanks

 

That’s not to say all of his collaborations went smoothly. “As I recall, Yuri wasn’t all that happy that I wrote the essay from an historical view point.” Schwebler had asked Lynda Roscoe Hartigan to write the catalog essay for the exhibition catalog at the Hudson River Museum. “And I’m like, Dude, you didn’t spend the time to make the work for me to write about it.” Hartigan, who is currently Deputy Director of the Peabody Essex Museum, had also worked for Walter Hopps at the National Collection of Fine Arts in the 1970s, and had gotten to know Schwebler through Hopps—who was a big supporter of Schwbler’s work. Hartigan gained Schwebler’s respect based on her research of Joseph Cornell. “I spent a fair amount of time listening to Yuri talk about what he was going to make, but at the time that I wrote the essay, I had no work to look at.” Footnotes to Hartigan’s essay indicate several conversations with the artist throughout 1980. Taking a more responsible position, Hartigan instead wrote about the historic importance of the artist’s studio. “You know… as can often happen, the artist puts the last piece in place and the first visitor walks in,” Hartigan reflected further. “And in this case it went down to the wire.”

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While a student at Western Maryland College, Schwebler had been encouraged to move to DC by painter Clyfford Still. The city would become his home throughout the 1970s. Occasionally he would drop into other artist studios—that’s how he met Enid Sanford, a talented painter who was prone to experiment with shaped canvases and plastics in her work (at the time), in addition to more traditional approaches. That’s how she recalls meeting Schwebler: it had nothing to do with a pencil. “The pencil [Connell] mentioned was a permanent part of a sculpture of Yuri’s glued to a drawing table titled, “Drawing Table-Table Drawing,”” Sanford pointed out via e-mail. “Obviously, it wasn’t meant to be removed.”

The two left DC around 1980, and put down stakes in New York. They split their time between a flat in the city, and a house that Schwebler found on the Hudson River, near Poughkeepsie. “I think he loved it there,” Sanford recalled, “roaming the grounds with his two Akitas, taking them down to the river through the woods.”

She has kept several of his pieces, including several large sculptures, sketches, and preparatory drawings, as well as some geometric constructions utilizing tools like right angles and shovels. “Yuri did not keep any papers in relation to collectors or reviews,” Sanford noted “trusting I suppose to the records of the gallerist.” Those records (I’ve learned) have since been lost. Of things Schwebler did keep: personal correspondence and photographs.

Example of small, “Cornell-like,” construction. Title unknown. 1979.

 

Sanford did note that Schwebler kept working after the Hudson River Museum exhibition came to a close, showing her work as he made it. He was also considering a project involving a railroad bridge that ran parallel to the Mid-Hudson Bridge. “I had the feeling that he needed to be part of a group of other artists, as he was in Washington, who more or less responded to what he was doing as he was doing it…….which would explain why he did so little during that time.”

The ellipses were Sanford’s, and they weighed heavy on me as I attempted to make sense of this quest to find an archive of a nearly forgotten artist. “You picked a difficult artist to illustrate this,” Ben Forgey remarked, noting the irony that, of all the artists I could choose to do this, I picked one whose work was often so ephemeral.

“It is not only an archive by which you get to know an artist, well known or otherwise,” Lynda Roscoe Hartigan suggested during our interview, recalling her research on Joseph Cornell: an artist she never met. Instead, she’s had to interview hundreds of people around the world. “You just kind of have to turn the earth over as much as possible and look at as much work as possible to see if you can connect the two.”

Still, having those materials would be helpful. Not all has been lost, though. Apart from the things found or kept by Rory Connell or Enid Sanford, it’s possible Ben Forgey’s archives at AAA have something relevant to Schwebler. An archive of secondary resource materials does exist at the Smithsonian Libraries: news clippings and exhibition announcements, mostly. The Hudson River Museum does have an archive of slides and other materials in dead storage. And there are still a dozen or more names of people recommended to me that I haven’t contacted.

However, in many respects, the stories of friends and colleagues serve as a more fitting archive, like a photograph blurred in the moment and faded by the light of 30 years. The result is an imperfect portrait that raises more questions, and could use more study. “The trail is as interesting as what you find on it,” Neil Printz concluded of the research process. Perhaps it is only more so to the one blazing the path.

By John Anderson

“Back to school” sounds good to children (who get to see their friends every day again) and to their parents (who get to not see their children for a number of hours every week day), but adults often find that their own schooling – say, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree – can be a hassle, what with the job, the kids, the cost of tuition, moving. Tuition for an MFA in sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art currently runs $43,760 for a full year (and it is a two-and-a-half year program), and then there are a range of required and optional fees, and we haven’t even gotten to food and accommodations. The low-residency MFA in studio art at the college is exactly half the cost of the full-time rate, which may be more palatable but still a big chunk of change.

The cost and time required for artists to earn a graduate degree has become a focus of attention for a growing number of nonprofit organizations, leading to the creation of what are being called alternative art schools. This past November, a group of 46 organizations held an alternative art school fair (https://pioneerworks.org/alternative-art-school-fair/) in Brooklyn, New York, offering a glimpse of what learning might be unencumbered by huge costs and the weight of a college or university bureaucracy.

Catherine Despont, co-director of education at Pioneer Works, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that offers short- and long-term educational workshops, as well as provides exhibition and performance space, for artists and who was one of the organizers of the fair, claimed that alternative art schools is a growing movement, with “close to 200 around the world, based on people who look to develop their own school and their own ways of learning.”

A number of these alternative art schools do not charge tuition but are supported by their fundraising, and those that are not free charge considerably less than accredited colleges and universities. For instance, the 12-week evening course for architects and designers that aims to empower them “with the tools to use design to be transformative of society” offered by Archeworks, a design school and “multidisciplinary think tank” in Chicago, costs only $3,100, said the organization’s executive director Andrew Balster. “MFA programs cost tens of thousands of dollars and take much longer to complete, but what we offer is short in duration and more focused, which fits the newer style maker-slash-start-up-slash-entrepreneur who wants to dive in, meet a whole new group of people and then move on.”

The alternative art school is “based on a European post-graduate model in which there are seminars of varying lengths for people working in an art practice, discussing broad theoretical, aesthetical and philosophical issues,” said Howard Singerman, who chairs Hunter College’s fine arts department. “In this country, the model that people refer to is Black Mountain College,” a nonaccredited, nondegree-granting school of sorts near Asheville, North Carolina that drew a variety of artists and writers in the 1940s and ‘50s, including Josef Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Walter Gropius, Allan Kaprow, Alfred Kazin, Franz Kline, Jacob Lawrence and Aaron Siskind. Some were instructors and others were students, “but what came about was a fluid interaction between students and students, students and teachers, teachers and teachers. It was lightning in a bottle, and a number of places are hoping to recreate that.”

The starting point for this alternative art school movement is often thought to be 2010, according to Greg Sholette, associate professor in the art department at Queens College, “given additional momentum by Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring and Movement of the Squares,” referring to mass demonstrations protesting government action in Europe and the Middle East. After 2010, he claimed, “a bevy of alternative, do-it-yourself educational experiments start to crop up from the U.S. to Europe.”

Alternative art schools may not be for every artist. “If your goal is to sell your work, to get noticed by art dealers and critics,” in effect, to feed the art market, “then the traditional Master of Fine Arts program probably makes sense for you,” said Craig L. Wilkins, an architect and professor of architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning and one of the speakers at the alternative art school fair. “But, if your primary goal is to put art in the world and effect social change, to create work that crosses disciplines and doesn’t create problems for traditional schools – is this person an artist or an architect or a something else? – then an alternative art school is a better choice.”

Some aspects of the alternative art school is entering the more traditional universities, such as Nomad/9, an interdisciplinary low-residency Master of Fine Arts program that began this past fall at the University of Hartford’s Hartford Art School. The customary art school low-residency MFA consists of students who remain in their home towns but take academic courses and pursue their independent artwork in their own studios during the year, only coming to the college or university for a few weeks annually to meet faculty and other students, as well as attend workshops. Still relatively teacher-centered. Nomad/9’s students do their coursework and artwork at home for most of the year, but the program’s twist on the traditional low-residency MFA involves the art student residencies not taking place at the Hartford Art School but at designated locations around the country. This year’s students have been sited at Oakland, California and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The aim, according to Nomad/9’s program director Carol Padberg, is to create a “living classroom,” where students are “embedded in a community, participating in actual artists projects and cultural non-profits.” They also work with other artists in the MFA program. “Eco-artists, craft practitioners, studio artists and socially engaged artists all work side by side. One of our strengths is that when you get such a wide variety of artists together in these classes the conversation really takes off, because of all the different points of view. It all makes for a very dynamic, connected educational experience.”

It may be the fate of alternatives to become adopted or co-opted by the larger institutions, and some of the leading proponents of alternative art schools – such as Carol Padberg and Craig Wilkins – work for major universities. Still, many small nonprofits are holding out. “We have partnered with a number of institutions,” Archework’s Balster said, “including the University of Chicago, but we prefer to remain independent rather than a division of a department or a college, where we might be bogged down by the bureaucracy of the institution and get told what to do. We would have to charge more and we wouldn’t be alternative anymore.”

By Daniel Grant

It sometimes seems as though being an artist gives the rest of the world a license to be insulting, if unintentionally. Can you really make a living from this? Is that a cat? Could you do that in yellow? Wouldn’t it look better flipped on its side? Artists who sell directly to the public regularly face those and other questions and comments that seemingly denigrate their professionalism and their art. What’s more, the same questions get asked repeatedly by different people at exhibitions and fairs, which could turn sensitive souls sarcastic and mocking, hardly a good way to engender sales.

Perhaps, the most often heard question is, How long did it take you to make that? On its face, the question is matter-of-fact, but many artists take it as a challenge, as though the person asking “wants to know how many dollars per hour you earn, so they can calculate it into wages,” said Dorothy Fagan, an artist in Cobbs Creek, Virginia, or the person “wants to make sure he’s getting his money’s worth.” A snide riposte some artists are tempted to make is, “Well, how much do you make an hour?” but artists are more apt to soften the blow or reframe the question. Taking the latter approach, one might describe one’s method of working, discussing the various steps involved and how ideas form and change during the process. This type of discussion, Fagan said, makes a precise determination of how long the painting took impractical.

An often-used response to the how-long question is “my whole life,” suggesting that a given artwork is the product of years of training, experimentation and intellectual growth, while a more of a straight-on answer might indicate that some works take days, others months. Some buyers may associate a longer process with higher value, which may or may not be true. If you must, chuckle inwardly.

At other times, the laugh can be enjoyed by all. “I was at this one show, and an old farmer walked by,” said Hamden, Connecticut painter William McCarthy. “He took a look in my booth, then said about one painting, ‘How long did it take you to do that, 10 minutes?’ He was a large man, not to be reckoned with, and I said, ‘Oh, maybe about 25 seconds.’ He then let out a big belly laugh, and we started talking. He actually said he liked my paintings.” The farmer was not a buyer (“he may have bought a hot dog there”), but a testy situation was defused. In rare instances, McCarthy has found that what starts as a confrontation turns into a sale. Visitors enter his booth display and begin voicing criticism of one thing or another (“People think that artists are invisible, that they leave their feelings at the door,” he said), such as that they hate the painting, they hate the colors, they hate the frame. Although he was not part of the conversation, McCarthy may interject himself, saying, “’Well, the intention of that painting was…’ or ‘I wanted to use those colors, because…’ or ‘I thought that frame was appropriate, because…,’ which catches people off-guard. They take a second look.” In fact, some sales have resulted, which “surprised me: They started out saying that hated a painting that they end up buying.”

It is rare that visitors to a booth or exhibition are looking to quarrel – after all, they often have paid admissions to enter the fair and have some idea of what to expect – but simply want to strike up a conversation (itself a compliment of sorts) and don’t know what to say. Artists are sometimes told that they dress like artists, which may seem like a backhanded compliment (are their clothes oddly matched or funky or ill-fitting or in disrepair?), or that their work reminds the visitor of some other artist’s (is their art derivative, unoriginal, plagiarized?). It is likely that both comments are meant in a positive light, indicating in the first instance that the artist is a unique individual and in the second that the artist’s work is as good or as pleasing as someone else’s. Knowing how to find the positive side of a potentially negative remark may turn an awkward situation into a more relaxed moment. Shows can go for days, and artists may become tired and irritable by the end, apt to find a question insulting simply because they have heard it repeated so many times. Possibly, there is no ulterior motive to the question of how long it took to paint that picture. Artists might simply need to refresh themselves periodically in order to maintain a positive attitude.

The old maxim, There are no Stupid Questions, may help artists turn a seemingly thoughtless remark into a learning opportunity, helping someone who might be intimidated by art into a potential collector at some point (maybe, right now) or just letting visitors know that artists are normal people like themselves.

Often, the knowledge to turn a conversation around takes practice. Artists who sell directly to the public need two quite separate sets of skills, the first is the technical ability and a conceptual framework to produce the desired work of art, while the second is the capability to put that technique and concept into words and to be a good salesperson. Salesmanship is not only concerned with negotiating the terms of a purchase, which assumes that prospective buyers know exactly what they want, but trying to answer the questions that are really being asked. It may help, for instance, to show a booth visitor a sketchbook, so that that person may see how things get started: A little idea becomes a work of art. The question of where an artist gets his or her ideas turns out to be concerned with the mechanics of the artistic.

Similarly, the question “Can you really make a living from this?” may not be “’How can anyone make a living selling this crap?’ but, ‘What’s it like to be a professional artist?’” said Gary Stretan, an artist in Spencer, Ohio. Or, the question may be more specific, leading many artists to state that they wouldn’t be there if they didn’t make money at it and that, otherwise, they are doing well in their careers. Perhaps, it is a vicarious longing to be artists themselves or just nosiness that leads visitors to ask about an artist’s livelihood. Money questions – how artworks are priced and why one work is more expensive than another – may also be specific to the objects on display or a glimpse into the artistic process.

On occasion, questions and comments that seem insulting may be just that. Buyers who come into a booth at the last hour of the last day of a show seeking large price reductions irritate Stretan and other artists, because they “seem to be putting down my work and me as a professional.” He noted “when someone comes into my display, they’re not under any obligation to make my day or to support me,” but to visitors who appear “belligerent and want to bust your chops” he gives short answers to their questions and recommends that they “take a look at some of the other displays.”

By Daniel Grant

The Miami Line in 1987 photo by RK

“I got to spend a lot of time on roof tops with my dad,” says Heather Krebs. She recalls a postcard from her father, dated 1974, telling her the laser piece they worked on had been turned on. She laughs. “I was five.”

Rockne Krebs, the father of laser art, got rooftop access to some atypical locations for his installations—The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Memorial, parts of Disney Land—and often took his daughter.  “It was sort of like having this backstage pass….hanging out in these areas and looking over the scenery and the laser sculpture from views that few would see,” she remembers.

During a roughly 20-year period in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, Rockne Krebs’ use of lasers (and a friendship with curator Walter Hopps) shot him into the stratosphere of the art world, rubbing elbows with the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Irwin, and James Turrell, as he bounced around from DC to LACMA’s Art and Technology program, and then on to the U.S. Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka. When Congress held hearings on Capitol Hill in the mid-1970s about royalties for the resale of fine art works, Krebs was among those who spoke to lawmakers. In 1989, when 900 people protested the canceled Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition at the (now defunct) Corcoran Gallery of Art, Krebs projected Mapplethorpe’s photos on the facade of the building. In between, he would receive awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Rockne Krebs on ladder wMatthew Tanteri his artist assistant RK’s truck equipment

 

In the years leading up to her father’s death, and in the five years since, Krebs’ daughter, Heather, has been consumed by a single problem: what to do with her father’s archives. “Unfortunately my dad had no organization. I have been working with total chaos.” File cabinets full of papers. Boxes labeled “stuff.” Whereas other artists who achieved his level of success usually had a gallery assistant or manager—like his longtime friend Sam Gilliam—Rockne Krebs lacked such organization. When Heather began to sort through the archive, she quickly discovered he didn’t even have an exhibitions list on file, or a list of collections that possessed his work. “I started the biography and bibliography before dad died,” Heather recalled. Working through boxes of articles, papers and letters her mother saved over the years, Heather would visit her father in the nursing home after work. “He was so funny. He had forgotten the extent of his career: how long it was.” She eventually reconstructed his career and notable achievements, from the time he arrived in Washington, D.C., through 1988 where, at the age of 50, a 12-year hole opens up in Krebs’ exhibition history. “I know he was still doing a couple commissions a year,” his daughter laments. Truth-be-told she’s still combing through the boxes labeled “stuff” in search of any other clues about his career.

When it comes to artist archives, there are basically two kinds of collections: one for objects and one for papers. The objects tend to run the gambit from finished art works to process pieces, artist tools to objects lying around the studio that might have some significance. This was the case with the Nam June Paik Estate Archive, when it was awarded to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. And with the Paik archive, the objects are housed in a separate location from the papers.

Rockne Krebs, 1938–2011. A Rainbow Tree, 1970 color lithograph. Museum purchase: National Endowment for the Arts and Friends of the Museum 1972.0074. courtesy The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas

 

Handling archives isn’t strictly a matter for large museums, either (as the bidding for the Paik archive might indicate). Numerous locations across the country might absorb a paper or object archive. For example, if you want to read about Patty Mucha’s activities (Claes Olenburg’s first wife and collaborator) you would need to contact the NYU Library. People researching the history of the moving image would find curator John Hanhardt’s archives at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.  Even the D.C. Public Library has an archive of the city’s Punk scene.

Where the Rockne Krebs estate paper archives goes isn’t much of an issue, per se.  Prior to his death in 2011, Rockne Krebs had expressed his preference for his papers to get donated to the Archives of American Art in Washington, DC. Philip M. Smith, a prominent collector of Krebs’ work, and Jay Belloli, interim executive director for the Pasadena Museum of California Art championed the decision, as well. But, before Heather Krebs felt ready to donate anything, the Archives of American Art contacted her. “I showed [Liza Kerwin] my archives and what I was doing. She didn’t realize we had a warehouse that needed to be catalogued and go places.”

A part of the Smithsonian Institution since 1970, the Archives of American Art is an immense repository of paper archives of artists, curators, critics, writers, and collectors within the art world. It’s deputy director, Liza Kerwin, prefers to receive things in the order the person used them. “Sometimes the original order tells you who that person is and how the files functioned.” She indicated that the existing order would be maintained if possible, with one notable exception. “If the order makes research impossible, then we would reorganize it.”  Such reorganization might especially be the case with a warehouse stuffed with copious boxes labeled “stuff.” Even then, the Archives of American Art wouldn’t absorb the broken lasers in those boxes, or the clothes and detritus packed around them; they’d only take the papers.

Mapplethorpe projections on the Corcoran

 

Despite the commitment from the Archives, or perhaps fueled by it, Heather’s holding onto her father’s estate archives for a little longer. She spends free moments on evenings and weekends looking through folders, scanning items she comes across. “I work on something for a couple hours and it seems like a drop in the bucket,” she confesses. The finds appear on a website dedicated to her father’s work, along with posts on Twitter and Facebook: all in an effort to reintroduce him and reestablish his reputation.

Since Rockne Krebs’ death, there has been a mild groundswell of interest in his work. Some have appeared in group shows, like From the Archives: Art and Technology at LACMA, 1967–1971 and Notations: Minimalism in Motion at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In Miami, his public art work, Miami Line—a 1540-foot long light installation along the length of a Metrorail trellis spanning the Miami River—is getting rehabilitated: from broken, burned-out neon, to LEDs. More recently, his smoke-drawings, executed from 1973–1975, exhibited at Hemphill Fine Art, in Washington D.C. in the spring of 2016:  A lesser-known body of work, gallery owner George Hemphill described them as, “somewhat an extension of his laser works,” no doubt because of their near ethereal quality. In a generation where a beam of light can be directed at a slide during a classroom lecture, the smoke drawings still possess the magic, if for no other reason than the unknown nature of their making.

1970 Expo ’70 Osaka, Japan RK

 

But the most significant survey of Krebs’ work was in 2013 at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, Krebs’ alma matter, where he studied under sculptor Elden Tefft  (founder of the International Sculpture Center). Philip M. Smith—who, according to one obit, served as a science policy advisor from the administrations of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton—had amassed a significant collection of Krebs’ work. “He knew about the Spencer, and he knew that we had some interest in art and science issues,” recalled Stephen Goddard, the Spencer Museum’s  Associate Director and Senior Curator for works on paper. Between 2010 and 2015, Philip M. Smith (and his estate) donated 25 works: mostly works on paper. “The drawings themselves form a kind of notebook, some being more polished as presentable drawings than others,” Goddard considered. Previously there had only been one piece in their collection: a lithograph entitled “A Rainbow Tree,” purchased by the museum in 1972 through the NEA and friends of the museum. It exemplifies the sketchbook with illustrations of trees radiating rainbows from prisms nested in their branches, and the suggestion of misting water to see the spectrum of light. But the drawing is surrounded by copious notes. “It has lots and lots of writing,” Goddard laughs. “That can be off-putting at times, but it is kind of worth-while to read Rockne’s handwriting on these things. They’re chockablock full of ideas and great fun!” As was the artist himself, as Goddard relayed. Apparently when preparing for the exhibition, Goddard asked around the faculty—those who would have been in the department in the early 1960s. Among them was the late art historian Marilyn Stokstad who recalled he wasn’t a good student, but since he was a bit of a prankster, he was a lot of fun to have in class.

Rockne Krebs, Untitled (smoke drawing), 1973, candle smoke, colored pencil and airbrush on paper, 19 3/4” x 29 3/4”, Art © Estate of Rockne Krebs/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY/ HEMPHILL Fine Arts

 

While such a recollection sheds little light on the working process of the artist, it’s that personality that Heather keeps finding in bits and scraps throughout the archive. Reviews of an exhibition talk about the work, but finding a doodle on the side of a letter bears a fingerprint of preciousness. “I found a scrap of paper with a grocery list, a to do list for his assistant George,” Heather remarked in an e-mail. “Scribbled on the side it said “my beautiful horses are in jail in Texas!” I knew what he meant.” It was a clue about the whereabouts of a sculpture. A Google search and a phone call later, Heather learned One of Rockne’s prism sculptures from the early 1980s was donated to the Old Jail Arts Center by a Texas art collector. Despite the victories, Heather is aware of her limitations. “I wish I could keep doing it with him,” she reflects, as she talks about the first time going through the boxes her mother gave her when her father was still alive. “Sometimes I’d go in the nursing home with lists of questions: things only he could answer.” While Rockne Krebs’ laser pieces might never again cut through the darkness, by Heather’s efforts she’s helping to shine a light on a nearly lost master.

By John Anderson

William Nedham’s A Toy Spaniel and a Springer Spaniel in a Landscape

Let’s talk about pet portraiture, a memorial in paint or metal of that other member of the family. The most common subject is a horse, followed closely by dogs and far behind is a wide range of creatures – cats, canaries, snakes, fish and whatever else people want in their homes. “Someone once painted a lizard, and we had a painting with a frog in it,” said Jaynie Spector, owner of the Charleston, South Carolina-based Dog and Horse Fine Art & Portraiture gallery, which represents “more than 30 artists across the United States and Europe” who specialize in animal art and take commissions for pet portraits. Most of those artists are painters, but some are sculptors who are asked to create a bronze of some animal that has passed away.

“Their animals are their children, and there are millions of people who feel that way,” said Ellen Silverberg, an East Hampton, New York transplant to Oakland Park, Florida who has been painting dogs (“I’ve also done guinea pigs, birds, cats, I did one horse”) for decades. “I never treat with people who wonder why spend so much on a pet. It just seems so obvious and natural to the people I deal with.”

Pet portraiture is subset of the larger portraiture industry. We more quickly associate portraiture with humans, mostly older males dressed in dark suits painted with dark backgrounds. Those men tend to be university presidents, corporation founders and presidents, U.S. presidents and state governors, federal agency secretaries, law firm senior partners, Supreme Court judges and hospital benefactors – people dripping with success – whose retirements are celebrated by stately dinners and the commissioning of a portrait, which will hang next to those of their predecessors. Take a walk down the long Cross Hall in the White House to see portraits of all the presidents before Barack Obama (his will be painted after he leaves office) or to the Senate Office Building where one sees sculpted busts of every U.S. vice-president (Richard Cheney’s was unveiled earlier this year).

Perhaps closest to the stately pose of the university president are portraits of horses, which generally depict these animals standing tall and majestic. For dogs and other pets, however, the look tends to be more informal – a dog laying down with one ear cocked, for instance, or a child petting a cat on her lap. Babette Bloch, a sculptor in Redding, Connecticut, was once commissioned to create a (larger-than-life) stainless steel pregnant male seahorse. “They can carry up to 1,500 eggs in their pouches, that’s a lot,” she said. She did her research, though, and came through with an anatomically correct portrait. Research is an important part of the job, she claimed. A veterinarian commissioned her to create stainless steel portraits of his three dogs, all of which were different breeds. “The fact that this was a veterinarian put extra pressure on me,” but she looked through a breeder’s guide (“to get a sense of the perfect proportions”) and an animal anatomy book, as well as studied each dog individually to see what was characteristic or less than ideal with each. “I’d go back and forth to the anatomy book and the breeder book and the dogs themselves so I understood that this dog has a little arthritis, that dog’s left leg is a little shorter than others, how the fur lies on the body. It’s all about seeing.”

While some pet portraitists work through a gallery such as Dog & Horse Fine Art (www.dogandhorsefineart.com) or the Birmingham, Alabama-based Portraits, Inc. (http://portraitsinc.com/), Bloch relies for her commissions – humans, mostly, with the occasional pet – through word-of-mouth and Web site searches. A friend of Kate Hyland of Windsor, Illinois “knew I liked to draw, and she asked me to do a drawing of her horse. I did, and everyone went crazy over it. Then, someone who had a dog asked me to draw his dog, and people liked that, too. Then, everyone who had a dog asked me to draw it.” Hyland had studied art a little bit in college but, at the time, was working at a factory. “My husband and I sat down one day and realized I could make money from this.” And so she quit the factory and began her career as a pet portraitist, busiest just before Christmas but with work to do throughout the year.

Not all of those who commission animal portraits are private pet owners. Many of the commissions for dog portraits that come to Lena Toritch, a sculptor in Salt Lake City, Utah, are from police and fire departments or military regiments with canine units. For instance, outside the Canton, Ohio police station is her lifesize bronze of “Jethro,” and the federal Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive has her bronze of “Nash,” who was shot to death while pursuing armed robbery suspects. The Marine Corps’ Camp Lejune in Jacksonville, North Carolina and the Airborne & Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville, North Carolina also have her work sited on their grounds. However, most of her clients are homeowners who just want to remember their pets fondly. “People call me the dog queen,” she said.

No artist sets out on a career with the idea of painting homeowners’ pets, and for many of the artists who are commissioned to paint or sculpt animals this isn’t all they do in art. It does pay, and demand does not appear to recede with the economy. And, some of those pet owners might buy other types of art as well.

By Daniel Grant

How much more enjoyable it is to speak of love and marriage than of splitting up, but divorce happens, and it happens to artists at probably the same rate as for everyone else. Marital property – everything acquired during the marriage – needs to be divided in some way: the cars, the house, the bank account, the furniture. So, too, the artwork created by the artist-spouse, and along with the physical objects are current and future revenues from licensing as well as the copyright.

Does any of this come as a surprise? “Artists tend not to think of the artwork they create as property, marital or otherwise,” said Barbara J. Gislason, a lawyer in Minneapolis who specializes in both family law and intellectual property. Artists often look at their unsold creations, which may be placed in storage, stacked somewhere in the studio, decorating the house or on consignment to a gallery, as theirs by right. The courts, however, view any artwork created during a marriage as community or marital property, to which the non-artist spouse has an equal claim. (That extends to copyright, which a 1987 ruling from the California Court of Appeals belongs not “only to the author” but “must be considered community property.”)

Not everything is up for grabs. Artworks created prior to the marriage and those produced after the couple has separated or filed for divorce (depending upon the jurisdiction) are not counted as marital property. Payments agreed upon before the marriage, such as for an art commission or licensing agreement, that arrive after the wedding also are excluded from the marital assets.

The first requirement for an artist in the midst of a divorce is “to develop an inventory, a detailed list of all the artworks that have been made, which were made before the marriage, which were made during the marriage, which have been sold and at what price and which haven’t been sold,” said Raoul Felder, a divorce attorney in New York City. The location of unsold pieces created during the marriage needs to be identified, and hiding artworks or failure to disclose licensing documents could be a source of future lawsuits. “Half or even 100 percent of any undisclosed and unallocated assets may be awarded to the other spouse, depending upon if the failure to disclose is determined to be the result of fraud by the nondisclosing spouse,” warned Valerie L. Patten, a family and art law practitioner in Palo Alto, California.

In addition, some value must be assigned these artworks. That evaluation might be done by a professional appraiser or even a gallery owner – a dealer may be the only source of pricing information in the event that no secondary market exists for the artist’s work. Preferably, the spouses will agree on a single appraiser or dealer to determine values, but both sides are entitled to pick their own experts, with final estimates negotiated by lawyers or by a judge in a court of law. “You want to avoid the vagaries of separate appraisals,” said Manhattan attorney Malcolm Taub, and separate appraisals also double the legal costs. However, spouses may determine their own valuations, without needing to bring in other people. Past sales, or the lack of sales, are a central part of the discussion as is a sense of realism. If an artist has had an exhibition of 20 works, and only two of them sold, for $3,000 apiece, it could be argued that the other 18 also are worth $3,000 or that those works have little to no value (or something in-between). Most states’ divorce laws are based on what is called “equitable distribution,” which refers to roughly comparable values for each partner on a marital balance sheet, and the goal of the judiciary is for the spouses to find ways to divvy up assets and property that each side finds acceptable.

More complicated is determining a value for artworks that have not been exhibited or even completed: What is the value of a clay model or maquette? When the piece is brought to a foundry, how many will be cast in an edition, and what will be the price of each? Taub stated that unfinished artworks might be assessed at some fraction of their value when completed. In these instances, the division of artistic property might be structured in terms of future earnings. The clay model in the studio may not have any value in itself but, if cast in an edition, could generate revenues in the future. “Unsold works of art have a speculative value, but it is still a value,” said Amy L. Beauchaine, a lawyer in Orlando, Florida whose practice includes both entertainment and family law. “I’ve seen agreements where an ex-spouse will be paid less than 50 percent, say 20 percent, if a work produced during a marriage is sold within three years’ time after the divorce.” Additionally, the non-artist spouse might agree to cede future earnings in exchange for being freed from responsibility for a current foundry bill, since debts accrued during the marriage also belong to both spouses.

“Judges don’t want to take away property from the person who created it,” said Gislason. They also don’t want to be in the position of assigning market value to artworks in a marital estate, recognizing that the art market may be in turmoil and that individual pieces might be sold only as conditions permit. Putting a large number of artworks on the market at one time is apt to result in lower prices and, perhaps, few or no sales, which complicates the divorce settlement and damages the artist’s market. Because of this, judges prefer artists in the midst of a divorce to devise some means of assigning values to art property that is agreeable to their spouses without the intercession of the courts. Most family law cases are settled without going to trial, leaving a judge with no further responsibility than to sign off on an agreement.

In the end, a divorcing couple is supposed to derive equal value in marital assets on a final balance sheet. Therefore, “artists need to be realistic about the value of their own work, she stated. “If the artist is inflating values, the lawyer for the spouse is likely to recommend that the artist keep it at the crazy price, and the spouse will get more on his or her side of the balance sheet.”

During a marriage, an artist may make gifts to his or her spouse of some work of art, but that gift still is part of marital property. If the spouses wishes to retain the gift, something of equal value is to go to the artist’s side of the balance sheet.

The fact of incorporating themselves as a business would not separate artists’ earnings and artwork from marital property. According to Brett Ward, a lawyer in New York City who has handled the divorces of numerous artists, performers and writers, “the court would determine the value of the corporation and require, say, half to be paid to the spouse.”

Until the property division has been settled in a divorce decree, artwork may not be loaned, sold or destroyed without the consent of the other spouse. It is unlikely that the non-artist spouse would object to sales at a gallery exhibition, since that may lead to money that can be shared, although a sell-off of one or more artworks at below established prices might be objected to for depressing the market.

Divorce negotiations are a time of considerable horse-trading. Ward noted that “more established artists generally have a wealth of other assets, such as real estate and investments, which can be traded for works of art that the artists especially want to retain, while less established artists may only have the works of art.” Emerging artists may view their artwork as more valuable than their spouses who hadn’t seen it selling and are willing to trade their interest in it for something more immediate, such as the computer or the car.

“Things I made I kept,” said painter and printmaker Janet Fish, who married and divorced painter Rackstraw Downes. “If you’re making these things, it seems that they should stay with you.” (Downes kept his own paintings after the divorce, too.) That point of view might have been a point of contention but for the fact that neither artist was experiencing sales at the time of their divorce, and dividing up their accumulation of artworks only would have been for sentimental reasons. When painter Lois Dodd divorced sculptor William King, on the other hand, he took some of her paintings and she some of his sculpture. “We didn’t argue about it,” Dodd said. “It was more like, ‘Do you like this piece?’ ‘Can I have that one of yours?’ We wanted things to be as amicable as possible.”

The value of any licensing contracts or the creation of multiples and derivative works, known as copyright, similarly is a matter of negotiation, with money changing hands as part of the divorce settlement or by an agreement to share profits after the divorce. When Charles M. Schulz, creator of the long-running “Peanuts” comic strip, divorced his wife of 24 years, he agreed to share future revenues from his work at the initial rate of 27 percent, decreasing over a 10-year period to 15 percent. Similarly, when comedian Jerry Lewis divorced his wife, Patti, after 35 years, they agreed that he would retain ownership rights to the films he had made during that time, but she would have a half-interest in the royalties from them.

With copyright, spouses may decide that one will own the physical object while the other owns the copyright (that insures an ongoing business relationship between the two), or one side might buy out the other’s copyright interests. For the artist, but just as much for the spouse – particularly if there are ongoing financial interests between the two or children who will need to be supported – the goal must be to maintain the art career with as little interruption as possible.

By Daniel Grant

Perhaps, you associate social media with Kim and Kanye, with beer pong videos and thumbs-at-the-ready politicians and gossip that comes with a hashtag, or maybe you just want to remind friends of your existence through uploaded images, Tweets (or retweets) and Likes and texted messages. Shannon Wilkinson, chief executive officer of the New York City-based Reputation Communications, wants you to think of social media as a career-building tool.

“Social media culture is a community,” she said. “First and foremost, it is about connecting and sharing. It is not about endless self-promotion, although many people misuse it in that way.”

The first step is building a community of what she called “influencers,” referring to gallery owners, museum staff, grant-making and awards organizations, journalists, critics, collectors and sponsors, as well as other artists – “people who play active roles in making decisions, policies and statements that impact the art world, in particular, the art world that is most relevant to an artist.”

Building that community involves researching the audience that matters to the particular artist. For instance, a sculptor might conduct a hashtag search for “#sculpture,”  which will offer a sense of what is currently on Twitter and Instagram in that space. Next, artists should conduct searches for the magazines, writers, institutions and organizations that are most active in supporting their particular type of art, following those that interest them and are relevant to their careers. After that, artists might start examining who those people and institutions follow, following the ones who interests them.

Wilkinson also recommended conducting a search outside the more narrow confines of the art world. “If science is a theme in your work, or nature, research the journalists in those are, including bloggers, starting with the same #hashtag search,” she said. “Bloggers are more accessible than magazine editors and often freelance for them.” Even better, bloggers generally respond before mainstream editors and writers do, as there is less competition for their time. “When they publish posts about art or other topics, it provides instant online forums for it that can be built upon and expanded.”

Print publications are on the decline, being reborn as digital publications. However, all digital magazines and blogs have social media platforms. Artists who are not aware of them, much less following and engaging with them, are restricting their opportunities. Much publicity is now being done digitally, and publicists are connecting with writers online because so many are independent; they are freelancing more and less likely to be a full-time staffer. Often, these writers also write for other online publications, ones that curators read. Being active on social media enables artists to see who those writers are and where they are publishing.

Social media should be used to support, rather than replace, other forms of marketing and public relations, she claimed. For example, an artist preparing a mailing of printed promotional material for art consultants and editors at art publications to announce a recently installed commission might look to maximize the marketing opportunities by researching all of those individuals on Twitter and other social media platforms and connect with the ones she finds. Begin sharing their posts (with the goal that they will notice and follow her back). That can lead to what is called “engagement” on social media – also known as a “conversation.” If that occurs, the artist might send a private message letting the contact know to look for his or her announcement. If it does not occur, the artist can still include the person’s twitter handle or Instagram address on future posts with pictures of her new commission.

Similarly, when artists have an exhibition and know there is a critic who is likely to respond to their work (based on the reviews the critic writes about other artists with commonalities), they can follow the critic on social media and ensure that his twitter/Instagram handles are included in posts with images from the upcoming show. “That is a very easy way to increase awareness about the upcoming exhibition,” she said. “It reinforces the message that is being sent on other channels, such as direct mail, perhaps in advertising as well as from a gallery or PR consultant.”

Different social media platforms should be used in different ways. Facebook, for instance, should serve as a portfolio, while Twitter would be used to gather information and to build an audience, and Instagram can showcase one’s work. Using #hashtags on posts helps to reach new audiences. For instance, she said, “if you just finished a painting in Sedona or the Hudson Valley, make sure an Instagram post about it includes #Sedona or #Hudson Valley. Otherwise, you might be missing exactly the type of audience that wouldn’t otherwise know about it, and who may respond to it.”

We live in a world of people seemingly glued to their phones and tablets for hours every day, following So-and-So and posting images from their drive home (or whatever struck their fancy). Social media might seem to fine artists like an enormous time-suck whose rewards are only theoretical while the requirements only guarantee distraction and time away from work in the studio. However, Wilkinson said that two or three hours per week would be sufficient, using that time “to scan the posts and tweets made by the community they have built, which provides them with marketing insight about news, reviews and opportunities within their sphere, and to compose and schedule periodic posts for the coming week. That may be as little as three posts in a week, two of which may be just sharing someone else’s content.” She recommended several free and low-cost social media management systems – such as Hootsuite, Buffer and Sprout Social  – that enable users to read the social media posts of anyone they want to follow, as well as schedule and publish one’s posts on social media platforms. That enables artists to participate within that community, and the alternative is to be invisible to it “at least in the digital space.”

By Daniel Grant

By way of justifying his art college’s lack of business of art courses, the former chair of the fine arts department at Ringling School of Art & Design, once told me that “our faculty are all practicing, exhibiting artists who know very well what it takes to make it in the art world.” Presumably, just the presence of these teaching artists and the example they set would provide their students all the information they needed. However, that claim is difficult to test. Certainly, art faculty don’t lose their jobs if they haven’t had a show or sold a work of art in many years, and no one would want that to be the criteria for evaluating an instructor.

Since that conversation, most independent art colleges, as well as a small number of university art departments where most art students receive their training, have established career workshops or entire business of art courses. One hopes that it does some good, although most undergraduate and even graduate art students don’t take these workshops and courses and those that do are doing so during their last semester when their thoughts are largely consumed with their senior or MFA exhibitions. It is difficult to blame their lack of interest in the career stuff, which seems so far off and unrelated to their lives as students – what do consignment agreements and registering copyright have to do with me? – but the result is that almost every art school graduate leaves the academy with no clear idea of how to build an art career at the same time he or she is trying to find a job and an affordable place to live.

For the foreseeable future, career assistance guides for artists will continue to find an audience of people who read the magazine articles about successful artists and have little to no idea how artists achieve success. Scottsdale, Arizona gallery owner J. Jason Horejs is among the many people offering career advice to artists, and some may be familiar with his online postings (http://reddotblog.com), which offer advice and suggestions on a range of practical topics, such as How to Behave in a Collector’s Home and How to Overcome Rejection as You Seek Gallery Representation. The responses to his posts, and Horejs’ responses to those responses are no less informative.

‘Starving’ to Successful: The Fine Artist’s Guide to Getting into Galleries and Selling More Art 
by J. Jason Horejs, Red Dot Press, 181 pp. $24.95.

Artists who prefer reading his advice without having to scroll through years of blog posts, and have that information laid out in a more structured format, might consider his book ‘Starving’ to Successful. The tone is chatty, and Horejs views his audience as quite diverse, some of whom may have studio art degrees while others may be only self-taught. The title of the book concerns artists getting into galleries, but the first 130 pages are much more devoted to artists selling on their own. Again, Horejs is looking to appeal to the widest readership.

Certainly, there is plenty of information and advice available, such as: How many gallery-ready artworks should you have before approaching a gallery owner (and what does “gallery-ready” mean)? What kind of people (gender, age, occupation, geographical location) appear to be most attracted to your work, and how do you determine that? What do prospective buyers and dealers want to know about you? How and where should you go to meet people, and what do you talk about? How do you price your work? How and when should you raise your prices? What should an Artist Statement and a bio say about your work and you?

Horejs advises readers to work diligently and be organized. He offers tips on setting up a Web site and, being an inveterate blogger himself, recommends that artists create an “e-newsletter” for the purpose of “building relationships with your customers and driving them to your [Web] site….Make sure an image is the first thing appearing in subscribers’ emails.”

It would be difficult to argue with many of his recommendations, while some others may strike readers as a bit more debatable. He suggests that artist be willing to accept a discount, reasoning that “[c]ollectors understand there is some give in the value of artwork, and for many it is part of the excitement of buying to negotiate the price down.” That seems truer for gallery owners than for artists who sell their work directly, although artists certainly get bullied at art fairs. Horejs also advises artists not to put a date on their work, as some potential buyers may look at an older piece and wonder aloud or to themselves, “Why has this piece been around for so long and never sold?” There may be buyers who turn away from older, unsold works, although not dating pieces creates inventory tracking problems for artists and other concerns for dealers, museum curators and heirs.

His advice for artists seeking gallery representation is not sending portfolios or CD-ROMs or emails but “throwing your best pieces in the car…and approaching the gallery in person.” Being right in the gallery makes an artist harder to ignore – the dealer cannot just hit a “delete” key as he or she could for an unsolicited email – and it is more difficult to say “no” in person. Pretty ballsy, although sculptors may have a bit more difficulty “throwing” works in the car than artists working in two dimensions.

‘Starving’ to Successful is an introduction to the business side of art, a starting point for artists who have decided to become more serious about their careers. The book’s greatest strength is that it is written easily and conversationally, and from a gallery owner’s point of view about how artists can make themselves more ready to be shown in a gallery and more appealing to both private buyers and dealers personally. The (free) Red Dot blog offers more in the way of specific issues that artists may face, but the book offers an overview for those who feel a need to start from Point A.

By Daniel Grant

It seemed creepy. Photographer Arne Swenson aimed his camera with its telephoto lens towards the windows of adjacent apartment buildings in New York City, taking pictures of people going about their normal business and exhibiting them in 2013 at New York City’s Julie Saul gallery. One family that found itself in those photographs, which included a mother and her one year-old son in a diaper and her three year-old daughter in a bathing suit, brought a lawsuit, claiming a violation of the family’s privacy under the state’s civil rights law. That law prohibits the use of someone’s name or image for the purpose of advertising or trade. However, in 2015, a New York appellate court found for the artist, who claimed that his images did not constitute advertising but were protected works of creative expression.

Artists – painters, photographers, printmakers and sculptors – regularly include identifiable figures in their work, and calling that work “art” won’t always suffice to keep them out of trouble. Artists aren’t being hauled into court every time they include a recognizable face in their work, but the growing sense that one’s likeness is a “property” that can be commercially exploited has led many artists to feel less secure in pursuing realistic figurative images. When might an artist need to have a “model release” form on hand to avoid trouble?

In general, the artist’s right is constitutionally protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but both artist and subject have economic interests in a likeness – the artist to sell the image in the form of a painting, sculpture or print, the subject potentially to sell the visage to fans as posters or as a product endorsement – and the battle is played out on the state level over the right of publicity.

Some state publicity statutes make specific exceptions for artwork, while others do not. Indiana exempts artwork in its statute, but New York case law has specifically extended the law to protect the first amendment rights of artists, which includes multiples (print or sculpture editions), while Indiana’s law only stipulates one-of-a-kind pieces. On the other hand, California allows the image to appear on a t-shirt or some more commercial medium, although in limited circumstances. California, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia allow publicity rights to be transferred. A number of states hold that the right of publicity ends with the subject’s death, while almost all the states with publicity rights statutes permit the right to be inherited. Florida, for example, extended the right of publicity to 40 years following the individual’s death, while Indiana and Oklahoma allow 100 years, and Tennessee crafted its law in 1984 to enable heirs, such as Elvis Presley’s, to control the use of a name and a likeness indefinitely. In addition, Washington’s and Indiana’s statutes provide retroactive publicity rights protection of 50 and 100 years, respectively. State right of publicity laws include minimum or statutory penalties for unauthorized use of a name or likeness – California’s is $750, while Indiana’s is $1,000, Washington’s is $1,500 and Texas’ is $2,500 – as well as reasonable lawyer’s fees and possible punitive damages.

Uncertainty can develop as artists sell works outside the borders of their own states, for instance, at an art fair or gallery. “I advise my clients, wherever they live, to comply with the most restrictive state laws” of publicity, said James Silverberg, an intellectual property lawyer in Washington, D.C. The Internet also may create jurisdictional problems if collectors in one state may purchase works from the Web site of an artist living in another state.

A number of high profile contests have been waged in the courts – model Cheryl Tiegs versus Mihail Simeonov in New York, Tiger Woods versus Rick Rush in Ohio and Comedy III Productions, Inc. (owner of the rights to the Three Stooges) versus Gary Saderup in California, all of which were won by the artists – but the right of publicity exists for everyone, not just the well-known (although celebrities have a greater economic stake in their names and likenesses).

Model release forms are used regularly by photographers in advertising and illustration, and they offer protection to both the model and photographer. The model knows precisely the use that will be made of the image (a book cover, for instance, but not a pornographic Web site), and the photographer is protected from any claim of having violated the subject’s right of publicity. A standard form indicates that for the payment of some (fill in the blank) amount of money, the model irrevocably assigns to the photographer the use of the image for advertising, trade or any other lawful purpose, waiving any right to inspect or approve the finished version. If the model is a minor, a parent or guardian would sign the release form. The agreement is irrevocable, protecting the photographer in the event that the model changes his or her mind, and waiving the right to inspection or approval insures that the photographer has full artistic control over the final product. The more specific the form, the less likely that the parties will find themselves in court arguing over what they had agreed to.

Fine artists and their models have the same needs and requirements. The release form that artists would offer to a prospective model provides them with a maximum level of flexibility, such as the ability to use the image in all forms, media and manners of use. That might include exhibitable sketches and a final painting, as well as a print version of the image, the use of the image on the artist’s advertising brochure or Web site and on t-shirts. The artist might also be able to license the image to a company that manufacturers calendars or note cards, among other items. A sample model release form may be found in Tad Crawford’s Business and Legal Forms for Fine Artists (Allworth Press). Less clear is how willing people in a field or park might be to sign a legal document thrust at them by some artist they don’t know, giving the artist a lot of leeway and them none. There may need to be a fair amount of discussion between artist and subject about what the artist has in mind and even some last-minute rewriting of the release form.

Privacy has been defined as “the right to be let alone” and protects individuals against unreasonable intrusion, publication of private facts and being “held in a false light in the public eye” – in effect, to protect the individual’s feelings and reputation. Publicity laws, on the other hand, are property rights protecting an individual’s ability to commercially make use of that person’s name or likeness.

“We’ve become a very litigious society,” James Silverberg said. “People can always make a claim, and it can be very expensive to defend against it. Art has become a hazardous endeavor. If you think walking on a scaffold 30 feet off the ground is dangerous, be an artist.”

By Daniel Grant

Another day, another scientific “finding” that the sources of creativity are also the wellsprings of something abnormal. A new multi-authored study in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, titled “Investigating the prosocial psychopath model of the creative personality: Evidence from traits and psychophysiology,” concluded that actors, artists and musicians frequently show similar tendencies to those with “psychopathic traits,” having high levels of “emotional disinhibition” making them prone to dishonesty and risk-taking. “Emotional disinhibition, in the form of psychopathic boldness, is actually integral to some creative personalities and functionally related to the creative process,” the study finds. “A creative field might not just shape a person into a more arrogant or dishonest personality, it might be actively selecting them, not for the sake of having disagreeable traits, but because such traits meaningfully co-vary with creativity itself.” Those who delight in the idea that artists inherently are transgressive outlaws may be pleased. The rest of us may wonder why artists are so often associated with problems.

This study by Adrianne John R. Galang, Vincenzo Leonardo C. Castelo, Leonardo C. Santos III, Christopher Michael C. Perlas and Ma. Antonina B. Angeles adds to an already overflowing bookshelf of research. Last fall, Trends in Cognitive Sciences published an editorial titled “Thinking too much: self-generated thought as the engine of neuroticism,” explored “creativity and nonsituational ‘angst,’” while a June 2015 report “Polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder predict creativity” in the journal Nature Neuroscience claimed that creative people are much more likely to carry genes connected to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder than those who work regular jobs.”

Research into the relationship between mental illness and artmaking is extensive, and a regular series of conferences on the subject of Creativity and Madness (http://www.creativityandmadness.com) are scheduled around the world. Papers of all types are presented that demonstrate links between artistic creativity and neurotic and psychotic states, but this area of research extends far beyond this one conference. A 2009 study by Hungarian researcher Szabolcs Kéri claimed to identify a “schizophrenia gene” that influences creativity and, in 2011, Scientific American reported on another finding that sought to explain “Why Creative People are Eccentric.” The preeminent book on the subject is Kay Jamison’s Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, which made a strong connection between “creativity and mood disorders” in general, seeing an “overlap between the artistic and manic-depressive temperaments.”

Jamison stated that not “all writers and artists are depressed, suicidal, or manic. It is, rather, that a greatly disproportionate number of them are; that the manic-depressive and artistic temperaments are, in many ways, overlapping ones; and that the two temperaments are causally related to one another.”

Two questions arise: Is this relationship so strong? And what are the assumptions that led to these studies being conducted in the first place? In fact, the two questions merge, as relationship between madness and creativity only can be “found” when one has looked specifically for it and stacked the deck to insure the results.

Take, for example, a study by J.J. Schildkraut, A.J. Hirshfield and J. Murphy of 15 New York School of artists that Jamison cites, in which it is noted that two committed suicide. Jamison leaps to the claim that “the suicide rate among the artists…is at least thirteen times the general [population] rate.” It didn’t occur to her to notice that this group of 15 is rather small, specially hand-picked and is viewed outside of any context. Arshile Gorky and Mark Rothko, the two who committed suicide, for instance, were in the late stages of cancer at the time, and an accident had left Gorky unable to use his right, painting hand: Why not view their suicides more heroically as choosing their own terms for death instead of as somehow inherent in their choice of occupation?

Research in this field is one more academic niche, the road to tenure and promotion. Ernest Hartmann, a sleep researcher and professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, claimed to discover a connection between nightmares and creative activity. Writing in The American Journal of Psychiatry that the subjects in his study “have a biological vulnerability to schizophrenia,” he noted that “nearly all the subjects had occupations or career plans relating to arts or crafts.” Not long after, Karl U. Smith, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, discovered that people who are more expressive on the left side of their faces are more likely to be creators than others who are “right-faced.” In 1999, Stanford University psychologist Robert Solso declared that artists have “different inborn brain structures” after having attached magnetic resonance imaging scanners to a portrait painter and a nonartist graduate student and asking them both to draw six faces on a notepad. A weird sideline in psychology, the psychology of artists has now moved into the forefront, with its own body of literature.

In their study, “Creativity & Madness: Psychological Studies of Art and Artists,” for example, Barry Panter, Evelyn Virshup and Bernard Virshup take the view that creativity is connected to psychopathology, while Stephen Diamond’s book, Anger, Madness and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity, identifies a strong link between anger, rage, violence, evil and creativity. D. Jablow Hershman and Julien Lieb, in their study Manic Depression and Creativity, argue that manic depression can be used as a positive factor in the creative artist’s life, and Ludwig M. Arnold, whose The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy views art as a successful resolution of madness. In all of these books, van Gogh regularly is trotted out to prove a general point about all artists.

Beyond the analysis of data is a structural problem, that is, the manner by which this data was established. Why only investigate artists rather than a more generalized group? (When you only look at artists, your conclusions could only relate to artists.) How about studying lawyers, doctors, physicists, psychiatrists and other professionals who are also highly trained, who often work independently and who need to develop creative solutions to thorny problems? The fact is, artists make their work and – through their work – their lives available for public consumption in ways that few other professions do. We don’t know what lawyers generally think about suicide because it is their interpretation of law, rather than the presentation of their feelings, that is the source of their income.

Perhaps, this is just an academic exercise, finding a strain of psychology hell-bent on proving artists to be mentally troubled. Why should it matter to the rest of us? Because, associating artmaking and mental instability condemns art, presenting an ad hominem attack on art. When you look to sell your art to collectors, you want them to think of you as thoughtful, skilled professionals, not as a crazy people. When you seeking financial support for a large-scale project, you want the private foundation or government agency to see you as responsible, not as mentally imbalanced. That is a portrait of the artist that needs to be changed.

By Daniel Grant

Under the law in Massachusetts, an “art dealer must pay the artist monies due from the sale of the consigned work within 90 days of receipt of payment.  The art dealer incurs fines for payments not made within 90 days, and the penalties increase again after 180 days.” If the dealer doesn’t pay within one or another period, is that person a thief or a crook? That’s quite possible, but saying it to others or publishing a statement to that effect could lead the dealer to bring a lawsuit for defamation.

Defamation is a malicious and false claim that comes in two varieties – slander (an oral statement) and libel (a written statement) – and both have the potential of harming the reputation of an individual or business, exposing the person or company to ridicule, hatred or financial loss. Penalties for both libel and slander are similar, although libel tends to be easier to prove, because documentary evidence exists of what was published, whereas one or more individuals may be required to recall what was said to them when the charge is slander and one’s memory can be imperfect.

The opportunities to defame someone have increased with communication technology, such as text messages, postings on a blog or social networking site like FaceBook, Twitter, emails and YouTube videos (that can result in charges of both slander and libel). People rush to their cell phones to text their immediate thoughts in the heat of the moment, rather than sitting down to write a letter, which might be torn up the next day after they cool down. It is the ease of announcing one’s grievances to the world that have some artists’ lawyers concerned. “You have to be careful when disseminating information that disparages someone’s reputation,” said Chicago attorney Scott Hodes, and New York lawyer Donn Zaretsky noted, “let me put it this way:  If one of my clients was upset with her dealer and was considering blogging or sending out an email blast, I would strongly advise against it. Too risky.”

It was through an email blast (a mass online mailing) that British actress Claire Forlani sent out an almost 500-word condemnation of Malibu, California art dealer Paul Rusconi for selling her what she called counterfeited paintings by artists Keith Haring and William Claxton, as well as overcharging her for works by Andy Warhol. Rusconi responded to the “poison-pen note” with a defamation lawsuit in 2009, which was resolved in a confidential settlement.

“Things spread like wildfire over the Internet,” Rusconi said. “People take what they see as fact, rather than as speculation.”

Not every claim of defamation can be won in a court of law, however. “Truth is the best defense to the charge of defamation,” Hodes said. If an art dealer actually had sold a counterfeit painting to a collector, announcing that fact by spoken word or written text is neither slander nor libel; it may cross the line into defamation if the collector claims without some measure of proof that the dealer knew the painting was a fake. On the other hand, Michael Salzman, a lawyer in New York City, stated that offering an opinion is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “If a dealer is late in paying his artists, it isn’t actionable to say that money owed to artists tends to stick to his pocket.” An artist calling his or her dealer a “jerk” or a “moron” also would likely be protected speech in oral or written form, and it would protect the collector purchasing the counterfeit who says that the dealer should have known better.

Calling a dealer a “crook” edges into a more troublesome area, because it implies wrongdoing, but the term suggests hyperbole and “puffing,” which would tend to prohibit a defamation lawsuit. Calling a dealer a thief, on the other hand, or asserting that the individual stole one’s money, is a statement of fact, which would need to be supported by facts. Not being paid promptly may feel like being the victim of a robbery, but the difference is consequential in the law.

Defamation of products also exists and has arisen in the art world when someone in a position of authority, such as a dealer or museum curator, publicly labels a work of art as a fake, depriving the artwork of much of its value. A number of catalogue raisonne and authentication committees for well-known deceased artists (such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder and Jackson Pollock) have been sued by the owners of artworks that were not deemed to have been created by the particular artists. The most notable lawsuit in this realm took place in 1920 after international dealer Joseph Duveen answered a question from a newspaper reporter from the New York World that the Leonardo da Vinci painting “La Belle Ferroniere” purportedly owned by a Kansas City, Missouri collector was only a copy of the actual work, which he knew to be in the Louvre in Paris. A trial resulted in a hung jury, siding nine to three with the collector, and Duveen cut his losses by paying a $60,000 settlement instead of risking a retrial. (That collector’s painting, still by an unknown artist, recently sold at auction for over $1 million, and 90 years later the Louvre itself announced that its “La Belle Ferroniere” wasn’t by Leonardo either.)

It may be natural to vent publicly when engaged in a disagreement, “and the temptation to hit the ‘send’ button for an angry text or email is very great,” Salzman said. Smarter is to follow the older prescription of writing it down and tearing it up, “or just sleep on it.”

By Daniel Grant

Because I have published several career guides for artists, periodically I Google my own name to see how easily (or not) I might be found by someone searching online for one or more of the books. Daniel Grant is not all that uncommon a name, and among those similarly named are a painter (www.dannygrantfineart.com) and a photographer (www.danielgrantphotography.com). There are many others as well. I once was confused for the photographer by someone who wanted to hire me. A trivial problem for me, but it may not be for artists who look to make a name for themselves, what is called branding.

Nine years ago, identical names led to a lawsuit. Keith Urban, the well-known country-rock singer recently brought a lawsuit against a Wayne, New Jersey painter with the same name for creating a KeithUrban.com Web site that displays his artwork but was alleged to intentionally confuse browsers about who actually painted them. The singer Keith Urban, who has his own Web site (KeithUrban.net), filed his suit in Tennessee, where he resides, accusing the painter of federal trademark infringement, dilution of a federally registered trademark, federal unfair competition and violation of the anti-cybersquatting consumer protection act and the Tennessee consumer protection act.

It is quite possible that the painter Keith Urban was trying to profit from the more famous namesake. On the Web site’s home page, the painter announces in large letters, “To Those Who Don’t Know, Oil Painting Is One of My Hobbies,” which suggests that this Keith Urban has some other gig, like country-rock music.

The lawsuit went nowhere, but it might open up an area of concern to fine artists who worry that others have their same name or that the titles they give to their artworks may have been used by someone else. In general, no one can be forced to change his or her name because someone else has trademarked it. Trademarks are distinctive symbols, pictures or words that sellers use to distinguish and identify the origin of their products. Trademarks that have come to be identified by consumers with specific products or services are said to have acquired a “secondary meaning.”

“Paul McCartney couldn’t stop people who are named Paul McCartney and sing from using his name,” said intellectual property lawyer James Silverberg. However, “you couldn’t perform under the name The Beatles, because people will assume that they will see John, Paul, George and Ringo. The name The Beatles is shorthand for the services of this group.”

Similarly, the Ford Motor Company could not legally require someone to change his name from Henry Ford, but, according to Washington, D.C. lawyer Joshua Kaufman, “if my name is Henry Ford, I couldn’t come out with a line of cars and call them Fords, because that name has acquired a secondary meaning.”

On the other hand, someone who is not named Paul McCartney but begins performing under that name could be sued under trademark law; even going to court to legally change one’s name may not eliminate the threat of legal action, as the original Paul McCartney would argue that the only reason a singer would take on that name and play guitar is to confuse people as to who is actually performing, Kaufman said.

It is no less illegal to use some famous person’s name as the domain name of a Web site if it is at all unclear if there is a relationship between the site and the famous individual. This type of use is called cybersquatting, which, as defined by a 1999 federal statute, involves registering or using a domain name with the bad-faith intent to profit from a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter usually then offers to sell the domain at an inflated price to the person or company who owns the trademark. In 2003, British Op Art painter Bridget Riley won a “cybersquatting” arbitration decision against American John Barry who had set up a bridgetriley.com Web site as a means of directly connecting visitors to an anti-abortion Web site, abortionismurder.com, although the artist did have to pay $999 for the rights to the domain name.

Using the same title for an artwork as some other artist tends to be more clear-cut. “Titles generally aren’t protectable,” Kaufman said, but generally doesn’t mean absolutely. Trademarks are used to distinguish one product from another. Very well-known artworks may have acquired a secondary meaning, such as Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World,” although “if you painted a picture of a girl in a field whose name is actually Christina, I’m not sure that Andrew Wyeth could stop you from using that title,” Silverberg noted. On a practical level, however, so many artists do use the same titles (“Untitled,” “Still Life with…,” “Descent from the Cross”) that a specific trademark would not be defensible.

Things may seem more clear-cut in the performing arts, where Actors Equity, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Screen Actors Guild all require new members with names identical to current or past members to alter their professional names, such as adding a middle initial (Michael J. Fox, for instance) or making a larger change. African-American singer-songwriter Michael Gregory Jackson first used all three names on his early recordings before dropping Jackson on his own and performing professionally as Michael Gregory. In the fine art realm, painter David X. Levine’s middle initial might help eliminate confusion that he isn’t the famed caricaturist and watercolorist.

Similar names and titles have resulted in legal disputes in other realms, such as between The Beatles’ Apple Records (formed in 1968) and Steve Jobs’ Apple Computers (formed in 1976), resulting in the payment of a $25 million settlement by the computer maker. The Motion Picture Association of America has a Title Registration Bureau, which arbitrates disputes between filmmakers over titles that seem too close, ruling in 1992 that film director Ridley Scott needed to change the title of his film “Christopher Columbus” after a Dutch company had already registered its own “Christopher Columbus – The Movie.” Outside of the Motion Picture Association of America, a New York State District Court ruled in 1999 against Leisure Time Productions’ “Return from the River Kwai” because of its similarity to Tri-Star Pictures’ classic “Bridge on the River Kwai,” awarding Tri-Star $1 million in fees.

Closer to the art world, New York City art dealer David Findlay and owner of Findlay Galleries sued his younger brother Wally Findlay after Wally opened an art gallery two doors away from David’s called Wally Findlay Galleries. A court of appeals ruled in 1966 that even though there is in trademark law history a “sacred right” to use one’s own name, “Wally’s conduct constituted unfair competition and an unfair trade practice, and it is most inequitable to permit Wally to profit from his brother’s many years of effort in promoting the name of ‘Findlay’ on 57th Street. Wally should use any name other than ‘Findlay’ in the operation of his business next door to his brother.”

The problem of artists having the same names is that branding becomes more difficult. An image forms in our minds when we hear the statement “That’s a Warhol” or “That’s a Rauschenberg,” but if the art market has more than one Andy Warhol or Robert Rauschenberg, we become less confident and worry about making a mistake. A willing buyer may become less willing. When someone coincidentally has the same name and when that person is adopting the name of a more famous person in order to sow confusion and steal some business are questions that may require the services of a lawyer. Certainly, identical names lead to confusion that may be amusing (“Nope. Not that John McEnroe,” proclaims the home page for the Denver sculptor, distinguishing him from the former tennis player) or problematic (Scottish painter Peter Doig is currently being sued by the buyer of a painting by a Canadian artist named Peter Doige who wants Doig to admit the picture he bought years before is by him). One can only hope that no mass murderer with the same name gains notoriety at the same time you are developing your career. The law only permits Person One to stop Person Two with an identical name from intentionally infringing on his or her brand. As for the Denver sculptor, having the same name as the tennis star has had an upside: “People see the name and take a second look at my work,” he said. “That’s better than their not taking a second look.”

By Daniel Grant

In its short history of existence, the nontangible Internet currency bitcoin has earned an uneven reputation, associated with drug sales, pornography, gun-running, tax evasion, money-laundering and hackers, but increasingly this “cryptocurrency” has gained legitimacy and is being used for a variety of online purchases, such as Etsy.com and Overstock.com. Will artwork and other collectibles be next?

Perhaps. Burning Man, the nonprofit summer arts festival based in California, began accepting bitcoin donations in late 2014, and in March of 2014 Chatham Township, New Jersey-based wealth management company The Leo Group purchased on behalf of a client a multi-million dollar c.1720 Stradivarius violin with bitcoin from the New York City stringed instruments boutique Carpenter Fine Violins. (“The Carpenters are knowledgeable people and had heard of bitcoin, but we had to construct the deal and walk them through it,” said Leo Group managing director Matthew Allain.) Some high-priced artworks have been put up for sale by bitcoin buyers – a 1903 Paul Gauguin oil “The Sorcerer of Hiva Oa (Marquesan Man in the Red Cape)” was publicly offered for sale last April at a price of 90,000 bitcoin (or $45 million) by an unknown seller who offered prospective buyers the email address of btcpainting@gmail.com, and a 55” x 85” collage by Peter Beard, “Orphaned Cheetah Cubs” was offered by bitpremier.com – although they do not appear to have found buyers.

A number of individuals – some artists, some not – have attempted to establish online venues for the sale of art using bitcoin, with limited success. In the year that it has been in existence as an “experimental artist’s platform,” the Vienna, Austria-based Cointemporary has exhibited 20-plus artworks, only selling one of them, according to Valentin Ruhry, one of the Cointemporary’s directors. The site is more experimental “than a commercial venture,” and what is experimental about it is that buyers pay for artworks not with dollars or Euros but in bitcoin.

Cointemporary is not the only art venue accepting bitcoin – one may also shop at other online venues (btcartgallery.com, bitdazzle.com/art, art4bitcoin.net and bitpremier.com/4-fine-art-antiques) – but it does also permit payment for shipping to be in bitcoin. The site does not represent any artists but has been consigned work by some whom the gallery had contacted either directly or through the brick-and-mortar galleries that does represent them. For its efforts, Cointemporary receives a 40 percent commission (if the artist wants to be paid in dollars) or 30 percent if the entire transaction is conducted in bitcoin. “I told them, when I was asked by my dealer, Clifton Benevento, if I would be willing to include a work of mine on its site, that I want dollars,” said Polly Apfelbaum. Probably, a number of the other artists in the online gallery’s display also would prefer a currency they know to one they don’t, but it wasn’t one of Apfelbaum’s installations that sold.

So far, other artists who have had their work displayed on bitcoin-accepting online galleries have not been disappointed at the experience, even if nothing has sold. “I like the idea of trading in bitcoins as it has parallels with the speculative nature of the art market,” said Marita Fraser, a Viennese artist who showed a 2014 painting titled “O.T.” and priced at 3.5 bitcoin on Cointemporary. “I see trading art in bitcoins as an interesting experiment, and an art project within itself, which calls into question the value of things in the world and different kinds of exchange. On the other hand, British “sketch artist” Oli Witcomb claimed that has sold two drawings on art4bitcoin.net, and “I’ve had a few donations.”

Bitcoin also may appeal to artists who like to oppose the status quo not only in their art but in their approach to life. Samuel Carlson, a painter in Boulder, Colorado who has displayed his work on art4bitcoin.net, as well as on his own Web site, noted that the online currency “allows people like myself to set up a digital easel, and start busking for virtual tips with what’s the equivalent of a chalk drawing in the park. People walk by, see a cool picture and toss a few bucks into your hat, for brightening up their day.”

Bitcoin, which was first created in 2009, is referred to as a “cryptocurrency,” a form of money based not on the value of gold or other currencies but on computer code that controls the creation of new units and their transfer from one computer user to another. Banks and governments are not involved in the production or movement of new bitcoin (the U.S. Treasury refers to bitcoin as a “decentralized currency”), and “payments are processed almost instantly, with close to zero fees,” Ruhry claimed.

Bitcoin suffers from a bad image, starting with its exchange rate volatility (within the past few years, it has ranged from one bitcoin equaling $160 to $1,200), theft by hackers (in February 2014, 744,000 bitcoin disappeared from the Japanese virtual currency exchange Mt. Gox) and an association with illegal activity. “So far as I know, bitcoin is used only for speculative and for illegal and borderline illegal activities, such as paying for drugs, guns, porn,” said Gerald Friedman, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts. John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo, also noted the negative associations, stating that bitcoin has been used to evade governmental oversight. In addition, because of the anonymity of the Internet, from a purely business perspective, “there is a problem of knowing your customers.”

Ruhry acknowledged that it is near impossible to identify who the audience for buying art with bitcoin is “due to the nature of the anonymity of bitcoin. However, if I had to guess, the people we have dealt with so far had higher education. Some are in technology or economy, but all of them are at least interested in those fields (which is to be expected in the bitcoin-sphere). It is an international and with some exceptions mainly male crowd.”

The amount of bitcoin in the world and who has it are open questions. Dustin Hinrichs, a 31 year-old economics student at Montana State University in Bozeman who runs the Bitcoin Art Gallery, claimed that one million people in the English-speaking world hold bitcoin as do another million and a half around the world. The appeal of this type of currency is that transactions may take place without middlemen – the Bitcoin Art Gallery doesn’t take commissions but accepts “tips” – which gives artists “full value” for their work. In this way, “bitcoin facilitates people producing art.”

The volatility in the exchange rate and the fact that “banks have declined deposits of bitcoin into accounts” has been discouraging for Orlando, Florida painter Alex Vera who has made one sale whose payment is “still stored in my digital wallet.” However, he noted that “bitcoin could make huge gains again in value and would pay off once it is accepted everywhere.”

The mainstream art selling businesses have tended to shy away from bitcoin. “We haven’t taken bitcoin and don’t plan to,” according to a spokesman for Sotheby’s, and Christie’s only permits payment in the form of “wire transfers, bank drafts or cashier’s orders, cash or checks.” Leslie Hindman, owner of the Chicago-based auction house, said that no one ever has asked about paying in this way. “Nobody has wanted to pay in bitcoin, thankfully.” Brick-and-mortar art galleries also have not shown interest in cryptocurrency. Jo Backer Laird, legal counsel to the Art Dealers Association of America, claimed that she has not heard of anyone accepting bitcoin and “would be surprised to hear that anyone did.”

“I suppose buying art on line will become more mainstream in general, and I can absolutely see bitcoins as a viable currency for trading in art, but not for a while, because the big money is still traditionally being spent in conventional currency and change is generational,” said New York art advisor Wendy Cromwell. “Another 15 years, maybe?”

The tech world has become more comfortable with bitcoin’s legitimacy. In December, Microsoft began to accept bitcoin – which currently is trading at $226.34 per bitcoin, as of February 7th – for buyers of Windows Phone, Xbox Music, Xbox Video, apps, games and other company products, following a similar move by both Apple and Dell last June. The King’s College, a liberal arts Christian college in Manhattan’s financial district, began accepting bitcoin as tuition in 2013, although Smith College controller and associate treasurer Laura Smiarowski still spoke for the rest of higher education when she said that “Smith has not yet accepted payment using bitcoin.”

Will Bitcoin join the more customary forms of payment, such as cash, personal checks, credit and charge cards, e-cash and PayPal? All of these pose certain risks for artists — cash is great, but who wants to worry about the theft of a lockbox at an art fair booth? — and Bitcoin is just the latest area of insecurity. Futuristic and for the intrepid, Bitcoin may be worth keeping an eye on.

By Daniel Grant

One business model for your art business could be producing and selling a series of prints, photographs, sculptures or multiple copies of any artwork.  The advantage of this model is that it allows you to leverage the work or designs you have created and achieve some level of efficiency and predictability in producing the copies.  An edition can be either limited or unlimited in the number of pieces produced.  Before you embark on producing and selling multiple copies or prints, it is a good idea to know what your costs will be and how you should price the works so that you will make a profit.

There are a couple of ways to determine your project profitability:

1. You can go ahead and produce an art project and sell it, then add up all of your costs and subtract them from your project revenue and whatever is left over is your profit.
2. You can take more of a planning/estimating approach by determining what your anticipated profit will be before you start the project. If you have already created your project and know your costs then your pricing becomes the most important thing in determining project profitability.

Identifying your costs

In order to properly plan the profitability of an edition you will have to keep good records and your accounting system should be set up so that you can easily identify your costs. If you need help ask your accountant or bookkeeper. If you are starting a new project take some time to identify your costs. Try not to leave out anything as this will be crucial in determining your pricing, breakeven, and project profitability.  After a while you should get pretty good at identifying your costs, it just takes a little practice and attention to detail!

Some basic concepts about costs

The cost of producing art or any product or service for that matter consists of two basic types of costs. These costs are called fixed and variable.

Fixed Costs

Fixed costs don’t change whether you produce one piece of art or hundreds. They also can be categorized as overhead. It is important to note that all costs can vary even fixed costs if the time period is long enough. The normal time horizon that is used to identify fixed costs is a year. The amount of fixed costs you apply to your project is generally based on how long the project takes to complete. If the project takes a month to complete then you would apply 1/12 of your annual fixed costs. If the project takes 6 months to complete then you would apply ½ (6/12) of your annual fixed costs to the project and so on.

Some examples of fixed costs:

• Rent and equipment leases
• Loan payments
• Insurance, taxes and maintenance
• Your website and other online fees and expenses
• Utilities, phone, internet, etc.
• Cost of originals or masters
• General advertising or marketing
• Depreciation expenses on equipment
• Labor not associated with any particular product such as administrative salaries

Variable Costs

These are costs which vary by the amount of art or products you make, they are also referred to as direct costs. If you don’t produce anything these costs will be zero unlike your fixed costs that don’t vary with the number of pieces produced. Typically these costs move in a constant way, if you produce two items then your cost will be twice that of producing one item and so on.

Here are some examples of variable costs:

• Direct labor – This is the cost of the labor that actually went into the making of the product
• You will also need to include any payroll taxes or employee benefits
• Materials and supplies
• Sales commissions and distribution costs
• Packaging, shipping charges and postage
• Advertising or marketing directly attributable to the product
• Other components to your projects such as frames, etc.

Putting it all together – Break-Even Analysis

Once you have gathered the necessary information on both your fixed and variable costs for an edition, you can employ a simple yet powerful business tool called a “Break-Even” analysis. The concept is fairly straight forward with the analysis as it tells you how many pieces in an edition you need to sell to cover all of your costs or “break-even”.  Suppose you sell a piece for $10 and the costs you have into the piece (variable costs) are $3 then your profit per piece would be $7.  But wait, the $7 profit per piece only considers the direct or variable costs.  To determine the true profit of the piece we also need to consider our fixed costs or overhead.  The $7 profit goes towards covering these fixed costs and is said to “contribute to fixed costs”.  When all of these fixed costs are covered you reach a breakeven point after which the cumulative $7 profit on each piece sold becomes your true profit.

Of course you will probably want to do more than just break-even.  The Break-even analysis can do much more than just determine your break-even point.  Some of the things it can do are to help you test different scenarios or “what ifs” like:

• If I raise or lower my price, how will this affect my break-even point and the overall profitability of the edition?
• If it costs less or more to produce a piece, how will this affect my break-even point and the overall profitability of the edition?
• If my fixed costs or overhead increase or decrease, how will this affect my break-even point and the overall profitability of the edition?

Click image to download worksheet

A Break-even Analysis example

A break-even works like this: Take your variable costs associated with producing an edition and subtract them from the price at which you will sell the product or project. The amount left over is then applied to covering your fixed costs associated with the edition. The break-even will tell you how many pieces you need to sell in order to cover your fixed costs or break-even. Here is an example:

Selling Price for a Limited Print = $150

Variable Cost for a Limited Print = $10

Contribution to Fixed Costs (Selling Price – Variable Cost) = $140

Fixed Costs Associated With Producing Limited Prints = $2800

Number of Prints Needed to be sold to Break-even (Fixed costs divided by Contribution = $2800/140) = 20

The general formula is Total Fixed Costs per Unit / (Unit Sales Price – Total Variable Cost per Unit)

Experiment with changing your sales price and costs to see what effect they have on your breakeven point. Before too long you will get the hang of it and you will become better at planning your business and your profits!  Use the worksheet to determine the breakeven points of your products and projects.

The bottom line(s)…

The Break-even Analysis can be a powerful tool to help you plan and price an edition and you should take advantage of it.  One of the neat things about this analysis is that you can apply it to other projects or even calculate a break-even for your whole art business.

Here are some resources to help you learn more about break-even analysis:

Download the break-even Analysis Spreadsheet

How to Perform a Break-Even Analysis

Break-even on Wikipedia

Entrepreneur Magazine – Break-even Calculator

Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

Antonio Masi does reasonably well as an artist, exhibiting and selling his paintings around the country, even abroad. If you had gone to the recent “American Masters” exhibition at New York’s Salmagundi Club (October 5-23), you would have seen three of the Garden City, Long Island-based artist’s paintings. That also would have been the only time you might see his work on exhibition in New York City. The problem is, he is a watercolor artist, with work averaging in the “$4,000-12,000 price range, not bad for contemporary watercolors but not high enough for New York City art galleries. “Dealers tell me they don’t want watercolors, because it takes just as long to sell a watercolor as it would an oil painting, and they can sell oils at a higher price,” he said. “When I have a gallery show, I always sell a few, but dealers here tell me that they can sell out a show of my paintings and still not make their rent.” As a result, he works through galleries in California and Connecticut where the rents apparently are a bit lower.

So, for visitors to New York art galleries who want to know why the prices are so high – or for artists who want to exhibit their work in those galleries – part of the blame may lie with the landlord, or the real estate market as a whole.

Rents are high, averaging $100-200 per square foot in Chelsea and $80-120 in the Lower East Side, and a number of galleries – including McKenzie Fine Art, Andrew Edlin, Zach Feuer, Foxy Productions, CRG Gallery, Casey Kaplan and Edward Winkleman – have left the higher rent art zone of Chelsea for the Lower East Side and the uptown Flower District within the past year.

The problem of high rent can be offset by moving where space is less dear, but galleries have few other options for reducing their costs. Payroll, after rent, tends to be the next highest budget item, which isn’t reduced by moving across town, and the usually small staffs can’t be outsourced to Asia. There are many other permanent gallery expenditures, such as the cost of attending art fairs, storage, insurance (health, premises, fine art), crating and shipping, entertainment, advertising and promotion, and none of these costs are lessened by moving.

“Rent is my highest single expense, thirty-three percent of my budget,” said co-owner Jill Weinberg Adams of Chelsea’s Lennon, Weinberg Gallery. Total monthly costs for the gallery generally range from $80,000 to $100,000, and the higher expenses have changed the nature of the gallery. “When we came to Chelsea, you could run a gallery on what you sold from your exhibitions of living emerging artists, but now you can’t. We’ve learned that in order to support those exhibitions, it’s increasingly important to represent a prestigious estate or two and to have sales on the secondary market, because those are more reliable income streams.” She added that “my back room is very important to me.”

There is a similar narrative at the Maxwell Davidson Gallery on West 26th Street, which costs between $50,000 and $80,000 per month to operate and where rent is somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of the monthly budget.

At CRG Gallery, sales at the half-dozen art fairs in which it participates annual subsidize the brick-and-mortar gallery, providing half of its annual earnings, said co-owner Richard Desroche. Reducing the number of art fairs that it attends, which each cost between $50,000 and $100,000 (for booth rentals, shipping, lighting, accommodations, dining, travel, entertainment and sundries), would do more harm than good, since those events have become lifelines for the gallery. Among the other gallery expenses that were off-limits, Desroche said, were storage (five percent of the monthly budget) and insurance (seven-and-a-half percent).

Of course, some unanticipated expenses just pop up for gallery owners. “Artists expect all sorts of financial assistance,” said Helene Winer, co-owner of Chelsea’s Metro Pictures gallery. “When artists want to finance a project, the first place they turn to is their galleries.” She added that “contributing to costs of museum and biennale-type events for artists, which is a relatively new expectation that affects galleries’ ability to keep their artists” are additional expenditures that cannot always be budgeted in advance. “It’s our job to help.”

Reducing overhead helps, but pressure is still on to sell, sell. “I have to sell 50-70 percent of the works in the shows in order to break even,” she said. “If you have one poor-selling show, you feel it for months.” Art prices may seem high to visitors to exhibitions, but discounts of five or 10 percent are more often the rule than not and half the sale price goes to the artist (the gallery commission is considerably less for secondary market consignments). Richard Desroche claimed that, if an art fair costs the gallery $100,000, he needs to sell $250,000 in art just to break even.

In other industries, when there are increases in the cost of doing business one raises the price of goods being sold. United Auto Workers’ contractual pay hikes traditionally are passed on to consumers in the form of higher car prices, for instance. However, if a gallery owner’s landlord doubles the rent, the dealer cannot simply jack up prices for an artist’s work. “You don’t price things related to our costs but relative to where the artist is in his or her career,” said John Thomson, founder and director of Foxy Production. If a dealer pushes prices beyond the market level for an artist, the dealer won’t make his rent, either. An emerging artist cannot be priced like a successful mid-career artist just because a dealer’s costs have risen. Additionally, many artists are represented by more than one gallery, sometimes in different cities, and other dealers all would have to agree to the same price changes. In practical terms, increased costs for rent and anything else tend to be swallowed by the gallery.

It is easy, and perhaps traditional, for artists to blame dealers for their woes, but the high cost of operating a gallery in New York is neither the dealer’s nor the artist’s fault. The pressure to sell moves down the food chain to the artist, whose tenure at a gallery becomes increasingly reliant on regular sales, especially when the gallery needs between half and three-quarters of works in a given exhibition to find buyers in order to break even. “Galleries can only afford to carry X number of artists whose sales don’t cover the cost of their promotions,” said a gallery owner who asked not to be identified. “The operating costs can also begin to impact which new artists you can afford to take on.” There are drawbacks to selling directly to buyers and avoiding the gallery realm — especially the New York City gallery realm — altogether, but artists who are trying to establish or maintain a career might find those drawbacks pleasant by comparison.

By Daniel Grant

Investing in one’s career is often touted as a sound business move, an act of confidence in the future, the cost of doing business, taking responsibility – that kind of talk. But, which career investments actually give you a return on that investment? For artists, most would agree that art school tuition was a vital expense, as are art supplies, a studio rental and the cost of creating a Web site to display and promote their work. Other forms of investment are more debatable, such as publishing a catalogue of your own artwork, hiring a publicist or career coach. (Certainly, some artists claim these expenditures are a major part of their success.)

Glendale, Arizona artist Bill Mittag “can’t determine the effectiveness of advertising,” but he still spends $6,000 or so per year on ads in such publications as Art of the West and Western Art Collector. “Every time I place an ad, the number of hits on my Web site picks up significantly.” Even more telling, “when a gallery has a show and puts a work of mine in the ad, I notice that every time that work sells.”

Still, Mittag is not confident that $6,000 or so he spends does much good – “no one has called me up to say, ‘I want that work I saw in your ad,’” – but it is a cost of doing business, of investing in his career, and he worries that not advertising would make things worse.

Placing ads is more associated with the design fields, such as illustration, than with fine art. Patricia McKiernan, executive director of the Graphic Artists Guild, noted that most of the artists in the Guild establish an advertising and promotion budget of between 10 and 30 percent of their gross income, and much of that advertising is in the design field print and online directories that prospective employers use. That sounds like a lot of money, but “if you earn $100,000 one year and decide to save that money instead of spending 10-30 percent on advertising, you won’t make $100,000 again.”

There is no rule-of-thumb sense of the percentage of one’s income that should be reinvested into advertising in the fine arts, but the concept of buying ads as a regular type of promotion is not foreign to some artists. “If I don’t advertise, how will people ever hear of me,” said artist Carl Borgia of Boynton Beach, Florida, a retired accounting professor at Florida Atlantic University, who spends $8,000-10,000 per year on ads in such publications as ARTnews, Modern Painters and Florida Design Magazine. “I have been pursuing art as a business for 10 years and applying the entrepreneurial skills that I have been teaching to my art.” Of those three publications, it has been the non-art one, Florida Design Magazine, that has resulted in the best results, which has included some sales and some requests to appear in shows at art galleries and art fairs.

That makes sense to Caroll Michels, an artist career coach in Sarasota, Florida, who recommends to her clients that they not “buy display ads in art magazines or on their websites. For the most part, the majority of art magazine readers are other artists, who are not in the market for buying other artists artwork. If you decide to purchase advertising space, select upscale consumer and interior design publications.” She noted that one of her clients had invested inherited money in “four full-page color display ads that ran for four months in Art in America. She said that the only response she received was from other artists who thought she was a gallery.”

Belief in advertising often leads to beliefs about how to advertise. Anatoly Dverin, a painter in Plainville, Massachusetts, stated that he only buys full-page ads, because “I don’t want to share the page with another artist; it creates competition. The other artist may use, I don’t know, some combination of red and blue that kills the balance of color in my painting.”

The purpose and nature of advertising is a subject on which there is considerable disagreement, although there is one point on which everyone agrees: One needs to think of advertising as a long-term, rather than a one-shot, effort. To develop name and artistic recognition, the same or similar images must be present in ads that follow one magazine issue after another. Many artists split the costs of advertising with their galleries in advance of an exhibition, and some galleries carry the entire expense, but it is rare for a gallery to pay in full or in part to advertise an artist when there isn’t a show. If the concept is to keep one’s name and images before the public on an ongoing basis, one-shot ads are not likely to produce the desired results. Too, galleries generally have a local audience, and the advertisements they place are likely to be in local or regional publications rather than national ones.

“Advertising, especially advertising with illustrations, effects attendance, not so much sales,” said Bridget Moore, president of New York’s DC Moore Gallery. Other dealers report that ads with reproductions result in a number of telephone inquiries as to price and the availability of works, which also do not quickly translate into sales.

Yet another reason to place ads is purely psychological, according to Edward De Luca, director of DC Moore Gallery, since these notices “massage an artist’s ego,” that is, they let artists know that money is being spent on them and that, in turn, makes artists feel better about their relationship with the gallery. “Artists want to see their names in print and their work being advertised, and they ask us to have ads run in certain magazines.”

Department store owner John Wanamaker once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” It isn’t any easier for artists or art dealers to know what works and what doesn’t. Asking previously unknown buyers how they heard of you or, on a higher tech level, purchasing software to learn if an email announcement has been opened are among the ways to discover what has had any effect. Like much else in an artist’s career, there is a lot of trial and a lot of error.

By Daniel Grant

Handshake between Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

Testimonials and referrals can be powerful tools to help you build your brand and sell more art.  A testimonial is either a written, verbal or video statement from somebody about the virtues of you and/or your art. Testimonials can take the forms of a letter, an online post, or a review. Today we are seeing testimonials in the online world in such services as Yelp as well as the many sites such as Amazon that allow visitors to post comments and reviews. For many companies these online reviews may mean quite a lot for their brand and their success.

A referral is different than a lead. A referral is someone who is expecting your call and they have been briefed on what you offer and there is a potential to do business. A lead is merely a mention of somebody who “might” be interested in your art. Clearly a referral is much more powerful than a lead.

There are many successful artists and businesses where testimonials and referrals make up a large part of their marketing efforts. These are very powerful tools that you should consider using.

Testimonials

Testimonials are much more powerful than an advertisement because of the fact that they are not paid for which distinguishes them from a paid endorsement.

Many years ago when I was starting out as a management consultant I had the pleasure to meet one of the top management consultants in the nation. He was kind enough to share with me some of the secrets that he used to get new clients.

He said to me, “Here is the best tool I have for getting new clients” as he produced a 3” thick three ring binder. Inside the binder were dozens and dozens of testimonial letters from his past clients saying how much he helped them out, his level of expertise and their willingness to recommend him and his services.

I asked the consultant how he got all of these letters. His answer was simple. “I asked for them, before I accept a consulting engagement I tell the client that if I do a good job and provide the agreed upon services that I expect a letter of recommendation at the end of the project”

When the consultant would meet with a prospect and it was determined that there was a fit, he would bring out the binder with the letters and show them to the prospect – more often than not he would make a sale and eventually add another page to the book.

You can use this technique for your art business! Ask your satisfied clients or others in your industry who know you well to write a testimonial about you and your work. Don’t be surprised if some agree but will ask you to write the testimonial which they will produce on their letterhead and then sign – go ahead and do it! Once you have your testimonial letters be sure to incorporate them into you sales presentations, marketing materials and don’t forget you online presence.

If you keep doing this, soon you will have your own binder with letters of recommendation to use in your next sales presentation.

Town Crier Lanfant de Metz Ausrufer und Kinder

 

Referrals

It is important that you understand the difference between a referral and a lead. A referral is someone who is expecting your call and they have been briefed on what you offer and there is a potential to do business. A lead is a mention of somebody who “might” be interested in your art.

You should make referrals an integral part of your overall sales and marketing strategy. Many successful businesses and salespeople develop the bulk of their new business from referrals and you can too. Building a successful referral network will require continued effort on your part and will not happen overnight; although there are several things you can do to speed this process up.

Here are some tips on how to generate referrals for your art business:

• According to Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals – “all things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.” The key idea here is to get to “know” people. You don’t get to know people by pitching them on you and your art. You get to know people by listening and finding out “their” story and then sharing your story with them.
• Use your in person and social networks to let people know what you are up to and take an interest in what they are doing.
• Follow up with your contacts and customers and ask them for a referral – don’t be shy.
• It’s a two way street, ask others what you can do to help them and how you can refer business to them.
• Tell others what you are looking for and make it easy for them to refer people to you. If they can’t figure out what you do then how can they tell someone else?
• Follow through on referrals and be sure to thank the person who gave you the referral.
• Position yourself as an expert or the “only solution” to a problem or need.
• After making a sale ask for a referral, “Do you know of others who would appreciate the kind of art I produce?
• You may want to consider offering some type of reward for a referral. You could offer a reward to the person generating the referral, to the person being referred or both.

The Bottom Line(s)…

Testimonials and referrals can make a big impact on your business. They will help you generate more prospects and close more sales, so make these tools a part of your marketing and sales efforts.  In order to make testimonials and referrals work for you, make sure that you have very satisfied customers, you provide exceptional customer service and the customer’s buying experience is something that they want to tell others about.

Here are some resources to help you learn more about referrals and testimonials:

Bob Burg – Endless Referrals

7 Sure-Fire Ways to Build Your Referral Business

7 Creative Ways to Get Customer Testimonials

Ten ways to get the most out of customer testimonials

One of the more intangible aspects of these tools is that they will let you know you are on the right track with your art and that people appreciate your work. In some respects the fact that people like what you do and are willing to tell others may be as valuable as the money you take to the bank.  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

Art critic and historian Irving Sandler doesn’t just write about art, he has a collection of dozens of two- and three-dimensional works by noted artists of the postwar era. For instance, there is a large-scale Joan Mitchell painting in his living room that he has pledged to donate to the Brooklyn Museum upon his death. However, he said, “I’m not a collector,” meaning that what he owns he didn’t buy. These works were gifts from artists he reviewed favorably, a few were wedding gifts. The artists had become his friends. There was “no quid pro quo, so no ethical problem, because the gifts were given after a review was published and not in order to influence what I was going to write.”

Friendships are important for artists, as personal relationships with the right people may lead to recommendations and tips to collectors, curators and dealers, perhaps resulting in commissions, gallery representation, invitations to exhibits and sales. Nothing so unusual about this: In the business world, it is called “networking.” What may distinguish friendships between artists and art writers from relationships in other fields is the practice of gift-giving.

“I’ve done it. I think it is pretty common to give artworks to writers,” said Elyn Zimmerman, a New York City sculptor and photographer. “There are a number of artists I know who make drawings that they keep in a desk drawer for just this purpose. The drawings aren’t overly involved but are identifiable as their work.” This practice may extend beyond just artists, according to Phyllis Tuchman, a critic and curator, as well as a former president of the U.S. chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, who claimed that “some galleries give small works by artists to critics.” Thanks for the kind words in Art in America.

The problem – if you see it as a problem and many art writers do not – is that the gift-giving is all one-way. Art critics don’t give away essays and reviews but expect to be paid, and if they write favorably about an artist, or even if they don’t, they simply are doing their job. An artist’s job is to create objects to sell, but they also appear to need to make things in order to ensure good will. “Is it quid pro quo? I’ll write a good review of your show if you give me a painting? I don’t really think so,” said Eleanor Heartney (“I’ve been given gifts of art from artists who were friends”), a critic and former president of the U.S. chapter of the International Association of Art. “It may be implied that the critic should write about the artist again and that the artist is buying favors for the future.”

Right and wrong on the issue of accepting gifts of artwork tend to be personal issues for art writers rather than a generally accepted practice. Levin noted that The Village Voice, for which she regularly wrote reviews at one point, “had a rule against accepting things,” but different publications operate with different or no rules. The International Association of Art Critics has no policy regarding the ethics of receiving gifts. At a board meeting, Tuchman said, “someone brought up the issue, and I said to that person, ‘You’ve never gotten any gifts.’”

Levin did not recall any discussion of the proprieties of accepting gifts from artists when she was president of the art critics association. “We were more concerned with the proposal that gallery owners might become members of the association.” The drawback to galleries as members, she explained, is that they might seek to influence critics in one way or another.

Some may think that artists’ gifts are a perquisite of the job. John Perrault stated that when he began writing for ARTnews in 1963, the magazine paid $4 per review and $150 for a feature length article, “so everyone knew critics were underpaid. And if you were also a poet, like myself, you were clearly starving.” (Perhaps one of those grateful artists might have given him a sandwich instead of an artwork.) Dore Ashton, an art critic, historian and curator, also complained about the low rates of payment. “When you think of what writers are paid, it’s almost for free. I was a working mother; I had to pay school fees and that sort of thing.” One of the gifts she received some decades ago was a large sculpture (“it probably weighs 500 tons”) by Isamu Noguchi, whom she called a family friend. “I gave my daughter the Noguchi. It’s for her future.”

Art critics aren’t the only ones who might justify receiving gifts for doing their jobs because of how poorly they are paid. In his 1952 “Checkers Speech,” which sought to explain why he took $18,000 for a group of supporters, then vice presidential nominee Richard Nixon claimed that his then current job as a California senator was inadequately compensated: “Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates. First of all, the Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip, that is, for himself, and his family between his home and Washington D.C.” That speech, now proverbial as an effort to talk one’s way out of an ethical jam, was a success at the time. The context has changed but perhaps not the sentiment.

Besides having drawings or prints kept in a drawer in a desk, some sculptors cast unlimited editions of small pieces that may be given as presents or donated to a charity benefit auction. Minimalist artist Robert Mangold creates a Christmas-timed print edition every year to send out to friends and supporters, as did Sol Lewitt during his lifetime, according to Lewitt’s business manager, Susanna Singer. “It is the part of the art world that operates on a handshake instead of a contract,” Zimmerman said.  For artists, the question may be whether or not giving gifts to art writers and curators is valuable for their careers. Zimmerman said that “my experience of giving things is that it hasn’t really helped me,” while Tuchman called it “a good career move.” Still, the artist continues to have give-away art on hand and the critic continues to have her hand out.

By Daniel Grant

Favor pools, mutual aid, scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours – we all get the idea of reciprocity. However, what about referral fees? If someone mentions to someone else, “I know an artist whose work you might like,” should that person receive a payment if a sale takes place? Referral fees are customary in the real estate field, where tips to brokers range from one to three percent of the sale price, or 20-30 percent of the agent’s commission. In most states, it is illegal to pay a referral fee to an unlicensed realtor, but the high end of the art trade has middlemen (tipsters, runners, a dealer who knows somebody) who may receive a payment or percentage of a sale. It would seem, in the age of the Internet, where everybody can be found, that there might be less of a need for an artist to pay a tipster for supplying information to a prospective buyer, but tell that to the millions of artists whose Web sites sit unvisited. An introduction, a mention, a referral is always welcome.

Kelly O’Neill, a portrait artist in Brentwood, Tennessee, relies on repeat business and referrals – usually of the word-of-mouth sort – from clients who recommend her to their friends and family members. However, the artist has gone one step further, systematizing the process of mentioning her name to others, offering between $100 and $350 – payable by check or through PayPal – for those who refer clients to her through social media or personal contact. (“We ask how each new client hears about her, so you’ll always get credit!” her Web site proclaims.)

“Fees motivate people to tell people about my work,” she said, noting that her friends have been turned into marketers. “It’s worth it to me not to have to market my work.”

Another artist who has tried the same is Milwaukee artist Anthony Sell, who offers a 15 percent referral fee after a completed sale and full payment. The purchased artwork must be “commissioned portraits, landscapes and other fine art projects” – prints don’t count. As with O’Neill, someone making a referral to a prospective buyer must do so before Sell and the buyer make contact for the first time in order to be eligible for the fee. “If the referrer cannot personally introduce the referred patron or client, they must instruct the referred patron or client to mention the referrer at the time of contact,” according to the artist’s Web site.

A lot of conditions on receiving referral fees, and “I have yet to have anyone take me up on it,” Sell said, adding that “much of my marketing involves my website and social media, specifically Facebook and Google+ at the moment.”

Referrals still are quite common in the art world; paying for them not so much. When looking for gallery representation, artists regularly rely on other artists, critics and dealers to recommend their work to gallery owners. Dealers value that, because they can rely on something other than just their own eyes to evaluate an artist’s work. Sometimes, a gallery owner may be enthusiastic about an artist’s work but want to know personal qualities about the artist before taking him or her on: Is the artist productive (creating enough work for exhibitions every two or three years)? Is the artist mature and reliable (understanding a business relationship without whining and causing disruptions)? Is the artist personable (able and willing to converse with collectors)? Has the artist worked with galleries in the past? The people from whom a dealer takes recommendations seriously also know whether or not the new artist fits into the gallery’s aesthetic and might be temperamentally compatible with the gallery director. Certainly, a recommendation may convince a busy gallery owner to take time out to actually look at an artist’s work—an experience artists who simply send in materials to dealers cold cannot often claim—but other factors need to be in place before a relationship between an artist and a dealer will begin to form. The artist’s work needs to be appropriate for the gallery (same style, size, medium and price range), and the gallery owner has to personally like the work; the artist should have some exhibition history, as well as a track record of sales, and the artist and gallery owner need to be able to get along.

Sometimes (probably more than half of the time), absolutely nothing comes of an introduction. Janet Fish noted that painters Chuck Close and Alex Katz made recommendations to dealers on her behalf. She even called one of her collectors to ask that person to contact a particular gallery about her work. “It was encouraging to me that people were trying to help me, but that didn’t mean I got anything from it. It’s not the ticket.” Calling the process of going round to galleries “a crap shoot,” she said that “some people come off the street and show work that the dealer likes right away. On the other hand, someone may say he’ll make a recommendation for an artist, but then this so-called friend ends up bad-mouthing the artist to the dealer. You never know.” Once, she made a recommendation for an artist to her own dealer and, when the artist came into the gallery to show the dealer his work, “the artist was treated horribly. I thought that was discourteous to the artist and to me. I was later to find out that this dealer was mean to a lot of people, and that was a contributing factor to my leaving that gallery for another dealer.”

The myth of the artist that we have all imbibed from early on is the solitary figure, alone and only discovered by happenstance. In fact, the art world is run on a who-you-know basis, where the chance for success relies on personal connections, requring artists to be part of a community. The job of the artist, as painter Harriet Shorr said, is to make art and make friends. It is those friends who will help make that art known to the world.

By Daniel Grant

Every business is challenged with making decisions and your art business is no different. Some of the decisions you make may be creative while others are more business related. More often than not these decisions will have financial implications that will affect your overall profitability.

In making most business decisions you will be faced with choosing among various alternatives. How do you choose the best? In this article I will take a look at a tool that will help you choose among various alternatives called Return on Investment (ROI). You don’t need a finance degree to understand Return on Investment, it’s just a matter of understanding a basic concept and applying some simple math.

One of the questions that successful business owners frequently ask themselves is, “Was it worth it to do …., or should I spend X dollars on…” Business is a lot of trial and error to find out what works and what doesn’t – not everything you do will be successful. Many successful entrepreneurs have said that success was the result of a hundreds (or even thousands) of failures. Your art business is no exception.

In business you are faced with many choices of how to spend your time and your money – even doing nothing is a choice! Yes, doing nothing is a choice. As you try different approaches or make different business expenditures it is important to measure their return on your investment. You may measure the return on investment of a past investment or you may estimate the return on investment for a proposed investment or change in your business.

How you can use Return on Investment in your art business

Not every financial business decision requires using a Return on Investment analysis but it should be carefully considered when making major investments or changes in your art business.

Some investments / activities where you should measure the return on investment include:

• Trying a new artistic approach or body of work that will require additional investment tools, supplies and possibly even new facilities
• Testing a new festival or art venue to determine which is most profitable
• Trying a new marketing campaign or approach
• Determining whether to produce prints in-house or have an outside supplier produce them (this is called a make or buy decision)
• Buying a new machine or tools of your art business
• Trying new processes or materials to reduce your costs or improve quality
• Opening a new retail location, studio or other facility
• Finding out which alternatives will give you the best return on your money
• Deciding to invest spare cash in your art business or putting it in a bank
• Measuring social media (yes it can be done, sort of…)
• Just about any major activity or proposed change where you spend your time and/or money!

How is Return on Investment stated?

• Return on investment is stated in terms of a percentage. Here are some examples:
• The festival in Santa Fe returned 200%.
• The festival in my downtown area returned 50%.
• Our investment to produce limited prints returned 5000%.
• Our old direct mail campaign returned 10% on funds and time invested.
• Our new direct mail campaign with a different list and message returned 15%.
• The new machine we bought has returned 40% in time savings and rejected pieces.
• Our social media efforts returned 1000% in new business.
• I invested our cash in a money market fund and it returned 2%.
• Adding two more assistants had a negative return of 20% (-20%) because of additional training time and broken pieces.

Calculating Return on Investment

The general formula for calculating Return on Investment (ROI) is:

An example of using ROI in an art business decision

Suppose you participated in two art festivals and you want to decide which one performed better.  Here is how you do it!

From the above example you can see that each dollar invested in Festival 1 yielded a return of $.67 and Festival 2 yielded a return of $.33 for each dollar invested. From an ROI standpoint, Festival 1 is clearly the place to put your money.

Determining the cost and gains of an investment

The cost of investment should be fairly easy to determine if you keep good records and have a good accounting system. It is important to include all of the costs associated with an investment like direct costs such as labor and materials as well as indirect costs such as overhead.

In the world of accounting, calculating the gain from investment is usually a savings in labor and material costs, reduced operating expenses and increases in sales/profit. These types of savings are tangible in that they can easily be measured. Some benefits from an investment may not be so easily measured in dollar terms but none the less still have a value that you may want to consider. Some examples of benefits that have value now and in the future include:

• The new machine didn’t really save me any time but I don’t lay awake at nights wondering if the old machine will finally give up tomorrow.
• The new décor of our gallery hasn’t had an immediate effect on our sales but we notice our customers really like it and they are telling their friends.
• Social media efforts that have increased the visits to my website and exposed my art to a worldwide audience.
• The public relations program that resulted in a cover article about my gallery in a major art publication.

As you can see, putting a dollar figure on sleeping well at night or determining the value of a cover story in a major magazine probably won’t come from your accounting system, but these things do have value! If you can quantify these type of intangible values then put them into your ROI calculations. In many cases these intangible benefits may not be realized until well into the future at which point they can probably be quantified.

The bottom line(s)…

Use the return on investment (ROI) analysis to help you choose among various investment alternatives. You will constantly be faced with choices of how and what to spend your money on in your art business. If an investment isn’t working then you should take corrective action. If an investment is working then you should consider similar investments until they become less effective. One way to benchmark your investments is to compare your ROI with taking the same funds and putting them in the bank. If your investment doesn’t return more than a riskless return like a bank then you should give this choice some serious consideration.

Here are a few links if you would like to explore ROI further and see how others are using this powerful tool.

Return on Investment ROI Explained

One Simple Metric You Need to Determine Marketing ROI

Understanding the New ROI of Marketing

Understanding and applying the ROI concept is key to building a profitable art business.  If you need help with calculating ROI your accountant should be able to help you out.  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

Some years ago, a collector took his Scott Burton print to a framer, where it was destroyed in a fire. The framer’s insurance took care of the cost of the print, but the collector still wanted the image; fortunately for him, the artist, who self-publishes reproductions of his paintings as limited edition prints, had another print on hand from the edition to sell. However, the question arose, What should Burton charge for the replacement print? Full price? A discount for being an avid customer? A higher price because there are now fewer prints left in the edition?

There is no industry standard answer: Both Mill Pond Press and Greenwich Workshop print extras, known as “overages,” of their editions specifically as replacements, and they sell them at substantial discounts – generally, the cost of printing, plus shipping. (These publishers claim that extras are destroyed within a period of months, in order to insure the integrity of the limited edition number, and that they require some proof of print’s destruction or damage, usually having the entire print or the corner with the signature and number sent back to them before they send out a replacement.) The artists whose works they print have also signed these replacements, and the publisher will append the number in the edition that the piece is replacing.

The publishers of print editions produce extras additionally to make up for potential defective prints, such as those with drying spots or faulty inks. The speed of the printing presses, unlike prints that are hand-pulled, make it impossible to cull out errors during production. After all the prints are examined, the faulty ones are removed and destroyed. (It is a good idea for artists to actually watch or otherwise verify the destruction of extras and misprints, as an occasional publisher has put these up for sale. That has also happened with Scott Burton, who has adopted the practice of issuing certificates of authenticity for all the prints he approves.)

Other print publishers, and some individual artists, have taken an opposite approach, maintaining a no-replacement policy that requires collectors to purchase the same work at the same or even higher price, if works from the edition are still available. “These are original prints, one-of-a-kind, and can’t be replaced,” said Carl Hoffner, a printmaker in Fayetteville, New York, and Oyster Bay, New York painter Barbara Ernst Prey stated that if one of the offset prints in a limited edition is damaged or destroyed, even in transit, the edition simply loses that number. Randy Eggenberger, president of Wild Wings, a publisher of wildlife art prints, noted that the print publishing industry is slowing moving away from the practice of making replacements available. “People need to take some responsibility. There’s no other product in American that you can get a replacement at cost if you damage it.” He added that customers are advised to have their work insured.”

Prices for the remaining works in an edition, especially when it is a small edition, often go up, and the higher amounts reflect their increasing scarcity; a replacement print is likely to come at that latter point of an edition, making it more expensive. “We have a stepped approach to sales,” said Tim Rooney, curator at Tandem Press in Madison, Wisconsin whose edition sizes are typically 30 with an average per print price of $1,500. “We sell the first 10 at one price, then bump it up, then sell another 10 and bump it up again.” This being the art world, no policies are hard and fast. Rooney noted that Tandem Press has discounts of differing amounts for individual collectors, corporations, museums, art consultants and commercial art galleries. Even late in an edition, Rooney “might” make a replacement print available “at a collector’s discount, to cushion the blow.”

Individual artists are just as likely to make or change policies on the fly. “If I have a whole glut of them, I may offer a discount, up to 20 percent for long-time collectors,” said printmaker Tim Sheesley of Oneonta, New York. “If I only have one or two left, I’ll charge a higher price. It all depends on my mood and the relationship with the collector.” When the supply of prints has been exhausted, artists may also sell their Artist Proofs, which are usually more costly (“They’re my retirement plan,” Hoffner said).

Scott Burton’s decision on pricing was somewhere in the middle ground between a cost of printing and a higher than original price. With an edition size of 35 for a print reproduction of one of his paintings, the prices of works in the edition had increased since the collector had first purchased it, but Burton charged only the old price, a de facto discount, according to the artist’s business manager, Alan Smith.

Car dealers don’t give you another car if you total it after leaving the lot — that is why drivers have automobile insurance. Art collectors take out fine art insurance exists in the event that artwork is damaged or destroyed, but that tends to be for quite high-end objects, and most prints aren’t at the level of requiring policy coverage. Artists who sell their own prints face a dilemma when a buyer wants a replacement for a print that was torn after it fell off the wall (or whatever happened to it), provide a replacement for free, at a reduced cost or at full price. Artists want their buyers to stay their buyers, which might lead them as a good will gesture to offer a piece for less than market value, but they may also worry that a buyer claiming a print was damaged wants a second one at a bargain. They may also be fearful that other buyers will ask for “replacements” at a reduced price if word gets around. As with everything else in the art trade, there aren’t hard and fast rules, only the need for artists to decide on a policy and stick with it for everyone.

By Daniel Grant

From an idea and a plan came the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park London 1854

Why do I need a business plan?

The main and best reason to develop a business plan is so that you have a blueprint to run and grow your business. Imagine trying to build a house without plan. If you are starting a new art business, a plan will help you organize your thoughts and help you tackle the challenges faced by startup businesses. If your art business is established a plan will help you in building a great team and allow you to focus on your most pressing problems, opportunities and initiatives.

A business plan will also be required if you are seeking some type of financing either from a bank or investors. Your plan will show what you intend to accomplish, how you will do it, how much money will be required and how you will pay back the money. More often than not a business will prepare a plan with the sole purpose of getting financing. Your plan is an important tool in the success of your business and should be much more than just a document to raise money.

One of the most often overlooked benefits of a business plan is that it forces you to think about your business in new ways! The skills you develop in creating a business plan are universal and transferable to businesses of any kind or size. Perhaps one of the most important benefits of preparing a business plan is that you will start to think strategically, look at the big picture and develop a critical way of thinking about your business’ future.

Just like an architect needs a plan to turn an idea into reality you need a plan for success in your art business. The Crystal Palace plan by Sir Joseph Paxton

 

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a formal road map (formal in the sense that you should write it down) where you state the goals, objectives and expected results for your art business. You plan can be very long and detailed or it can be just a few pages – it is really up to you to decide what your art business requires. Developing your business plan will make you think about all of the things that affect your art business and what you intend to do to make your art business a success.

Your business plan can be created an internal audience such as yourself and your team and for external audiences such as your bank or investors. You should seriously consider including both audiences in developing the plan for your art business.

The basic questions of business planning

The overall idea behind business planning is really very simple if you consider the following four questions:

1. Where are we now?

This part of your plan is called a Situation Analysis in that you are trying to get a feel of where you are today and to identify the internal and external factors that affect your business. In answering this question you will be looking at your own strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the marketplace and analyzing your competition.

2.Where are we going?

The answer to this question will be wrapped up in your overall mission or vision for your art business as well as the goals and objectives you have developed. You should develop goals for the various business functions such as marketing, finance, creative direction, production and operations, management and organization and your studio and facilities.

3. How are we going to get there?

Once your overall goals and objectives have been defined it’s time to develop strategies and the steps required to achieve them. Strategies are generally broad and need to be further broken down into the day to day activities or steps that are needed to accomplish a particular strategy. These steps are commonly called tactics, action plans or action steps. No matter what you call them these are the things that you will do to make your overall mission and goals a reality.

4. How will we know when we have arrived?

An important part of the planning process is to track and measure your progress and take corrective action as needed as you move towards accomplishing your goals. This is an ongoing activity that ranges from analyzing your monthly financial statements to reviewing detailed project plans. How do you measure success?

Reasons to create a business plan:

There are a lot of reasons to create a business plan and the best reason is that it will help you build and run a successful art business. Some of the reasons to create a business plan include:

• You are starting a new art or creative business
• You want to improve the profitability, performance and growth of your existing art business
• You are seeking financing from a lender or investor
• You want to get the members of your team to work better together and to share a common mission and vision
• You want to learn more about business and become a more effective manager and leader
• You want to learn to think strategically and anticipate changes and opportunities rather than react to them

How often should I plan?

It is a good idea to prepare or update your plan at least once a year. Make the planning process a part of your normal business activities. Preparing your plan and monitoring it are two different things. You should monitor your plan on a continuous basis to make sure that you are on track and that you are accomplishing the goals that you have set for your business. If you change the overall direction of your art business or add new employees or partners then reviewing your plan is probably in order.

How far should I plan into the future?

Your business plan can be very long term (5-10 years), medium term (1-3 years) or very short term (the next year). Whatever the term of your plan, it is important that your short term plans contribute to achieving your long term goals. A good planning horizon for your art business is the next 1-3 years. Remember the long run is made up of a lot of “short runs”.

From an idea and a plan came the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park London 1854

Where should I plan?

It is unlikely that you will be able to do a proper job of creating your plan in one session. It may take several days in a row or evolve over several weeks or months. When you start to build your plan choose a location that will free you of day to day interruptions and allow you to concentrate on the task at hand. Pick a location that inspires creativity.

The bottom line(s)…

If you are starting a new art business or your business is established you need to develop some sort of business plan – if you don’t you are seriously handicapping your chances for success. The business plan process will get you thinking in a different way to be on the lookout for new opportunities and anticipate change rather than react to it. All great businesses are founded with a clear vision of where they are going and a plan of how they are going to get there – something well within your reach!

By Neil McKenzie

Here are some online resources for building a business plan:

Create Your Business Plan – US Small Business Administration

Business Plans: A Step-by-Step Guide (Business Planning Articles and Tools) – Entrepreneur Magazine

SBDC Net (Small Business Development Center Net) – Business Planning Articles and Resources

Muestra en Martorell Art + People – montaje, 2012.

Ya de por sí, cuando uno hace referencia a un artista, el imaginario social suele encasillarlo en un tipo de personalidad, al menos, distinta al resto de los mortales. Quizás una persona con una sensibilidad extrema y con un temperamento que puede oscilar entre la absoluta euforia o la depresión del encierro creativo. A Dios gracias, es solamente el imaginario social el que opera porque nada más lejos de la realidad. Sí bien no se puede negar que hay algo del orden de lo racional y lo sensible que en el artista se articula de una forma diferente y que permite poner en obras una voz inherente que muchas veces hasta él mismo desconoce, no es por eso menos “ser humano” que los demás. Y el artista muchas veces alimenta estas fantasías construyendo un discurso que de alguna forma lo legitima ante la mirada del espectador. Esto tiene mucho que ver con la posibilidad de aislarse en su trabajo, de cortar lazos por un tiempo con “la realidad” para poder pintar, sacar fotos, trabajar en el taller, hacer obras site-specific en medio de la nada, es decir: su hacer justificaría –y hasta estaría bien visto- su apatía social.

Muestra en Martorell Art + People, montaje 2012.

 

Me pasó en los años de trabajo con tantos artistas, conociendo sus talleres, su entorno de trabajo, sus amigos y sus obras, ir notando que no todas los caminos del arte se transitaban de la misma forma en cuanto a la práctica y la ceremonia del trabajo. Escribir sobre escultura me hizo vincularme con una enorme cantidad de artistas con una estética disímil y hasta antagónica. Sin embargo fue con enorme sorpresa que he experimentado situaciones donde dos o más escultores, que no comparten objetivos ni criterios estéticos, sí compartían una suerte de camaradería y apoyo mutuo difícil de encontrar en otras “ramas” de las artes.  Y por supuesto, no voy a caer aquí en la simpleza de caracterizar cómo es cada artista según su especificidad de trabajo; todos son/somos diferentes y no sabría cómo hacerlo. Pero hay algo en el escultor que hace que se vincule con los pares de una forma solidaria y con la observación en el tiempo, creo que tiene mucho que ver con la condición de tener que poner en cuerpo–literalmente- al trabajar en la obra sumado a que muchos de los materiales que trabajan requiere delegar parte de su tarea creativa cuando se llega a determinadas trabas técnicas. Siempre hay un objeto que media: un pincel, un cincel, una cámara; pero el escultor –y estoy pensando en escultores que trabajan formatos monumentales y aquellos que manipulan materiales que necesitan como condición,  la intervención de la mano de terceros (por ejemplo expertos en el vaciado en bronce, soplado del vidrio, corte de piedras, ayudantes, por nombrar algunos)-  tiene una tendencia a incorporar la experiencia del trabajo con el otro, de una forma orgánica: necesitar al otro y esto no se convierte necesariamente en un problema.

Muestra en Martorell Art + People, montaje 2012.

 

El trabajo en el encierro absoluto desde donde nace la pieza de cero y ve la luz sin mirada externa mediadora, es algo mucho menos común en estas condiciones, a menos que hagamos referencia a obras de formato chico y materiales “accesibles” al trabajo solitario. Cada vez pareciera haber más, con el auge de las instalaciones, escultores que trabajan a una escala donde las obras suelen ser pocas, el tiempo de trabajo muy extenso y las manos que intervienen serían varias bajo la voz de mando del artista. Como curadora, me tocó trabajar en muestras donde la propuesta estética era muy variada: La muestra “2012” que hicimos en el espacio Martorell Art + People con los escultores Hernán Dompé, Manuel De Francesco, Sofia Donovan, Ana Borzone y Pablo Dompé, necesitó de muchas manos solidarias para llevarse a cabo. Y no me refiero solamente al transporte de obras en hierro, madera o cemento, enormes y pesadas sino también a la asistencia entre las partes para colaborar en un mejor montaje, en hacer lucir la obra del otro, en asistir en la enseñanza –así como lo digo- de una determinada técnica de trabajo para que las obras tengan el acabado buscado, y por supuesto, el poner el cuerpo trabajando in situ por horas. Además, para aquellos que tienen que dejar parte del trabajo en su obra en manos de otro,  se suma una enorme cuota de paciencia que el escultor debe aprender a administrar y la confianza en que sus “instrucciones” van a ser atendidas. Cierro con una anécdota de colaboración popular, ya no solamente entre artistas sino cómo una comunidad se integra a la experiencia creativa con fines -en este caso- solidarios.

Paulina Webb-Bienal de Chaco 2014 obra Reflejos liberados-Intervencion sobre el Rio Negro de Resistencia

 

Me cuenta una experiencia la escultora Paulina Webb: “Reflejos liberados”, si bien nace como un proyecto individual necesité de la participación colectiva donde colaboraron los miembros de la comunidad de manera significativa y, fundamentalmente, la Fundación Urunday en gestión. Esta intervención efímera, que duro días, fue una obra acuática realizada en el marco de la Bienal de Chaco 2014 sobre el Rio Negro.  Ha sido elaborada con 2000 botellas de plástico descartables, más de 4000 metros de tanza, y aproximadamente 8000 ganchos de pesca. Midió aproximadamente 48 metros por 12 metros. Recibí la ayuda de la sociedad, fundaciones y empresas para la recolección de los envases. Fue importante la creación del equipo de trabajo donde participaron una escultora de Resistencia, Gabriela Farías Nichi, y cinco alumnos de la Escuela de Bellas Artes de Resistencia, donde alcanzamos todo un ritmo de trabajo parejo y solidario. En el instante en que la obra fue colocada en el agua todos quisieron colaborar. Todo Urunday, con cargos o sin el, pisaron tierra mojada y agua para que las botellas floten. Conmovedor fue comprobar el compromiso de todos en la concreción de la obra y el apoyo de la comunidad en el momento de hacerlo. Quiero destacar el trabajo solidario de los miembros de la Sociedad de Escultores de Resistencia, que siendo artistas de prestigio en el ámbito escultórico de simposios, son voluntarios y cooperan de manera desinteresada con los escultores invitados, dejando su tiempo personal, por un acto de solidaridad con el otro”.

Maria Carolina Baulo

“I once was seriously considering taking on a young artist who sent me follow-up material claiming to have shown at the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney and other major museums,” said Louis Newman, director of New York’s David Findlay Jr. gallery. “When I called to express my astonishment that he did not tell me to begin with about these impressive credentials, he revealed that he actually never showed in these museums but at them,” such as on the steps of the Metropolitan, where he would set up a display of his work for tourists, visitors and other passers-by. Newman added that “needless to say,” this artist was “out the door as far as we were concerned.”

What should we call this? Fib, puffery, white lie, misinformation, half-truth, fairy tale, or just outright lie? It probably doesn’t matter, as a prospective dealer lost confidence that he ever could trust this artist to be truthful. Perhaps, the moral of this story is that you should always assume a worst-case scenario if you are ever caught not telling the truth.

Certainly, there are a lot of things that you might be reluctant to tell the truth about that don’t seem so terrible. For instance, one’s age. “I have had a few CVs cross my desk without a birth year or educational dates, although the exhibition history would suggest they’ve been around a few decades, so I imagine they were trying to disguise or at least not focus on their age,” said Manhattan gallery owner Edward Winkleman. Actually misrepresenting one’s age, however, might make him suspicious of what else isn’t quite the case.

It may be embarrassing for some artists to be older and starting out, or to have not ever sold any work or to not have academic degrees in studio art or to not have any real exhibition history. Sins of omission are better than making things up or even feigning ignorance of the truth. Winkleman noted that bothersome to him and other gallery owners “is an artist doing something that is a deal-breaker and then pleading they didn’t know it was against the gallery’s terms for representation or that this exception was so bad.” The most common example of this is an artist selling artwork out of his or her own studio without informing the dealer and pricing that art below what the gallery charges.

Then there are instances of what might be called “prize inflation,” an example of which is the bronze sculptor in New Mexico who told an interviewer for a daily newspaper there that “she won first place – two different times – at the National Sculpture Society in New York City,” according to the article, which appeared in The Daily News in late March 2013. “One of our board members read that article and emailed it to me,” said Gwen Pier, executive director of the National Sculpture Society. “We keep records on our winners,” and while that artist did win modest prizes back in 1978 and 1982, “they weren’t first prizes.” At a distance of 30-plus years and 2,000 miles away from the Society’s headquarters, this might seem very minor. Still, the Society is a national organization with members all over the country, and artists should keep in mind that anything in print also is likely to end up online, shrinking the span between one place and another.

Pier noted that, when sculptors apply for membership in the Society, they are “juried on the basis of the merit of their work. Jurors aren’t very interested in reading the paperwork. They don’t care how old you are or what degree you have, or if you don’t have any degree.”

Various watercolor, pastel and plein air societies around the country all have their own definitions about what constitutes the acceptable form of their own media. These definitions become mandatory requirements for those seeking membership or to be included in an exhibition. “You can’t always tell from the digital file sent in with the application if opaque or white paint is used, but you can see it when the artwork is in front of you,” said Robin Berry, a member of the board of directors of the Transparent Watercolor Society of America. “Those works have to be removed.”

Juried arts and crafts competitions and fairs offer yet other opportunities for artists to be less than honest, usually not so much the information about themselves that goes on the application than about the artwork submitted. Show sponsors may stipulate that all items be new (that can be difficult to discern unless it has been seen in years past or is dated), that everything be original (giclee reproductions are often in evidence, occasionally touched-up with embellishments to appear more unique), that the artist be present at all times (assistants or agents for the artist, sometimes with fake identification, may fill in) and that everything be for sale (artists may price pieces too high in order to get around that). Artworks juried into a show as digital files may be switched for other pieces by the time the event opens (if the show sponsors happen to notice, they have a range of options, from approving the change to demanding the booth come down). “I walk around the festival with an iPad, comparing what is in the booth with the images that came in with the application,” said Katrina Delgado, artist director for the Coconut Grove Arts Festival in Coral Gables, Florida. Artists who have broken one or another festival rule will receive a warning and, on rare occasions, be told to take down their booths, she said.

Artists seeking to take part in fairs sponsored by Paradise City Arts Festival, which holds events in Marlborough and Northampton, Massachusetts, are required to submit five digital images of their work, and these are “judged on the basis of design, technical skill, originality, diversity and imagination,” according to the prospectus. However, Linda Post, founding director of Paradise City, noted that some artists “misrepresent their work through the images sent to us,” which is discovered at show time. There may be a handful of one-of-a-kind pieces in the artist’s booth, “and the rest are production pieces,” such as sets of identical plates and mugs. Those artists “get talked to” and perhaps are asked to take down some of the least unique items. Those artists whose violations of the rules are most flagrant are not likely to be included in subsequent shows.

“We have our hands full checking on people,” Delgado claimed, but her work is made a bit easier by other artists who help police these shows and “tell on each other.” The more competitive the event, the more likely other exhibitors will become whistle-blowers.

“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth,” Pablo Picasso told an interviewer in 1923, but artists also need to adhere to a less lofty form of truthfulness. They must comply with stated rules, offer accurate information about themselves and their artwork, and avoid exaggeration in order that they will be trusted by collectors, dealers and shows sponsors. Even when the rules and questions seem unfair and arbitrary.

By Daniel Grant

Direct mail is often referred to as “junk mail” but if it is used properly it is anything but “junk”. The usage of direct mail has been declining for many years brought on by the recession and a shift towards digital media. There may not be a better time to use direct mail as the competition for space in the mailbox has declined and studies have shown that direct mail can be very effective.

To have an effective direct mail program you need to have your market targeted, secure a list which matches your target customers and create a direct mail piece that gets read and acted upon. Direct mail can take on many forms such as postcards, letters, coupons, packages, samples, promotional items, brochures and other marketing materials. Direct mail can be sent to your existing customers and prospects, galleries, collectors, patrons, businesses or other organizations.

Treat direct mail as you would any marketing tool such as advertising, public relations, digital or social media – try different things and see what works for you. Direct mail can complement your uses of these tools especially with your digital marketing efforts.

Here are some things you should consider in using direct mail for your art business:

Know your customer

• Are they reachable via direct mail?
• Do they prefer and make buying decisions on based on physical offers such as a mail piece or prefer digital methods?
• What websites they visit, magazines they subscribe to and other media habits?
• What complementary products is your customer likely to buy
• What are their hot buttons and how can you touch their emotions?
• What benefits do your customers get from doing business with you?

Developing your list

• Using your own or purchase from a list vendor. There are many companies that specialize in direct mail lists and they can help you with finding the right list.
• Develop a list of past customers, prospects, and other contacts from gallery shows or events. It is important that you keep your target customers in mind when developing your list – you should mail only to those who are likely to respond.

Designing an effective direct mail piece

The design and elements that go into a direct mail piece can make or break your direct mail program. Don’t forget that the objective of any direct mail piece should be to interest the recipient and get them to follow through with a sale or request for more information. Here are some of the things you should look at:

• Create a quality piece that reflects your brand and the benefits of the products and services you offer.
• Conduct tests before you go all out with any direct mail program. Test your list and test your direct mail pieces. As postage costs have gone up cost it has become even more important to watch your costs and response rates. The days of mass mailing are becoming a thing of the past.
• Design an effective piece with a good headline, story, offer and call to action. Think outside the box and try some 3-dimensional pieces that come in a box or other “non flat” packaging. You are creative so put some of this creativity into your direct mail piece!
• Make something that screams “open me I want to find out more!” In addition to printed materials you may want to include items such as CDs, DVDs or even samples.
• Make it easy for your prospects to get more information and place an order. Have a call to action and direct them to make a purchase, call you, visit your website or mail in a reply card.
• Think about ways you can personalize each direct mail piece to its intended recipient.
• If you choose to do some kind of postcard, be sure to check out printing companies that specialize in postcards. You can easily find these companies on the internet.

Delivery options

There are many options to get your direct mail piece to the recipient. Some of the options available to you include:

• Using the postal service.
• By delivery services such as FedEx, UPS or other courier services for your “high value” targets as these deliveries have a higher chance of getting opened and read.
• By hand delivery to residences and businesses where allowed.
• Taking part in a coop mailing program where offers from multiple advertisers are packaged and mailed together in a single envelope or package.

Tracking, measuring and results

As with any marketing activity it is important to track and measure the results of your marketing efforts. For many marketing activities like advertising, public relations or digital media it can be challenging to measure the effectiveness of any one activity. Fortunately it is must easier to measure the results of a direct mail program. You know how many you sent out, you know the production and delivery costs, and you know how many responded to your efforts and the revenue that was generated – simple! Here are a few things to look out for in this important step of any direct mail program:

• Keep track of your results, costs and make changes as needed. Direct mail is all about testing until you come up with right formula.
• Make it easy to track by asking for a call back, visit website with code, special offer/code or send in this card for more information.

The bottom line(s)…

With the decline of overall direct mail usage now may be the time for you to try this powerful marketing tool in your art business. If you can put together the right direct mail piece with the right message and mail to the right list, direct mail can work for you. As with all of your marketing efforts you need to test, try new approaches and measure your results until you get a formula that works for you.  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

The visual arts are different. No one would expect a dancer or actor to pay the director of a troupe in order to audition for a part, a musician trying out for an orchestra wouldn’t be told to pay a conductor, nor would a writer be asked to send in a check along with the manuscript for a publisher to read it. Visual artists, however, usually must pay an entry fee to be considered for a juried competition. Whether they are selected to be in the show or not, they have to pay. People don’t look at their work for free.

There are an estimated 10,000-15,000 invitational arts and crafts shows taking place somewhere in the country throughout the year, held by private companies, nonprofit groups and small towns, and they enable lesser-known artists and craftspeople to show their work to the public. Plenty of artists have grumbled privately about entry fees, which, they believe, place the financial burden for these shows on the shoulders of the people who have little money to begin with. I think the grumbling should get a little less private and a bit more public.

Entry fees are like a lottery. Artists pay for the privilege of having someone look at their slides, even if they are rejected. Emerging artists are told, Pay your own way until you’ve made it.

Entry fees usually are not such a huge expense in and of themselves, ranging between $25 and $50. However, that is $25-50 multiplied by the number of shows they apply to annually, and when combined with the costs of framing, crating, shipping and insuring one’s work (expenses that show sponsors almost never pay), the entry fee represents an enormous outlay of money for these artists. In many instances, artists forego the insurance and take their chances with damage.

It is argued that artists should contribute something for these shows, since they’re the beneficiaries of them. As a practical matter, most artists don’t generally benefit all that much from a given show, but the organizations that put on the shows often make a great deal of money by charging (read: exploiting) artists who need to show their work somewhere, and many also earn revenues from ticket sales, food vendor fees, souvenirs and a percentage of their exhibitors’ sales.

Originally, entry fees were established as a means both to control the number of participants in juried fine art competitions – it was assumed that rank amateurs could not afford the fees – and to provide organizations with upfront money with which to rent a hall, pay some notable art expert to evaluate the artists’ work (or images of the work) and to create prize money. The distinction between professional and amateur is no longer offered or has any meaning in this context; what matters is the desire to receive money from artists, any artists.

The money a lot of these show sponsors are raising more than likely meets their expenses and then some. National Artists Equity Association has been uneasy with the existence of entry fees since the organization came into being in 1947 and, in 1981, it wrote up ethical guidelines for its membership, stipulating that artists should refuse to participate in events where there are these fees.

This issue has caught on. Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des Artistes Canadiens in Ottawa also claims that its membership “does not consider that the payment of entry fees is appropriate to an exhibition of work by professional artists.” The National Endowment for the Arts has been reluctant to create a policy of this kind but, on a practical level, it has generally refused funds for groups charging entry fees. Michael Faubion, former director of visual arts at the arts endowment, said that “it’s understood in the field that the panelists” – who judge each grant application – “don’t really approve of entry fees, but most of our applicants are exhibiting organizations which put may put on 10 shows a year, and one of them might be a regional juried show that requires a fee. It’s unlikely that the panelists would deny a good organization any funding because of the one show, although they might decide that none of the money that’s given to the organization can be used for that one show.”

The case against entry fees has found sympathetic ears on the state and local level, as both the Oregon Arts Commission and the New York State Council on the Arts as well as the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities in Washington prohibit funds from going to organizations that charge entry fees. The Berkshire Art Association in western Massachusetts eliminated its entry fee, and other small town-sponsored events around the country have done the same, looking for money elsewhere. Many other show sponsors have chosen to maintain the entry fee system, however, realizing that there are so many artists around who are willing to send in money in order to have the chance to be shown that they might as well let them.

By Daniel Grant

Success in business is a lot like sports when it comes to competitive advantages

Competitive advantages are the things that allow a company or organization to outperform its competitors in the marketplace of products, services and even ideas. These advantages can take on many forms from brick and mortar facilities to more intangible things like an organization’s reputation and customer base.

Your competitive advantage may touch all aspects of your art business from creating your art to billing the customer. There are a lot of things that go into competitive advantage and it is well worth the time to determine the competitive advantages for your art business. Think of your competitive advantages as your “secret sauce”.

Competitive advantages are not permanent. The business and competitive environment is always changing and it appears that the speed with which things change is becoming more rapid. With the internet and an age of instant information it doesn’t take too long for competitors to see what each other are up to and change their game accordingly.

Just as your competitors have competitive advantages and disadvantages your art business has them as well. A good place to start to identify your competitive advantages is to look at your internal strengths – what you are best at and why? Knowing your competitive advantages will help you develop goals and strategies for your art business and also help build a brand that is profitable, sustainable and growing. These advantages should also be a foundation for your marketing messages in advertising, public relations, the internet and social media.

A little history

The idea of competitive advantage has been written about for ages starting with affairs of state, politics and the military. Soon businesses took up these ideas and applied them to the world of commerce. One theory of competitive advantage was developed by Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School in his 1980 book, Competitive Strategy. He came up with Five Forces as a way to look at competitive advantage when developing one’s own business strategies.

Porter’s Five Forces

Rivalry – With the rise of the internet and the global economy you don’t have far to look to find competition. In some industries the rivalry among competitors may be low and in others it may be extremely high – this applies to businesses in the arts as well! Porter came up with these strategies on how to deal with competitive rivalry:

• Changing prices to gain an advantage either by lowering price to thwart competitors or raising prices which increases your profit thus giving you a financial competitive advantage.
• Innovating and improving your art and the way it is made
• Looking for new ways and places to sell your art
• Looking for new sources of supply for the ingredients that go into your art either to get a better price or more dependable source of supply.

Threat of new entrants – Most businesses today are faced with the threat of new entrants in their markets. In some industries the barriers to entry by new competitors may be substantial in terms of costs, technologies, expertise, regulations and existing patents – i.e. building a new steel plant. For most art businesses the barriers to entry are low and entrants freely come and go. Some art businesses like Dale Chihuly’s glass sculpture business are an exception as they require substantial capital, facilities and expertise which not many potential competitors are capable of. There is not a lot you can do to ward off new competitors; you will just have to outdo them!

Threat of substitutes – The products produced by many industries may be substituted by other products often by other industries. For example if you are a craft brewer you may package your beer in glass bottles or in aluminum cans, choosing whichever makes the most economic sense. This is good news for the brewer but maybe not such good news for those supplying the containers. As an artist your art may be substituted by other similar/dissimilar art or by art in a different medium such as decorating with a sculpture instead of a painting.

Buyer Power – Depending on market trends, buyer power may affect a company’s competitive advantages. Buyers such as an art gallery may have a strong influence on setting prices (and the resulting artist’s profit) for an artist’s works and thus are said to have strong buying power. If you sell your art direct to the end user or consumer then in most instances the buyer is said to have little influence on price – ok, maybe a little bargaining!

Supplier Power – Creating art requires raw materials, supplies, labor and other inputs that all come at a price. If you have good access to the necessary ingredients to produce your art at a favorable price and your competition doesn’t, then you are said to have a competitive advantage with regards to supply.

Competitive advantage today

In the 30+ years since Michael Porter wrote his book Competitive Advantage the world has changed and so has the way we look at competitive advantage. Today, competitive advantage is seen to be more in the realm of innovation, creativity, speed, strong brands, solving customer problems, customer experiences and loyalty than in the ideas formulated by Porter.

Today we live in a global creative economy where successful companies are more focused on the customer than the competition. In her book The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business, author and professor, Rita McGrath summed it up rather nicely,

“There are indeed examples of advantages that can be sustained, even today. Capitalizing on deep customer relationships, making highly complicated machines such as airplanes, running a mine, and selling daily necessities such as food are all situations in which some companies have been able to exploit an advantage for some time. But in more and more sectors, and for more and more businesses, this is not what the world looks like any more. Music, high technology, travel, communication, consumer electronics, the automobile business, and even education are facing situations in which advantages are copied quickly, technology changes, or customers seek other alternatives and things move on.“

Sounds a lot like the art business, doesn’t it?

And it is not just professors who are talking about what competitive advantage means today. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder Amazon.com shares his thoughts on the competition and being focused on their customers.

“We watch our competitors, learn from them, see the things that they were doing for customers and copy those things as much as we can.”

“We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards.”

Ok, now you should get the general idea of what competitive advantage is and why it is important to the growth and sustainability of your art business. The next step is to take a look at your art business and identify your competitive advantages. While you are looking around don’t forget to make a note of the things in your art business that are not now currently an advantage and how you might turn them into advantages.

The bottom line(s)…

There is a lot of competition in the art world, and to stand out and prosper the art business owner needs to capitalize on their competitive advantages. Competitive advantages are fleeting and competitors will soon attempt to copy what others are doing – it is a never ending cycle! Take an inventory of your competitive advantages and use this information to craft your business strategies and don’t forget to tell the world about them in your marketing efforts!

By Neil McKenzie

The conversation that artists are most likely to enjoy having with buyers concerns what inspired them to create this or that and the ideas they seek to express in their work. Less enjoyable are negotiations over price (how much it costs, if any discounts are available, how they will be paid), and less enjoyable still is a discussion of the type of care that their artwork may require over time. Too often, artists shy away from questions of care, because they themselves may not know much about the materials they are using and how their pieces weather over time (and what, if anything, to do about it) and because they worry that such talk might cause prospective buyers to back out of a purchase.

Phoebe Dent Weil, a retired sculpture conservator at the St. Louis Art Museum who continues to work for private and institutional clients, claims that artists need to look beyond the initial sale to the long-term maintenance of their work. And, they need to talk to buyers about how to keep artworks looking good. “Collectors may get very upset if the sculpture they buy starts to look very different and starts to lose its value,” she said.

Weil herself was called in by the Houston Museum of Fine Arts when a polished carbon steel sculpture in its collection by the Italian artist Pietro Consagra rusted all over. Should the museum sand off the rust and polish the piece, knowing that the rust would recur? She spoke with the artist, who was still alive, recommending that the work be painted, which might make the piece look a bit different but would provide lasting protection. The artist was happy with the recommendation and began incorporating paint into his other steel works. He also was lucky that the conservator the museum chose to contact had an idea about how to keep his work from looking good. That helps the artist’s reputation and keeps the museum interested in his work.

Light, heat, humidity, dirt, dust and especially water are all potentially harmful to works of art, and the damage is dependent upon the materials used and where the objects are located. Artworks placed outdoors are most likely to experience changes through cold, heat, moisture and pollutants, and some materials are better able to weather these changes or be treated than others. Stone sculpture, for instance, is porous and can absorb water vapor up to four inches deep, taking airborne pollutants into its interior. Eventually, when it dries out, the stone will “sweat” out these particles, which creates an erosion on its surface, slowly eliminating some of the detailing.

Bronze, too, reacts badly to humidity, turning green. Weil stated that chlorides in the patina – the surface sheen of an object – occasionally reacts with high humidity to cause “bronze disease,” which is green mold-like spots that start appearing on the surface. She noted that there is not much one can do to permanently stop this condition, although regular cleaning and waxing of the work does provide some protection from the humidity. Wood is most severely affected by moisture in the air, expanding in high humidity and contracting in a dry environment. Two adjoining wooden pieces in an object may expand against each other and knock themselves out of line, and the glue holding pieces together may dry up and cease to bind the parts together. The ideal relative humidity levels are 55 percent for wood, 50 percent for stone and 40 percent for bronze.

Unlike paintings and drawings, wooden sculpture cannot be placed under glass to protect them from strong light. She noted that these pieces should be kept away from windows where direct sunlight would hit them, since their veneer absorbs heat which can lead to cracking.

Certain types of antiques or sculpture are born trouble, no matter what anyone does, Weil claimed. Claes Oldenburg’s outdoor pieces, for instance, are cast in Everdur bronze that has the distinction of tarnishing and discoloring very rapidly. If one touches a piece made in Everdur bronze, the mark must be immediately cleaned off or else the fingerprints may be permanently etched into the metal within a matter of days.

Other problems may have been found with Cor-ten steel, which has been used for works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Pablo Picasso and many other artists. Cor-ten was thought to be an answer to outdoor environmental conditions as it formed a tight oxidation layer that stabilizes and acts as a buffer against further corrosion. Weil stated that there have been serious problems when conservators seek to clean graffiti off works made of this metal. “To clean it, you have to remove the entire rust layer. Then, another rust layer has to develop.” The result is the removal of actual metal, which may change the proportions and appearance of the entire work.

Artists, of course, choose the materials they use often for other reasons than longevity. Picasso would not have pasted newsprint onto some of his late Cubist canvases had his concerns been the problems conservators would face decades later. As a result, artists should provide guidance to their buyers in the maintenance of their work. Here are some Don’ts that Weil has to offer:

• Don’t use Pledge on a wood sculpture. It may leave residue, cause discoloration and provide moisture that enters the wood.
• Don’t use Brasso metal polish on metal sculptures. It has a mild abrasive and leaves a residue of white powder that collects in corners.
• Don’t use a rag to remove dirt and dust. The rag may catch on sharp points and abrade the surface. Feather dusters are better but are more difficult to control. Instead, use a soft bristle paint brush, taping the metal ferule to guard against scrapes.
• Don’t put a waterproof coating on stone sculpture. Rainwater will get underneath the coating through cracks and cause the coating to chip off, distorting the overall look of the piece.

And, of course, what one might expect from a conservator: If a buyer has questions about how to protect a work from damage or restore a piece after damage has occurred, contact a qualified conservator.

By Daniel Grant

“While your art business may not require an assembly line,
it can certainly benefit from good production and operations management”

As a sculptor you make and create things and in many respects you have the same challenges as any other company that makes a product or provides a service. There is a field of study and practice in business management that concerns itself with making things called “Production and Operations Management”.

Production and Operations management is all about managing all of the things that go into making a product or service like materials, supplies, technology, methods and labor (called “Inputs”) and transforming them into a finished product or work of art (called “Outputs”). The overall goal of production and operations management is to produce goods and services in an efficient, cost effective and profitable manner while maintaining the desired level of quality – a goal you should have for your art business as well!

The field of production and operations management is divided into several areas that you need to be aware of. These areas are:

• Production Planning
• Production Scheduling
• Work Design, Flow and Measurement
• Inventory Control and Management
• Quality Control
• Operations Management

Most every one of these will affect how you produce your art in one way or another. Take a look at these areas; see how they apply to your art business and how you might make improvements – now you are practicing Production and Operations Management!

Production Planning

“A stained glass painting plan is a good example of one type of production plan”

 

 Like putting together a plan for your business or a plan for your marketing efforts you need a plan to produce your art.   Your plan can be formal, written down on a napkin or just in your head. Your production plan will help you answer questions like:

• What am I going to produce/create?
• What materials or supplies will I need?
• What types of technology or processes will I need?
• What other resources will I need such as labor or outside suppliers?
• How much will it cost to produce this art?
• How long will it take to produce a final product?
• Where will I produce the art?
• When will the art be complete and delivered?

Production Scheduling

Scheduling is making sure that the proper materials, supplies, technologies and labor are brought together so that the job gets done in an efficient manner and meets your customer’s expectations and deadlines. In order to make your scheduling effective you will need to “break down” a project into steps that you can track and measure. There are many scheduling tools available to you from a simple to-do list, calendar to elaborate project scheduling software.

Work Design, Flow and Measurement

The idea behind work design, flow and measurement is to take a look at how you are producing your products. Some questions you should be asking yourself:

• Have you formalized the steps necessary to complete a project?
• Are you doing any unnecessary steps or procedures?
• Do you know how long it takes to complete each step?
• Do you know how much it costs to complete each step?
• Are they ways you could improve your production process?
• Can you use this information in future projects?

Inventory Control and Management

“Inventory comes in all shapes and sizes and in all stages of completion”

 For most businesses having inventory is a necessary part of producing their products – your art business is no different. There are three basic kinds of inventory: finished goods (those that are completed and awaiting sale or delivery to customers); work in progress (these are projects or products that are partially complete); and raw materials.

The important thing to remember about inventories is that they cost you; you have your money tied up in them! The idea is to reduce your inventories as much as possible without running out of goods to sell while having the necessary ingredients to make more art. Inventory is a delicate balancing act between having too much on hand, being able to fill customer orders and not being susceptible to supply shortages.

Some questions to ask yourself about inventory:

• Do you purchase your materials and supplies at favorable prices?
• Do you know the quantities of inventory that you hold and their cost?
• Do you have a system in place to track inventory?
• Do you frequently run out of materials or supplies?
• Do you have finished products available when customers want to buy?
• Is your inventory properly stored and easy to find?
• Do you carry enough inventory, not enough or just the right amount?
• Are your procedures for purchasing adequate?

Quality Control

For most companies the quality of the products they produce and the level of service they provide are a big part of their brand – your art business is no exception. Quality and value are closely linked to your customer’s expectations. The quality expectation of an inexpensive item may be different from that of a luxury item. It is important that you keep your production focused on quality and meeting or exceeding your customer’s expectations.

• Here are some questions to ask yourself about quality:
• Does the quality of your products, meet, exceed or fall short of your customer’s expectations?
• Do you build quality into every step that goes into producing your products?
• Do you have a lot of rejects or rework?
• Do you need better equipment or processes to improve your product quality?
• Do you have a system or way to measure quality?
• Does your quality extend to packaging and delivery of your products?
• Have you made quality an integral part of your business?

Operations Management

“Operations concerns itself with many of the other things in your art business, like your back room operations”

The second part of production and operations has to do with the processes you employ in running your business. These processes start when an order is placed and continue until the product is delivered to the customer. Many would consider operations to be a big part of the “back office”.

Some of the areas that make up operations include:

• Order entry – The placement, tracking and finally billing the customer for items sold
• Purchasing – Making sure that the proper materials and supplies are ordered and received in a timely and profitable manner
• Delivery and Transportation – Making sure that your products reach your customers as promised
• Forecasting – Developing forecasts for finished goods as well as the inputs (materials, supplies, labor) that go into you products
• Systems – Developing systems or processes for all of the things you do in business
• Purchasing – Buying the right materials and supplies at the right price
• Facilities Management – Making sure that your facilities are adequate, meet building and other requirements and are maintained properly
• Project management – Managing a project so that deadlines are kept, costs are minimized and quality levels are maintained.

The bottom line(s)…

Whether you produce one of a kind art pieces, commissioned works, limited editions or go full out with mass production you need to manage the production and operations areas of your art business. It doesn’t have to be complicated, just start with the question, “How can I improve the way I produce my art?” Make some adjustments and repeat. Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

Just as in most stories, the fundraising process has a beginning, middle and an end: The first part is the request (usually filling out an application) to some private or public agency for money; the middle sequence is actually performing the work or service for which the funding was requested; the final part usually is letting the agency know what was done with its money.

The last area is probably the least structured and consistent in the fundraising process, as the requirements for a final summation differ from one agency to the next. Some allow artists and craftspeople to tell in narrative (perhaps even handwritten) form what went on during their project or fellowship period, while others send out questionnaires of between one and four pages that must be filled out. Some agencies require fellowship recipients to detail how the money was spent, while others show little interest in the subject. Other funders hold back a certain percentage of the award until the final report is in, while others put no strings on the disbursement of funds.

It is not possible to generalize about the reporting requirements for any particular class of funders — for instance, that public arts agencies call for more documentation than private philanthropies, or that smaller or local agencies require less paperwork than their larger or federal counterparts — and they must all be viewed individually.

The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and Craft Emergency Relief Fund, both of which are private nonprofit organizations that provide emergency assistance to artists in financial need, have very different ideas about reporting. The Gottlieb Foundation demands that recipients describe by letter how money was used within six months of receiving their grants. The letter accompanying the Foundation’s check states, “You should be advised that the Foundation may request copies of receipts, which document your expenditures.” Craft Emergency Relief Fund, on the other hand, requires no reporting whatsoever for their loans (up to $2,000), believing that the essential documentation took place as part of the application process.

At times, a private or public funding agency’s application guidelines indicate how money will be released to an individual artist or organization and under what terms. Even when that information is provided, many applicants will overlook it as they are concentrating so intently on describing their projects and monetary needs in a way that is most likely to appeal to the granting agency. As a result, agency reporting requirements may come as a surprise, pleasant or otherwise. Artists and organizations may not decide to forego applying to a particular funding agency because of its reporting or other requirements, but they would want to know what they are getting in for.

Among the issues that artists should be aware of early in the process are:

Interim Reports. Not only do agencies ask for final reports, some ask for progress or interim reports during the period of the project or fellowship. Bush Artist Fellowships, which offers fellowships of $36,000 to artists in seven counties of Minnesota and the Dakotas, requires quarterly reports of approximately 100 words that describe the recipient’s activities during the preceding three-month period. The money is paid over a 12- or 18-month period and the organization may withhold payments if quarterly reports aren’t submitted. The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based Pew Fellowships in the Arts, on the other hand, which provides grants of $50,000 for fellowship periods lasting up to two years, asks for brief reports or “updates” every six months, and most of these are the length of a paragraph.

The National Endowment for the Arts requires fellowship and project grant recipients to submit a progress report after they have received two-thirds of their allocation in order to receive the remainder of the money. In a very different approach, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York City contacts grants-in-aid recipients three times during the grant period by telephone, in March, July and October, in order to discuss their work. “We don’t just forget them but try to see what else they need, what else we can do for them,” said Jane Stevenson, director of the Elizabeth Foundation. She added that recipients are also asked to complete a two-page questionnaire at the end of their grant year, detailing how the money was spent and the effect that the funding had on their work.

Grant Disbursement. Every agency has its own ideas about how money should be paid out. Pew Fellowships provides a monthly stipend (the same amount each month during the fellowship period), while the Kentucky Arts Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council award the entirety of their fellowships and project grants up-front. Bush Artist Fellowships spread out payments evenly over the fellowship period, although it will make an initial pay-out of up to $10,000 when asked. Such a request may be the result of the costs of purchasing materials or equipment, without which the project could not be accomplished smoothly.

The Ohio Arts Council pays half of the fellowship amount in one calendar year and the remainder in the next calendar year in order to not burden artists with a large tax liability in one given year, while The Elizabeth Foundation allows artists to receive half of their grant in July and the rest in January or to take the entire amount all at once. The Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts have the most artist-friendly approach, distributing fellowship awards in whatever manner the artists want them.

Public Service Requirements. Fellowships essentially mean monetary awards with no strings attached. Artists can use the money to create a new work or simply to pay their rent and buy groceries. It is unclear why an agency would require a final report for a fellowship recipient when it makes no demands on how its money is used, and some artists may feel obliged to claim that the award helped to complete a new work when it actually was part of a down payment for a house.

At times, a fellowship comes with a specific public service requirement, such as a demonstration, lecture, visit to a school or something else. Both the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Seattle Artists Trust pay artists 90 percent of the total amount of the fellowship, holding back the final 10 percent until a community service function has been performed. The New York Foundation for the Arts allows an artist or craftsperson up to 18 months following the completion of the fellowship to fulfill the public service requirement. There are reminder calls to artists about fulfilling their public service requirement and that artists will forfeit the final 10 percent if they do as expected.

Final Reports. Whereas an application for a grant or fellowship is often read by a number of people (a program director, peer review panel, agency director, board of directors), it is never quite clear who reads an interim or final report and what is done with that information. It may be just one person at the agency, checking to see that a certain amount of information has been included. Those funders who send out questionnaires usually have something specific they want to know, such as the attendance at a certain event, the demographic breakdown of an audience, how their money was spent or what artistic achievements their grants helped to create. This information may be used solely for statistical purposes or to show an agency’s accomplishments to legislators or the public.

At other times, final reports are examined by one or more agency personnel in order to determine the effectiveness of a program and whether or not changes should be made. The reports are read; they don’t just get filed. Agencies and organizations do want to learn how better to perform their roles.

The two-page final report form of Bush Artist Fellowships is, in many ways, typical of most agencies’ questionnaires. On the first page are asked three questions — to describe the activity for which the artist needed funding, to describe what the artist had hoped to achieve during the fellowship year and to note what actually the artist accomplished. The second asks the artist to provide a “best estimate” of how the fellowship money was spent, listing seven categories (materials and production costs, transportation costs, food and lodging, insurance costs, utilities, taxes and miscellaneous).

Prodding artists, craftspeople and organizations to complete their questionnaires is a major activity at most arts agencies. Reporting requirements tend to become more optional the smaller the amount of the award and, sometimes, they are more like requests.

Some individual artists may worry about incurring disapproval from an agency over what they actually accomplished during a grant or fellowship period and do not submit a final report (Would they ask for the money back? The answer is no, but the artist might make him- or herself ineligible for future grants.)

There is a hierarchy of difficulty in final reports. Fellowships tend to require the least paperwork and take the most relaxed attitude about what the report says, while project grant recipients (typically organizations) have to provide more documentation about what was done and how as well as provide an accounting of expenditures. In some instances, organizations receive a certain percentage of the project grant award (say, 75 percent) up-front and the rest at the conclusion of the project after the report and budget have been submitted; at other times, payment is only available on a reinbursement basis – submitting specific receipts to the agency for which a check will be issued. The most onerous reports are those by recipients of operating support grants, who must usually provide the agency with quarterly financial statements and pay for an audit.

By Daniel Grant

“A gallery representation contract is in a lot of ways like a marriage contract”

Having your work shown in a gallery can be a great way to build your art brand and expand your market reach.  If you are represented by a gallery you are entering into a legal agreement between you and the gallery.  As with any legal agreement it is important to know what you are getting into. The same goes for having your work represented on an online gallery as well.

Good business relationships are based on having a good understanding and an agreement of what is expected of all parties. I have heard from many galleries that artists are a “pain” to work with and an equal amount of artists that say that galleries are a “pain” to work with.  My suspicion is that most of this comes from relationships forged on a lack of understanding of what is expected, who is responsible for what, and typically the lack of a formal written agreement.

A gallery agreement is a legal document

Typically with a gallery you will have to enter into a contractual arrangement. This may seem painfully obvious but a gallery agreement is a contract and like any contract it is a legal document. If something goes wrong and there is a dispute you may enter the realm of lawyers, courts and the expenses that go along with them.

A good contract will benefit both the artist and the gallery.  Don’t be rushed into signing a contract! You may be presented with a contract that is “the one everyone signs” or “our standard contract” – think carefully before you enter into any agreement. Make sure you understand the obligations of both parties and how the contract will affect your business now and in the future.

And speaking of signing a contract – you may have the heard the saying “an oral contract is as good as the paper it is written on”.  Whenever possible get your agreements in writing and avoid future misunderstandings!

Make sure you know what you are getting into before signing an agreement with an art gallery.

 

Online art galleries

Today many artists show their work on online art galleries.  Just because you haven’t signed a contract doesn’t mean that you haven’t entered into one.  When you agree to the terms of using online gallery representation it is the same as if you had signed a written contract.  Read carefully the online gallery’s terms and conditions before you press the “I Accept” button.  If you post or share images of your work on online photo sharing networks or social media platforms it is probably a good idea to check their terms and conditions as well.

Some things to look for in any contract with a gallery

Art gallery representation contracts should cover the basics of how the relationship between the artist and the gallery will be conducted.  A contract may also have special clauses or items that are not typical – these require special attention and understanding.  Here are the basics that you should look for in any gallery contract:

• Is the contract written?
• What period of time does the contract specify for representation?
• How does either party get out of the contract?
• What are the gallery location(s) and hours?
• What is the exhibition schedule and duration?
• What are the due dates with respect to: contracts, bios, price information etc., gallery take down & restoration, pick up dates
• Who is responsible of marketing and what are the specifics?
• Who is responsible for installation and take down?
• Who is responsible for gallery restoration?
• What is the commission split on the sale of your art?
• Is the contract for the purchase of your works, guaranteed minimum or consignment on a best efforts basis?
• Who is responsible for the transportation of artwork to and from the gallery or customer?
• What insurance is to be provided by both parties?
• What are the requirements with regards to accounting and record keeping?
• What are the stipulations with regards to the inspection of yours and the gallery’s books?
• Do you need releases for images of art, the artist and written materials such as a bio or artist’s statement?
• How will you handle new works of art?
• Is the contract exclusive to the gallery, for how long and where geographically?
• How are sales by the artist handled?
• How are reproductions going to be handled?

Make sure you understand any agreement before signing it

If you have trouble trying to decipher the “legalese” or you are not sure about what something means then seek out the advice of a qualified professional. There are many attorneys that specialize in art law and they can help you with gallery contracts as well as other art business matters. Many arts organizations also have access to legal advice as well as sample gallery agreements that you can use.  You may also want to seek out the advice of other artists who have real experience with galleries, but remember this isn’t a job for “Uncle Bob or Aunt Jane” who once had their art hung in a gallery.

The bottom line(s)…

Galley representation can be a great way to build your brand and sell more art – if you do it right! Remember that with most any contract everything is negotiable. Before you sign an exclusive contract make sure that it will be beneficial to you. Make sure you abide by the things you have agreed to and make sure that the gallery upholds their part of the deal as well.  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

Most artists don’t know what kind of career they will have, or if they will even have a career, but sculptor Jock Reynolds knew he was making a career-changing decision in 1983 when he took over the directorship of Washington Project for the Arts, a nonprofit multidisciplinary art space in the District of Columbia. “It was a six- or seven-day a week job, requiring a total commitment, and I know it meant not really being able to do my own artwork,” he said. The organization was $160,000 in the red, and salaries hadn’t been paid in some time (“I had a wife and two kids”), but Reynolds left a tenured position at California State University at San Francisco where he was director of the graduate art program to take a job whose primary role was exhibiting the work of other artists. The decision turned out to be a good one for him: Somehow, he managed to erase the debt and put the art center in fiscal order within six months (“Fundraising isn’t so hard, you just have to care about whatever you’re raising money for”), and his career as a gallery director was firmly established. After nine years at Washington Project for the Arts, he became director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, leaving six years later for his current job as director of the Yale University Art Gallery.

A studio art training prepares one for a life of unemployment, so says the cynic. However, to a less jaundiced eye, a background in fine art is particularly suitable for fields that involve fine art. Reynolds joined the many artists who found a place in the nonprofit gallery world, working as curators and directors of nonprofit art spaces, college or university art galleries and even some smaller private and municipal museums. The focus of many of these institutions is contemporary (sometimes, contemporary regional) art, making a familiarity with current art and art materials, as well as the ability to work with living artists important criteria for hiring. Others with only training in art history or arts administration may lack one or both of those essential elements.

It would be difficult to chart such a career trajectory like Reynolds’ in advance: He was “making art like mad” after receiving an MFA from the University of California at Davis in 1972 and soon thereafter hired to teach at California State. On the side, however, he and some artist friends started up an alternative art center in San Francisco, called New Langton Arts (it is still in operation), in order to exhibit the kind of artwork not otherwise shown in the city. Good with his hands, Reynolds took part in sheet-rocking, wiring and carpentering an unused warehouse space into an art center, then taught himself how to light and install art. Those skills were called upon when he went to the Washington Project for the Arts, although when both the Addison Gallery and Yale’s Art Gallery required renovation he limited his involvement to supervising others doing the physical work.

The curators working under him all have doctorates in art history, but Reynolds does not find their credentials intimidating, and the curators themselves recognize that “I have a real understanding of what it takes to make art, and that I have an eye,” he said.

Others working in the nonprofit arts have also found their experience of being artists helpful in bringing forth new art to the public and presenting it in a way that benefits both artist and audience. “I think I’m more sensitive to the plight of the artist than a nonartist might be,” said Dan Talley, director of the Sharadin Art Gallery of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, who earned a Masters in Fine Arts in the mid-1970s. “I try to imagine what the artist would want to have happen,” making an exhibition look good, documenting the show with a catalogue and bringing important people in to see it. That sensitivity requires Talley to understand that, for the exhibiting artist, the gallery show is a stepping-stone to (it is hoped) larger things; Talley also recognizes that he is abetting someone else’s career, rather than his own, displaying work that he may not believe is as good as what he creates. That tension may increase if the visiting artist acts the prima donna (but that usually isn’t the case – artists tend to be quite happy just getting their work shown). Artists are supposed to have big egos, and big egos cry, “Me, Me, ME!” to one and all, but Talley and others in his position understand that showcasing another artist’s work involves maturity and self-confidence as artists (“I’ve gotten a lot of positive attention for my work in my career,” Reynolds said. “I’m not hung-up about taking credit for things”). It also requires a number of skills – such as art selection, programming, exhibition design, writing publicity notices, perhaps fundraising – that tend to fall outside the more defined scope of what arts administration graduates and certainly art historians learn.

Perhaps as well, art historians and administrators aren’t taught to develop a comfort zone with artists. “Some people are uncomfortable with living artists,” said Dan Mills, who received an MFA in painting in 1981 and is currently director of the Bates College Museum of Art, having previously worked for nine years at Bucknell University’s Samek Art Gallery, both of which have a focus on contemporary art. “The involvement of artists adds something unknown whereas, when dealing with the work of someone who has been dead 100 years, your thesis is your thesis.”

As with all art-related careers, there are benefits and drawbacks for artists. An obvious benefit of working in galleries and museums is a paycheck and the contacts artists are able to make with collectors, critics, gallery owners, curators and other artists, which may prove helpful in the who-you-know art world. “The artists working here are making phone calls to people who might not talk to them if they were just calling as artists,” said Edmund Cardoni, director of HallWalls, who himself came to the job with an MFA in creative writing.

On the down side, work gets in the way of work. Energy expended on building and running and organization, or promoting the work of other artists takes away from the pursuit of one’s own artmaking. “That part of me that is an active studio artist has diminished,” Reynolds said. “However, I don’t feel I made the choice to do something else because of failure. I think I’m good at both.”

As good a job as they may do, artists often still find a “glass ceiling” keeping them from rising to upper-level positions at larger or more academic museums. Doctorates in art history are generally the union card for employment at this level in these institutions. Charles Steiner, former director of the Wichita Art Museum in Kansas, noted that he attended a recent meeting of the Association of Art Museum Directors and “I didn’t see anyone there who was an artist.” His degree is an MFA in painting from George Washington University, although his first hire at the museum was a curator with a PhD. Steiner’s plan upon receiving his MFA was to teach (“I applied to 50 some-odd universities and didn’t get a bite”), but during his graduate schooling he had set up a program to bring in the disabled to the university’s museum, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum hired him to set up a similar program there. That program involved a host of administrative responsibilities, including gallery talks, fundraising, training teachers, and creating and scheduling exhibitions and activities for the target audience. After nine years at the Met, he was hired by Princeton University as first assistant and later associate director, where he stayed for 14 years before being hired by Wichita.

Specialized knowledge and being in the right place at the right time are helpful for artists looking to be hired by museums. Mark Pascale, who received an MFA in printmaking from Ohio State University, taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and used the museum’s study room for lectures, eventually becoming familiar with the associate curator of prints and drawings who ran that room. In the early 1980s, the museum acquired the collection of the renowned print studio United Limited Art Editions, and curators began to tap Pascale for his knowledge of printmaking. “They asked me about techniques, papers, procedures, texture and process,” he said, “as few curators knew much about the making of art.”

Eventually, Pascale became a regular resource for the curators of prints and drawings whenever a technical question arose. By the late 1980s, he was helping curators with a catalogue raisonne on Whistler’s lithographs, checking entries for technical correctness. Not long after, he was hired by the museum to run the museum’s study room as an associate curator of prints and drawings. “I was not given to understand that I need additional degrees,” he said. “I did, though, take a writing class, because I would be doing some academic writing.”

Artist-curator adds to the growing number of multiple roles that artists have assumed (artist-writer, artist-collector, artist-teacher, artist-gallerist) over the years. Maintaining an artistic career in the face of a full-time job is often quite difficult, and creative energies may be channeled into the paycheck work. Perhaps, the artist’s loss becomes society’s gain.

By Daniel Grant

Perhaps, the tablets Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai should have contained another commandment: Get it in writing, and assert your rights. Artists who consign their work to art galleries regularly get a lesson in why they need to take this to heart. Here are two recent examples:

In June of 2014, Los Angeles artist Nicola Wood was asked by Culver City, California art dealer Bruce Lurie to allow him to bring four of her classic-car themed paintings to an annual art fair (“Art Hamptons”) in Bridgehampton, New York taking place the following month. Viewing the event as a “high-end show in a prestigious location,” offering her the “opportunity to present her work to an entirely new audience,” the artist willingly agreed and consigned to the dealer four paintings with a combined price of $160,000. There was some discussion of the prices, and both artist and dealer agreed to lower prices to a combined $82,500 in order to spur sales, and the dealer was given the flexibility to discount the works another 10 percent if that would encourage sales. However, Wood wrote on the consignment agreement that discounts of 20 percent or more would need her pre-approval. The one-page document also stated that the artist would be paid “within 30 days of completion of sale.”

That was the easy part.

Lurie next asked Wood to pay him $1,000 for a booth fee to participate in the Bridgehampton art fair. (Is your heart starting to race yet?) None of Wood’s paintings were sold at “Art Hamptons” but, instead of returning them to her, Lurie took the four artworks to another art fair, this in Aspen, Colorado. One of the paintings, titled “House with 1960 Cadillac,” which had been priced by the artist and dealer at $35,000, did sell, to Lurie’s cousin who bought the artwork as a wedding anniversary present for his wife. The exact price of this painting was not revealed to the artist – she suspects that it was under $15,000, far below her agreement with the dealer – but she received no payment anyway, perhaps in retaliation for the fact that Wood hired a lawyer when she learned that her paintings were taken to Colorado without her permission.

To make matters worse, one of the four paintings, titled “See Through,” was damaged beyond repair during transit to Aspen, requiring the dealer to make a claim on her behalf to Lloyd’s of London, which he did. (The insurance company agreed to pay Wood $4,000, with the dealer responsible for paying her the $540 deductible, for the $7,500 painting.)

Eventually, the remaining two paintings were returned to her, in good condition.

In mid-January, Nicola Wood brought a lawsuit in Superior Court in California against the gallery owner for fraud and breach of contract. According to her lawyer, John Fuchs, “the lawsuit was filed in California, because both parties are California residents, the contract was signed here” and payment to the artist was to be in Los Angeles. He noted that if “one of the parties is a California resident and one is not, it could be filed in Federal Court, based on what is known as ‘diversity of citizenship.’ The place where the painting was exhibited and where it was sold, in my opinion does not affect the place for filing the lawsuit. However, if we seek a writ of possession to require that the painting be returned, because it was sold without authorization and in violation of the consignment agreement, we may have to take that court order to Colorado to get it enforced, assuming the painting is in fact in Colorado.”

The lawyer called the one-page consignment agreement “bare bones” and “somewhat vague” – there was no stipulated period of time after which Lurie would return the paintings to Wood, no mention of the amount of dealer commission and no requirement that the artist be given an accounting (receipts or cancelled checks) after a sale – “but still enforceable.”

Nicola Wood is not alone in her troubles with those claiming to want to help artists sell their work. William T. Chambers, a portrait painter in Arlington Heights, Illinois, had created a number of images from famous movies, such as “My Fair Lady,” “Annie,” “The King and I” and “Gone with the Wind,” as well as several portraits of the late Princess Diana, that were reproduced on collectible plates produced by the Bradford Exchange, which is based in Niles, Illinois. This was a straight licensing deal that proved profitable for both parties.

The actual paintings for these collectible plates remained Chambers’ property, and in 2011 he decided to consign them for sale at Midwest Estate Buyers, an online auction house based in Northbrook, Illinois. The agreement that the artist and auctioneer signed placed minimum prices on each of the consigned artworks and set a sales commission of 35 percent.

The auction house did sell a number of his paintings, sending Chambers a series of checks that “were returned NSF [not sufficient funds] and had to be re-deposited or exchanged for cash payment.” Things got worse when the artist decided to terminate his agreement with Midwest Estate Buyers. The auctioneer at first refused to return to him the remaining artworks, later informing the artist that four paintings of scenes from the film “Annie” “had been stolen by movers when defendants moved their offices.”

According to the lawsuit that Chambers filed in Cook County Court in early January of this year, charging breach of contract and fraud, the four “Annie” paintings “had been sold in online auctions in January and February 2012 for far below the agreed minimum price under the agreement.”

It is never clear what one is supposed to learn from deals in which one side is acting in good faith and the other behaves badly. In both instances, artists who believed themselves to have been wronged, asserted their rights, hiring lawyers and bringing lawsuits. Perhaps, the only morals to draw are that artists should learn about the people to whom they are consigning their work (references from dealers and other artists, see if lawsuits have been filed against these people in the past for any reason) and only use a consignment agreement that covers a range of issues. These include:

• The term of the agreement (how long will we be bound by this contractual relationship).
• The nature of the relationship (exclusive or non-exclusive representation, for instance). The dealer may have the exclusive rights to sell all of the artist’s work, or exclusive rights to sell only prints (another dealer has exclusive rights to the sculpture, yet another has the rights to the canvas paintings); perhaps, the dealer has the exclusive rights to market the artist’s work in North America or just New York City. The dealer may simply handle an artist’s work without any claims to exclusivity.
• An exact accounting of what is being consigned to the dealer. A paper trail should accompany every work that the dealer or gallery is sent, listing the title of the piece, the medium and size, and a signed receipt should be in the artist’s possession.
• Price arrangements (minimum amounts per work or prices for each work, as well as what sorts of discounts may be allowed).
• The percentage of the dealer’s commission.
• The responsibilities of both dealer and artist (how promotional efforts for a show will be handled, where advertisements will be placed, who will pay for framing and insurance, whether or not the artist will be compensated for the loss in the event of damage or theft).
• The frequency and nature of the exhibits (one-person exhibits, group shows, once a year or less often, when in the year, how the work will be shown).
• A requirement for periodic accounting (who has purchased the works, how much was paid for them, where and when have works been loaned or sent out on approval).
• Prompt payment by the dealer (sixty to ninety days should be the absolute limit, 30 days is preferable).

Other provisions that might be discussed and formalized in a letter of agreement between artist and dealer include a mechanism for resolving disputes (such as presenting a disagreement before an arbitrator), protection of the artist’s assets in the event that the gallery goes bankrupt in those states where artist-consignment laws do not exist. If the agreement requires that all attorneys’ fees be paid by the person who is in breach of the contract, this will encourage the dealer to act ethically.

By Daniel Grant

Plutchik wheel

Each day we are bombarded with literally thousands of sounds and images in the form of advertisements trying to get us to notice a product or idea and then persuade us to take some form of action – like buying a product or supporting an idea or cause.  It takes a great ad to cut through the clutter and get noticed – something which is easier said than done!

In this article I take a look at some ideas on how to create a great advertisement for your art business.  A good place to start is to take a look at advertising (don’t forget other artists) and see what connects with you and what doesn’t.

Develop an “Eye” for advertising

Develop an “eye” for advertising to see what works and what doesn’t

 

One of the first steps in creating your own great ad is to look at what others have done.  Take a look at the magazines, websites and other advertising that your prospects and customers are likely to be exposed to.  Start to develop an “eye” for the advertisements that you are exposed to – you should have plenty of opportunities! As you look at these ads be sure to take note of what catches your attention, what moves you and why. Also take notice of the ads you don’t like and figure out what turns you off. If an advertisement is effective for you it will likely be effective for your customers.

Try this experiment

Try to remember an advertisement you have seen in the last day or so. The ad could be on a billboard, television, magazine, newspaper, radio or on the internet. If you can’t remember one you are probably not alone. If you can remember an ad take a moment and think about why you remember it. Here are some reasons you may remember it:

• It had a great design, message or graphics that caught your attention
• You are interested in what the ad was saying to you
• You connect with the product, idea or mood the ad creates
• The ad touches an emotion, feeling or memory
• It was so bad and annoying that you couldn’t help notice it and you probably won’t respond in a favorable manner to the advertisement

Connect with your customers with the right message

What connects with you should connect with your customers – after all isn’t that a big part of producing your art is all about? You advertising message may be your first “point of touch” with your prospects before they have a chance to take a look at your art either in person or online.  In other instances your advertising serves to maintain contact with your existing customers by helping them keep you in mind.  If you don’t connect with your customers or prospects they will surely be on to the next thing and your advertisement will have failed.

An advertising message can be relayed using elements like: headlines and advertising copy, graphics and images, sounds, and even smells and tastes.  A bit of testing is in order to find out the right combination of these elements that work best for you.  In any case your advertising message needs to come in loud and clear and grab your audience’s attention.

Elements of a great ad

Great ads always touch an emotion!  Which of these emotions can you use in your advertising?

 

Most great ads have all or some of the following elements in common:

• The idea or concept behind the advertisement is clear and there is a sense of purpose of what the advertisement is designed to accomplish
• They get to the core of the benefits of a product, service or idea
• They fit into the culture of the intended audience
• They have great design, production and execution
• They get noticed with great images, catchy phrases and other elements
• They connect with their audience and communicate to them
• They make their audience feel something by touching their emotions
• They may be entertaining but are always impactful
• They make you want to find out more, pick up a phone or make a purchase or other call to action
• They support your brand and your brand image
• They accomplish their objectives in terms of responses, awareness, sales and profit

Putting your advertising message to work

One of the keys to effective marketing is to have advertising messages that are consistent across all of your advertising and marketing efforts.  If you come up with a great ad use it in as many places and ways that you can.  Here are some examples of places that your advertising message can work for you:

• Advertisements in print, broadcast or other electronic mediums
• Brochures, flyers and informational pieces
• Websites and online galleries
• Signage, banners, and billboards
• Your public relations efforts
• Your social media postings and profiles
• Your “elevator speech” or what you tell others about you and your art
• And don’t forget your business cards are a great place to advertise!

A good ad is art!

 

The bottom line(s)…

Creating a great ad is not easy!   It takes knowing your customers and delivering to them a message about your art business.  Think outside the box, do something new that connects with your audience. To quote the legendary adman George Lois, ““I think advertising should be like poison gas. It should grip you by the throat, it should bowl you over, it should knock you on your ass.”  In many ways creating a good advertising is an art.  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

These days having a good website is more important than ever before. The key word is good!  Without a website your customers and prospects may not take you seriously and you may not appear professional.  From a marketing perspective an online presence is imperative as media moves from away from traditional forms such as newspaper, magazine, television, radio and some forms of direct marketing.  Even your local hot dog stand probably has a website!

There is a lot of competition for your customer’s attention

There are millions of web sites with billions of pages on the internet.  Thousands more websites are being added every day.  If you don’t implement an effective web strategy you may find yourself at the bottom of a huge search list never to be found.

It is important to remember that you are competing for your customers’ and prospects’ attention – it’s that simple.  As consumers have become more plugged in than ever before, their attention span has become shorter.  People are increasingly becoming “multitaskers” and it is not uncommon for people to be writing an email while checking their Facebook page, texting on their mobile device with a television set on in the background.  In short if you cannot provide an engaging online experience then your customers and prospects will be off to the next thing – guaranteed!

If you would like to learn more about how the virtual world is changing our lives and attention spans I invite you to check out the following PBS video “Digital Nation” http://video.pbs.org/video/1402987791/

Your customers expect more from a website

As websites proliferate, the bar is being raised as to what people expect. Websites are evolving and getting better with regard to:

• Improved viewer experiences
• More professional graphics, photos and text content that are relevant
• Improved and more standardized navigation
• Addition of video, audio and interactive capabilities
• Mobile device capability as more people view content on a small screen
• Easy product ordering and customer service
• Integrating social media activities and the ability to share your content

The cost of developing a website has been dropping as new technologies and more competitors enter the web development market.  That is not to say that the cost of developing and maintaining a good website is next to nothing.  Make sure that you provide for web development and enhancements in your marketing budget.  Perhaps more costly than money in website development is your time; don’t overlook your time required and budget it as well.

Uses for an artist’s website

Websites can serve a lot of different purposes and you will need to decide which ones are right for you.  As you add more functionality to your website the amount of maintenance and expense increases.  Keep your website as simple as you can without sacrificing features that will help grow your business and brand.  Some common uses for a website include:

• A basic business presence or way for your customers and prospects to find you.  As other forms of finding a business are going away such as the yellow pages this is a basic function that you need to be concerned about.  Make it easy for your customers to find you, contact you and interact with you.
• Showcasing your product or service offerings.  This may be a simple product listing or elaborate galleries showing your work. Make sure you present your products in the best light for your intended audience and make it easy for them to view your selection.
• Announcing upcoming shows or exhibits, securing reservations for an event.
• Sales and product fulfillment more commonly known as ecommerce may be an important feature in your website. Make it easy for your customers to do business with you and give them a sense of trust when they order from you online. Your online sales efforts can open the whole world to your business and greatly expand your market reach.
• A great way to build a community of people who are interested in you, your company and your products. If you choose a blog format you are already set up to build your community. They key word behind building a community is interaction, between you and your community and interaction between community members.
• As a resource for ideas, news, entertainment, products and services which has now been dubbed “Content Management”.
• A platform to share information about yourself, your art, your ideas as well as things you find interesting in the form of a blog or journal.

Something to always keep in mind about your web presence – your customer!

As with any marketing activity you need to keep your customer or intended audience in mind. In the end it really doesn’t matter what you think or what you like, it is what your customer thinks and likes, hopefully both parties are on the same wavelength.  Make sure you understand your customers and prospects with respect to:

• Who they are by knowing their demographics, lifestyles and income levels
• What they want and what benefits they are looking for
• Their interests, like and dislikes
• Where they can be found both physically and in the virtual world
• What their hot buttons are and what they respond to

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask yourself, “Is my website providing them with what they want?”  If the answer is no then you have some work to do.  If the answer is yes then continue what you are doing but be sure to ask this question often as you change your business and your customers change their habits.  In short you need to get feedback from your website visitors and take action where needed.

The bottom line(s)…

Having a good website is important to the success of your art business and how your brand is portrayed to the world.  If your web experience is lacking in the eyes of your customers and prospects then they will move on – count on it!  Take a look at your web presence and identify the things that you need to change or improve on and take action.  And don’t forget to check out the websites of other artists who you feel do a great job in presenting their work and engaging their website visitors for ideas on improving your web experience.  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

There are many definitions of art (Leo Tolstoy: “a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity”; Oscar Wilde: “the most intense mode of individualism the world has known” – that sort of talk), but far fewer definitions of artist. We are quicker to think of the term as a value judgment than as something hard and fast. Lots of people want to be viewed as artists, from employees of tattoo parlors (body artists), chefs (culinary artists) and exotic dancers (performance artists). According to the bylaws of the National Watercolor Society, “Associate Membership is open to anyone,” and the National Sculpture Society proclaims that “If you create, collect, or just plain love sculpture, please join us as an Associate Member.”

Perhaps, a definition doesn’t matter, but the subject of identifying who is a professional artist does arise from time to time, for instance, when a foundation or government agency looks to award a grant or fellowship or during a census year when the U.S. government tries to count how many people are employed in this or that profession.

The Internal Revenue Service also cares, which is why for a period of almost 10 years the federal agency auditors combed through the financial records of Cambridge, New York painter Susan Crile, regularly disallowing her claimed deductions on her tax returns for art-related expenses on the basis that her work as an artist was “an activity not engaged in for profit.”

This past October, the siege finally ended with a 53-page ruling in her favor by the U.S. Tax Court, which stated that “[i]n a qualitative as well as a quantitative sense, we conclude that the balance of factors favors [Crile] and that she has met her burden of proving that in carrying on her activity as an artist, she had an actual and honest objective of making a profit. We therefore hold that she was…in the ‘trade or business’ of being an artist.”

Her credentials as an artist undoubtedly would pass muster with the Census Bureau or with a grant-making foundation or agency, and in fact she received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982 and 1989. The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased two of her paintings, as did the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Phillips Collection, and more than two dozen other museums (including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum and the Guggenheim Museum) have her works in their permanent collection. Most of her works in these public collections were donated by collectors.

For most artists, their careers may seem brighter on their resumes than reflected in gallery and auction house sales, and the same has been true with Susan Crile. The Tax Court ruling noted that during the years 2004-2009 her net proceeds from sales of her art amounted to $15,740, and she sold an additional 13 pieces for which she should have received $17,250 but had not been paid. During 2000-2013, Crile earned average annual net proceeds of $9,980 from her art. From the beginning of her career through 2013, she averaged approximately $17,000 from sales of her art.

She would be a pretty hungry artist if that was the entirety of her earnings, but she also is a full-time art professor at Hunter College in New York City (earning between $85,999 and $106,058 during the years in question, not counting interest income, dividends, capital gains and social security payments), which the IRS auditor held against her, claiming that teaching was her real job and making and selling art just a hobby.

However, the Tax Court found “that Hunter College required or expected its art professors to exhibit their work; it did not require that they actually sell art. Many of the marketing and related business activities in which [Crile] engaged were thus irrelevant to her teaching career.”

Crile’s case was not the first time that the Tax Court had ruled in favor of an artist in an area of law referred to as “hobby-loss.” Back in 1977, a precedent-setting decision was handed down with regard to a painter, Gloria Churchman, who had claimed losses of several hundred dollars in her tax filings in 1970 and 1971. For all of her 20-year career, Churchman’s income from art sales never had exceeded her losses, and the IRS also claimed that the artist was supported by her husband, a college professor. As a result, IRS auditors labeled Churchman a hobbyist and her deductions for art-related expenses were denied. However, the artist took her case to Tax Court, which found that Churchman pursued her art career “with a bona fide intention and expectation of making a profit” and the fact that she did not rely on sales of her artwork for her livelihood was irrelevant. Lack of income, the Court ruled, and “a history of losses is less persuasive in the art field than it might be in other fields because the archetypal ‘struggling artist’ must first achieve public acclaim before her serious work will command a price sufficient to provide her with a profit.”

The ruling in favor of Susan Crile was “not a revolutionary decision, but a reassuring one,” according to Amelia Brankov, an arts lawyer in New York City. She noted that “this case is reassuring to artists with regard to Crile having a job and being an artist,” adding that what turned the Tax Court in the artist’s favor was the fact that Crile had “saved receipts for her art-related purchases, had a business plan, marketed her work. It all supported the idea that she was attempting to earn a profit from her work.”

Crile’s tussle with the IRS is not ended. While the Tax Court accepted the artist’s intentions of earning a profit and commended the fact that she saved receipts, the court questioned some of her claimed business expenses, such as cable television bills, gratuities to doormen in her apartment building, taxicabs to the opera and other social events, restaurant meals with friends and international travel. Decisions on those deductions await another day.

While the Census Bureau and many foundations have a broad definition of professional artist, the Internal Revenue Service’s perspective is more narrow. There are nine criteria that the IRS applies in order to separate professionals from hobbyists (professionals may deduct their expenses, hobbyists may not):

• Is the activity carried on in a businesslike manner?
• Does the artist intend to make the artistic activity profitable?
• Does the individual depend in full or in part from income generated by the artistic work?
• Are business losses to be expected, or are they due to circumstances beyond the artist’s control?
• Are business plans changed to improve profitability?
• Does the artist have the knowledge to make the activity profitable?
• Has the artist been successful in previous professional activities?
• Does the activity generate a profit in some years and, if so, how much of one?
• Will the artist make a profit in the future?

The artist need not answer “yes” to every question in order to legitimately deduct business-related expenses – including art supplies and equipment, studio rental, travel (mileage, airfare, parking, tolls, meals and lodging), educational expenses (conferences, master classes, museum membership) and the cost of advertising and promotion (business cards, brochures, photography, postage and shipping) – but the IRS demands proof that an artist make a genuine effort to earn a profit in three years out of a five-year span.
Artistic credentials, which don’t usually matter to collectors, critics, dealers and curators, may help an artist make a case that he or she is a professional for tax purposes. These include earning a bachelor’s or Master’s degree in fine arts, membership in an artists’ society, the experience of teaching art, inclusion in Who’s Who in American Art or some similar directory and an exhibition history.

“No one told me or my lawyers what problem the IRS had with me,” Crile said. “I think they wanted to test the idea of whether someone claiming to be a professional artist is actually a hobbyist, and I was there.” She added that the “only positive thing to come out of this is that the ruling is clear and precedent-setting. It may help an awful lot of people.”

By Daniel Grant

Exhibition visitors. Photo by: Jeff Taylor – uncommon photography

Today there are many opportunities for artists to show and share their work – you just need to be creative! Before you embark on choosing a venue to show your work you need to answer one simple question – “Is my customer likely to visit the venue either in the real or virtual worlds?”

When you talk to a person on the street and tell them you are an artist, one of the questions that they will likely ask is, “What gallery is your work in?” Being in a gallery is a large part of many artists marketing efforts and for some it says, “I have arrived”.

The reasons for having your work in a gallery can range from pure vanity, adding to your resume to selling your art. Hopefully one of your main goals will be to get new customers while building your brand.

There are two main parts of displaying your work in a gallery, the presentation or exhibition part and the business part. The exhibition part is about preparing a body of work, displaying and merchandising it properly and providing a great experience to the gallery visitors. The business part is about choosing the right venue, with the right customers, having the right agreements in place and marketing your work so you end up with a profit.

Traditional venues to display your work

The traditional venues to display your work are art galleries or museums. Increasing more artists display and sell their work on online galleries. These traditional venues include:

• A gallery section in your studio
• Your own gallery or retail location
• A shared space such as an artist’s coop
• A museum, library or other public space
• An independent gallery
• College and university galleries
• Online in a gallery on your website or with online gallery/portfolio websites
• And don’t forget the Member Portfolio on the International Sculpture Center’s website!

Exhibition visitors. Photo by: Jeff Taylor – uncommon photography

 

The traditional gallery approach

There are numerous books written on how to get your work exhibited in a gallery. The process goes something like this:

1. Get a body of work together.
2. Develop your artist’s statement for the work.
3. Do some research on the galleries to see if there is a fit. This is where networking, referrals and getting to know gallery owners becomes very important.
4. Make an appointment before you approach a gallery and be respectful of the gallery owner’s time.
5. Show them your work.
6. If the gallery wants to represent your work then work out a business arrangement or….
7. Prepare yourself for rejection and move on to the next opportunity.

Things to consider with gallery representation

Before you enter into any relationship with a gallery make sure that you understand what you are getting into. If you are unsure of a particular gallery relationship, talk to your legal advisor or someone who is knowledgeable about the gallery business.

Here are some basic things to consider with gallery representation:

• Do you have a big enough body of work to support the gallery?
• Is the gallery appropriate for your art and the gallery’s customer base?
• What is the gallery / artist split?
• What expenses will be paid by the artist, by the gallery?
• Is there a written contract and do you understand it?
• Who is responsible for insurance and in what amounts?
• Who is responsible for the delivery of your art to the gallery?
• Who is responsible for set up / take down of your gallery show?
• What dates / hours will you need to be at the gallery?
• What if a customer tries to come directly to buy from you?
• How long will the relationship last (CONTRACTUALLY)?
• Who will promote and market your show?
• Does a relationship with the gallery help grow your brand?

Nontraditional venues to show your work

You need to be creative and think about nontraditional venues to show and sell your work. One of the advantages of these venues is that you may have less competition from other artists or art works.

Some nontraditional venues to show your art include:

• Home Furnishing Stores
• Furniture Stores
• Office Buildings
• Restaurants
• Retailers
• Just about any other place you can think of to display and sell your art. I have a student with automotive themed sculpture who sells his art in an auto repair store!

And Don’t Forget…

Not everybody who views your work in an online or in person gallery will make a purchase. Use these opportunities to develop a list of prospects. Make it easy for people who have seen your work to connect with you as well as easy for you to connect with them. Some ways you can make this process easier include:

• A signup sheet for visitors to provide their name and email
• Appropriate advertising materials which list your contact information with your website, email, phone, etc.
• Advertising your social media presence and inviting others to connect with you on social media
• Show cards, tags, brochures or flyers at your shows
• Possible use of QR Codes on marketing materials and individual work descriptions

Remember: Make it easy for people who have seen your work to contact you, to find out more and to keep up to date on you and your art.

The bottom line(s)…

There are a lot of ways to show your work from the traditional gallery to many not so traditional venues and methods.  Take some time to explore the various alternatives where you can showcase your art and experiment to see what works best for you.  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

As Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Wayne Clough greeted visitors to Smithsonian X 3D Conference, he casually rattled off a rounded figure of visitors to the Smithsonian in 2012: 30 million. If those were all Americans, that means about 300 million never crossed the threshold of any of their 19 museums, or the National Zoo. For Clough – a man from rural Georgia who, in his opening remarks of the conference, admitted to not knowing about the Smithsonian until he was 20 – how can the Smithsonian reach that audience? Or, for that matter, the rest of the world?

The Smithsonian X 3D conference, which took place November 13 and 14 in the Freer Galleries in Washington DC, featured the Beta launch of a possible solution. Smithsonian X 3D is a webGL-based viewer that uses an OBJ file to zoom, rotate, and adjust lighting or surface quality, virtually. (The “x 3D” signifies the Smithsonian, multiplied by 3D.) While the idea of downloading and printing a model on a desktop 3D printer is intriguing, it’s the notion that you can get closer to the virtual object than you could to the physical object: at least, without getting arrested and charged with a Federal crime.

At present, Smithsonian X 3D contains about 20 scans from seven of the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, and from four of its nine research centers. For a project that has been in the works for the last three years, 20 models doesn’t seem like a lot. However, for Adam Metallo and Vince Rossi—the Smithsonian’s so-called “Laser Cowboys”– the goal of launching the project has not been one of volume so much as it has been about education. And part of that education has been learning on-the job, and letting their colleagues know what was possible, both in terms of capturing techniques and the final output.

Metallo and Rossi grabbed some attention in early 2012 for their collaborative work with Studio EIS to scan and print a 1:1-scale replica of a Thomas Jefferson bronze sculpture from Monticello. The final output was considered museum quality, and was intended for display in a touring exhibit, Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty. While it cast a light on the potential for a museum to scan and display replica of artifacts (a feat previously accomplished by Staab Studios for the 2010 tour of King Tut, it also signified the potential for users anywhere in the world to download, print, and study a museum-quality replica from the Smithsonian collection. Although, the Jefferson reproduction also posed one minor problem: it’s not a part of the Smithsonian collection. The original sculpture remains property of Monticello, and the 3D model is the intellectual property of Studio EIS, so the scan is not amongst the available options on Smithsonian X 3D. (See Michael Weinberg’s whitepaper “What’s the Deal with Copyright and 3D Printing” for more insight on 3D printing legality issues.)

Detail of a layer of the Cosmic Buddha revealing engravings.

 

Throughout its three years, the 3D Digitization program has consisted mostly of two guys, and a hand full of volunteers (full disclosure: I was one for about 40 hours, and as of March a third member, Jonathan Blundell, was hired onto the team, full time). Over the course of those three years, they’ve worked with and learned from numerous partners in scanning and printing technologies, and software design. They’ve applied that knowledge at research sites in Africa, South America, and Indonesia. They’ve shared that knowledge not only at the Smithsonian, but also at conferences across Europe and North America, presenting their processes, and informing audiences the potential 3D has for exhibitions, preservation, archeology, and research.

The Smithsonian Institution houses over 137-million objects. Fortunately for Metallo, Rossi, and Blundell, it’s not their job to scan it all: it would be impossible. At a rate of one object per minute, it would take a person working round the clock, seven days a week, 260 years to accomplish that task. And there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Scanning a small and simple object in one minute with a single hand-held scanner can be a difficult task. Now, imagine the time it takes to scan a fossil of a mammoth, or a pod of forty complete whale fossils. Reverse the scale and scan an object as intricate as an orchid or as small as its pollinator. Apart from laser scanners, there are choices to be made to use photogrammetry or CT scans to capture the data, and ways of treating an object for a better scan (the orchid had to be freeze-dried). Each object presents a different challenge: some of scale, some of delicacy. Other objects have intriguing narratives, some specific to the locations of an object’s discovery; preserving that information is just as necessary. While scaling up the capture of data is the next big goal of the project, more important is educating their colleagues within the Smithsonian on methods to most effectively capture and render the data for the website. Apart from achieving Clough’s goal of bringing the Smithsonian to more people, it would also provide fruitful ground for exchanges of research.

For instance, the Buddha Vairochana, nicknamed the Cosmic Buddha, was sculpted approximately 1500 years ago. Standing at roughly the height of a person, It’s hands and head have been lost to time. What remains of the sculpture is a long robe draped over the human figure: a robe that once contained an intricate low relief carving. Over time that carving has been worn down by the elements and the countless hands that rubbed its surfaces during teaching. To the naked eye, that carving remains somewhat visible, but the detail is difficult to read. Prior to placement in the Smithsonian, it is assumed that researches may have made paper rubbings of the surface in an effort to extract from the stone what the naked eye could not see. This is the physical experience of seeing the Cosmic Buddha.

As a 3D model, the story is different. Thanks to a highly detailed laser scan of the sculpture a user can illuminate the sculpture with an occlusion map: a map of light that basically pushes the contrast between shadow and light, revealing intimate detail lost to the naked eye. Also, thanks to the 3D model, researchers can digitally unwrap the Buddha, and view the entire relief, rather than in the round. Now a scholar on the other side of the globe who has access to similar artifacts can compare the carvings within the Cosmic Buddha to other existing sculptures, relief carvings, and rubbings.

In the future, that researcher might also be able to add to the Smithsonian X 3D website. At present, visitors can take a guided tour courtesy of annotated pins that contain text, image, and video. Visitors can also share snapshots of the object, change the light source, and make measurements. But, one day, the Smithsonian hopes to create opportunities for visitors to make their own guided tours for class presentations, or to add to the catalog of information available on the website.

The Smithsonian is not the only research institution committed to 3D scanning. The Metropolitain Museum of Art has held hackathons in recent years, inviting artists to scan objects in the collection and reconfigure the models into new creations. Student scans from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago can be found on Thingiverse, a free on-line repository of 3D scans, inventions, cell-phone cases, and Yoda-heads. There is also the Idaho Virtualization Laboratory at Idaho State University, which has scanned hundreds of zoological specimens, and has also made them available on line, but its interface is clunky and requires a plug-in. Each example has limitations of access, quality resolution, or usability. The Smithsonian, at present, simply has the limitation of available volume. Whether that changes remains to be seen. Regardless of the limitation of volume, at the very least, Smithsonian X 3D gives us a glimpse of the future to come, potentially changing how we view objects within the context of the museum, and beyond.

By John Anderson

Image of the Cosmic Buddha courtesy of Smithsonian Digitization Program Office

Note: Updated 12-13-13 2:30pm

There are times when you can assume that you will be the center of conversation – for instance, in your studio during an open-studio event, in your booth at an art fair, at a gallery opening of your own work. However, those occasions are few and far between. It’s a big world out there, and most people will have no idea who you are or what you do. Artists, like everyone else meet people all the time, and it makes sense to reach out to people you don’t know or don’t know well, finding opportunities to mix with people who might become buyers. For instance, one might join a town committee or the Rotary club or the Jaycees, volunteer at a church or public television station.

There is usually a “Hello, what do you do?” element of the conversation. Think, everyone is a potential collector, so it is wise to present yourself as a professional, with some prepared way of summing yourself up. For instance, “I’m a sculptor and do figurative works in bronze” or “I create large-scale outdoor metal sculptures on commission and for gallery exhibitions.” It doesn’t hurt to carry a business card or thin brochure with you that can be handed out to people you meet. (You don’t want to hunt around for a pen and a piece of paper to write your name and phone number on, and you can’t count on people you just met to type in your name and contact information on their cell phones.) Whatever you pass out should have your name, Web site and contact information; a brochure would have those things and include one or more images.

You don’t want to say something along the lines of “I’m just an artist,” because that sounds as though you want to get off the subject. If you mumble or tell a listener, “Well, I guess you could say I’m an artist,” it sounds as though you don’t know what you are about. There are some who will just say “I’m an artist,” which is almost a conversation stopper, because it doesn’t really tell people anything. Are you a painter, a sculptor? What kind of work do you do? Where do you show? Whomever you are talking to will get the sense that they need to play 20 Questions and pull the information out of you, which strikes many people as a lot of work, let’s not go there.

If you say, “I’m a landscape painter, and I teach at Indiana University,” the likely response will be a question about how long you have been teaching there or if you like the school, not about you as an artist and what you create. Direct people first to talk to you about you, and later on they may ask how you actually make a living.

There are two schools of thought about what you say to people. On the one hand is the short sum-up, which is often called the “elevator pitch” – a capsulate version that won’t take longer than the time it takes to get from the first to the fourth floor in an elevator. For instance, “I paint cityscapes, particularly images of my two favorite cities – London and Paris. I’m having a show next month at the This-or-That Gallery, and there is an opening on the first night. I’d love if you could come.”

The other approach can be described as more open-ended, tending to elicit follow-up questions and keep the conversation going. Ann Rea, a San Francisco landscape painter, for instance, tells people “I create an experience of art for my collectors.” Colleen Attara, who calls herself an eco-artist, says, “I make joyful art from salvaged materials.” (She might have described her work as “assemblage” or, more in the line of Richard Stankiewicz, “junk art.”) Jenny McGee, a portrait artist, tells people that I “help people express their story through art.” This approach identifies not so much what the artists do as it makes a case for the value of what they do and what is unique about them.

Both ways of identifying yourself and your art have worked for certain artists, and the effectiveness of each depends on one’s comfort level with one or the other approach, but most important is having something ready at hand to say.

By Daniel Grant

I come from the business world. In over thirty years of business planning and marketing I have had the opportunity to work with many successful (as well as my share of not so successful) startups to some of the world’s biggest and best known brands. These successful companies had a lot more in common than you might think. What they had in common was a grasp for the basics of marketing, consumer behavior and a good plan of action with the management to execute it.

 When I was first asked to develop and teach the course Artrepreneurship at the Center for Innovation I was excited but a bit apprehensive – I went to business and economics school not art school! So here is my premise – selling art (or anything for that matter) is like selling potato chips, you do the basic things, you do them right and you have a chance to succeed. Don’t do them and you are set for failure.

In preparing for my first Artrepreneurship class I knew I needed to get immersed in the art world and learn from successful artists, gallery owners, collectors and others in this realm. As I told them about my Artrepreneurship course they all were excited and said that this was something that was desperately needed.

To a person, each one asked what my philosophy on selling art was. It went something like this, “I don’t mean to be rude or offensive but to me selling art is like selling potato chips….” With the first few people I tried this on I made sure that I was far enough away from them and rocking on my back foot just in case I had to get out of the way of a punch – it never happened. All agreed that people in the arts need business skills to succeed!

Ok, let’s look at a few of the ways selling art is like selling potato chip and a few ways where the similarity is a bit less obvious.

• You have to understand your market and your consumer (art collector, investor, gallery…). Why they buy, how they buy and what funds do they have to buy.
• Your product fulfills a need. That need could be to make a home or office a better space, a gamble that the purchase will become more valuable in the future or they “just like it”. People buy potato chips because they like to eat them with their meals, just have a snack, they taste good, or eating them makes them feel good.
• In market research we have a term called “incidence”. It goes something like this, x % of the US population eats potato chips, y % of the population buys art. You should be able to figure out that the incidence of people eating potato chips is probably a lot larger than those buying art.
• There is a lot of competition in the potato chip market. Just look down the potato chip aisle in the supermarket to see all of the different brands, some national, some local, and probably some that are only available in your local area. And there are plenty of choices: plain, salted, unsalted, fried, baked, flavored, big bags, small bags, organic and the list goes on and on. Your art is no different; your consumer has a lot of choices as well.
• Let’s go back to the potato chip aisle at the supermarket; actually it is called the “Snack Food” aisle. Not only can you get potato chips but you have the choice of pretzels, tortilla chips, vegetable chips and other salty snacks. Potato chips are competing for your snack dollar every time you walk down that aisle.  Your art is no different. Depending on why your customer buys your art they probably have many choices available to them. It could be a sculpture, a flower arrangement, another type of investment, or even a new coat of paint or a large screen TV for a wall.
• The money consumers have to spend can be divided into two groups, necessary spending and discretionary spending. Necessary spending is for food, clothing and shelter, taxes and what is left over is called discretionary. We can use our discretionary funds for things like vacations, luxury items, entertainment or even choose not spend them and save. For most consumers I would not put potato chips in the realm of discretionary spending, for many they are a necessity to go along with their sandwich. For most consumers I would put art in the discretionary spending category. The problem with discretionary spending is that in an economic slump there is less of it.

Whether you are selling art or potato chips you need to develop strategies for:

• Targeting your market – Who should you concentrate your art marketing efforts on?
• Understanding your customers – Have you painted a picture of what your customers look like?
• Understanding your competition – Who is your competition and what can you learn from them?
• Developing effective strategies for:
  • Products Offered – What products do you sell and what are the benefits you offer?
  • Advertising – Are your advertising efforts reaching your target market and are they effective?
  • Public Relations – Is the word out about you and your art?
  • Pricing – Does your pricing allow you to make a fair profit and fund your business?
  • Distribution – Are you selling your art in the proper venues or channels?
  • Promotions – Do you have special promotions which can help increase awareness or help sell slow moving items?
  • Merchandising & Packaging – Do you package your art in a way that attracts customers and builds your brand?

The bottom line(s)…

There are many things that an art business has in common with all businesses in general. Make it a point to study other businesses to discover what makes them successful and see if you can apply these ideas to your art or creative business.  There is a lot you can learn from selling potato chips.  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

A good day: On August 11th, 2010, the Gasser Grunert Gallery in Manhattan sold Jomar Statkun’s 2009 60” x 72” painting “Tubal Cain at Beggar’s Creek” to an art collector for $16,000. Less a 50 percent commission, Statkun walked away with an $8,000 sale.

A not-so-good day: At a party two years later, Statkun met a former employee of the gallery who told him that the gallery facilitated that sale by cropping 10 inches off the painting to suit the space needs of the collector. The painting’s dimensions were now 50” x 72”. Emails between the gallery owner and the painting’s buyer revealed that Grunert offered to trim the original painting to a size more suitable to the buyer, and the dealer claimed to have spoken about that plan with Statkun and that the artist was content with her doing so. That $8,000 was still welcome, but the artist saw that his painting had been mutilated, a violation of the 1990 amendment to the U.S. Copyright Law, known as the Visual Artists Rights Act, which allows living artists to protect their artwork from “intentional distortions, mutilation or modification… that would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation.” Almost three years to the day after that sale, Statkun brought a VARA lawsuit against the gallery owner, asking $20,000 for compensatory damages and $150,000 for statutory damages as permitted under the law.

Not really a better day: Last March, a district judge found in favor of the artist but only awarded him $3,500, claiming that the change in the painting’s dimensions weren’t that significant, considering its original size, and that its actual value far less than the amount Statkun was seeking. In his ruling, Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote
While this alteration, assuming as the Court does that it was made without plaintiff’s consent, violated plaintiff’s rights, was improper, it does not, in this Court’s estimation, warrant the imposition of statutory damages of nearly ten times the sale price of the work….

[The Court] sees no reason to provide the artist with a windfall at the expense of the gallery, which served the artist’s economic interest while, to be sure, serving its own as well. It fixes statutory damages at $3,500.

Statkun said that he was “baffled by the ruling,” as was his lawyer, Raymond Mandra, who had been appointed to represent him by New York’s Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts organization. The artist claimed that he is considering an appeal of the award.

Perhaps, it is time to review this thing called artists’ rights. VARA is a fairly limited statute, preventing the owners of artworks of “recognized stature” from destroying them and forbidding these pieces from being altered in some way without the artist’s approval. The thinking behind these moral rights is that unapproved alterations or destruction may damage an artist’s reputation. The law establishes mechanisms by which an artist may retrieve a work of art that the owner might otherwise destroy, as well as enables an artist to disclaim ownership of a piece that has been altered. Works of art are also narrowly defined as a painting or drawing, or sculptures, graphic and photographic prints in limited editions (signed and numbered by the artist) of 200 or fewer copies.

Back in 1990, it seemed as though the issue was making sure that collectors didn’t intentionally damage or destroy significant works that they owned. Among the examples offered of willful damage when Congress was debating this legislation in the 1980s was a black-and-white mobile by Alexander Calder, displayed in a building at the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, that had been turned into a stationary sculpture in 1958 and painted the city’s official colors, green and gold. A few years before that, the industrial green paint on one of David Smith’s metal sculptures was removed because the purchaser didn’t like it, and a mural by Arshile Gorky at the Newark (New Jersey) Airport was whitewashed. Stupid stuff; there ought to be a law.

Those kinds of problems rarely happen, because ruining a work of art is tantamount to throwing away money, but as Statkun learned they still may occur. Few Visual Artists Rights Act lawsuits get very far up the judicial chain, because of the cost to the artist. “It is very expensive to bring a VARA suit,” Scott Hodes, a Chicago lawyer who has represented several artists in these actions, said. “You’re talking $200,000, $250,000. Even nonprofit lawyers won’t take these cases unless they’re a slam dunk.”

Brooke Oliver, a San Francisco lawyer who has represented a number of artists in moral rights cases, principally dealing with building owners wanting to do away with a mural, claimed that a major affect of the Visual Artists Rights Act has been to inform prospective buyers of art of “recognized stature” that they cannot do whatever they want with the pieces they purchase, because they, too, may find themselves with legal costs.

By Daniel Grant

If you are serious about selling art and having a successful art business then you need a business plan.  Every business needs a plan including businesses in the arts!  A plan will help you organize your business and give it a much better chance to succeed and grow. Many successful artists and galleries have told me that when they started their business they now wish that they had spent more time to create a formal plan. They felt that having a plan would have enabled them to grow faster and make fewer mistakes – good advice to follow!

Whether you are starting a new art business or have an existing one, make sure that the planning process is a part of your business life. A major benefit of the planning process in addition to the plan itself, is developing a way of thinking about your business and the environment it operates in. You will begin to see things differently and uncover opportunities and threats before others see them.

Most people spend more time planning their vacations than they do in planning for their businesses – don’t let this happen to you. Set some time aside for planning in your normal course of work – planning should be an integral part of running your art business.

The Planning Process

In keeping with the “planning your vacation or trip” theme, planning for your business is quite similar. The planning process is really quite simple and consists of four basic questions. Finding the answers to these questions is a little more complicated and will require some time and effort on your part. The basic questions in the planning process are:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where are we going?
3. How are we going to get there?
4. How will we know when we have arrived?
   

1. Where are we now?

Sometimes this step is called a Situation Analysis in that you are trying to get a feel of where you are today and to identify the internal and external factors that affect your business. Key parts of the Situation Analysis include:

Company Summary – a brief description of:

• Your company
• Products
• Markets
• Competition
• Form of organization
• Key players
• Your story

Strengths & Weaknesses

When you analyze your strengths and weaknesses you are taking a look inward at your business. Because strengths and weaknesses are internal to your business you have some level of control to alter or change them. When you find an area of strength, you should capitalize on it. When you find an area of weakness you should remedy the situation or make its impact less on your business.

Some ideas of areas to look for strengths and weaknesses:

• Your art, products and services you create or provide
• The skill of the people in your organization (this includes you!)
• Your marketing efforts and your brand
• Your studio and facilities
• How you create or produce your art
• Your financial and accounting systems
• How your company is organized and managed

Opportunities and Threats

Opportunities and threats are factors that are external to your business. Unlike strengths and weaknesses you will probably have little power to change them – only adapt. You should strive to take advantage of opportunities and minimize the effect of threats on your art business.

Some ideas of areas to look for opportunities and threats:

• Changes in consumer behavior, fashion and trends
• Changes in technology that may affect how you sell and produce your art
• Government regulations
• Changes in availability of supplies / materials
• The state of the economy
• The size of the market and growth trends

Competitive Environment

Your business doesn’t live in a competitive vacuum! It is likely that you have a large number of competitors. These competitors may be in your neighborhood, city or town, country and now ever increasingly all over the world. Don’t confuse the fact that your work may be unique with not having any competition – there are very few products or companies in the world with no competition!

Some areas to look at in analyzing your competitive environment:

• The number and quality of competitors
• Geographic dispersion your competitors
• What makes your competitors strong/weak?
• Competitor’s actions and reactions
• What can you learn from your competitors?

My Competitive Advantages

After you have looked at your competitors you should analyze what YOUR competitive advantages are. What makes you stand out in the marketplace and insures that customers think of you first? A good question to ask yourself is, “What is your “secret sauce”?

2. Where are we going?

When you plan a vacation one of the things you do first is decide on where you are going and what you will do when you get there – planning for your art business is really no different. If you don’t know where you are going then you may end up in a place that you don’t want to be.

In business planning you answer this question by developing our Mission; a Vision of what the future should look like; and Goals & Objectives to focus your attention on key business initiatives.

Mission

• The what, why, how and to whom for which your business exists
• Your mission guides your everyday business actions.

Vision

Conceptually the Vision Statement helps you describe why it is important to achieve the Mission, the overall reason(s) the business exists, and what you are trying to accomplish

Goals & Objectives

A goal is a broad term for the things you want to accomplish in your art business. Objectives are typically defined as goals that have been “quantified” in terms of time to complete, cost, and other resources that can be measured. You will need to develop goals and objectives for the major areas and initiatives in your business.

Goals & Objectives need to be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time and/or Cost Based

3. How are we going to get there?

Once you have developed your overall goals you will then need to develop strategies and action plans to describe the various steps necessary to achieve your goals. Strategies are somewhat broad in nature and the day to day activities needed to achieve them are translated into “Action Steps”. Your strategies and action plans are similar to a map and itinerary when planning a vacation.

You will need strategies and action steps for:

• Your creative and product direction
• Marketing and sales
• Finance & Accounting
• Production & Operations
• Facilities, studio, workshop
• Management & Organization

4. How will we know when we have arrived?

When you are on a vacation it is easy to know when you have arrived at your destination by the signs or points on your map. Business is no different but the signs are in a different form. In business we know we have arrived at our destination or completed our goals and objectives by:

• Tracking our progress on a calendar or schedule
• Measuring key initiatives to see if they were effective and accomplished our goals
• Monitoring our financial statements to see if our revenue and expenses are meeting our expectations.

The Bottom Line(s)…

Planning your art business is a must for success.  You don’t need to go to business school to learn the basics of business planning and as you plan you will become better at it.  If you need some help, there are a multitude of resources out there to help you develop your business plan.

Once you are done with the planning process you are ready to start over. You should develop a business planning “state of mind” and make it an ongoing activity. Remember – a lot of the value of the planning process is not the plan itself but a way of thinking about and running your business. Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

Without much fear of contradiction, one can say that artists want to exhibit their work and sell their work, too. When you yell into a canyon, you want to hear an echo. Getting that exhibition opportunity and making a sale, however, is rarely a given, leading artists to try alternatives. Some artists have found one option to be loaning their work, and they are discovering that a growing number of municipalities, as well as universities and museums, around the country are interested in receiving short- and long-term loans of artwork.

“It’s very difficult to sell sculpture through galleries,” said Reven Swanson of Denver, Colorado, who creates stationary and kinetic works. “Most people don’t have time to go to art galleries.” More often, they will have time and opportunity to travel downtown, and it is in these public locations that she places her large-scale pieces as part of a loan agreement with the arts commission or public arts commission in the city. Among the cities in Colorado are Broomfield, Boulder, Grand Junction, Greeley, Lakewood, Littleton, Longmont and Pueblo, and she also has loaned her work to city arts agencies in Iowa and South Dakota. At each site, the city creates a plaque identifying the artist and the title of the work, sometimes including information about the artist, and on occasion passers-by become more than a little intrigued, turning into buyers. “I’ve sold more than half of my loaned work, and I’ve received quite a few commissions from people in the cities where my work has been on display.”

Art loan programs are a way for cities and other institutions to “enhance public spaces without having to spend a lot of money,” said Anna Blyth, program planner for the City of Santa Fe (New Mexico) Arts Commission, and her agency solicits offers from artists (most of whom are within driving distance) for renewable year-long loans for sites at municipal parks, libraries and community centers. “Borrowing allows us to fill in the spaces where there is no art.”

Loan programs offer a variety of benefits for artists. For Mark di Suvero, who regularly creates monumental works, “a gallery show of 40- and 50-foot works don’t happen too often, because of the height limitations in most galleries,” said his studio director, Ivana Mestrovic. Lending his work to schools and other institutions “is really how his work is exhibited.” Sculptor Elyn Zimmerman also noted that “I try to put my work somewhere on loan, at colleges, museums or sculpture parks.” She contacts these institutions herself, finding that many of them are interested in short- and long-term loans. Her reason for doing this is that “maybe two or three works sell from a show and the rest take more time to sell. Meanwhile, I’ve got all these big sculptures to store while I’m making others. If I can put my work on display where people can see it, it’s better than my paying to store it. They have guards and insurance, so I don’t have to pay for that, either. An added benefit is that I can bring people out there to look at it – that may result in a sale.”

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation periodically loans sculptural works in the “Brushstrokes” series by the late artist to museums and other cultural centers “as part of its mission, which is to facilitate public access to the work of Roy Lichtenstein,” said Jack Cowart, the foundation’s executive director. Noting that “the foundation does have to support itself, some of these loans turn into purchases by the borrowing institutions, including one by the Indianapolis Museum of Art that had begun as a five-year loan.

In Greeley, Colorado, where Swanson has loaned her work, a panel selected by the public art coordinator, Kim Snyder, decides among the submissions of applications and images to pick a dozen works every year. Among the criteria for selection, Snyder noted, are the size and strength of the artwork, whether or not it would be “a good fit for Greeley” and the object’s susceptibility to damage or vandalism. Each selected artist receives a $700 stipend to cover (or assist with) the costs of moving and installing the artwork – additional manpower is provided by the city’s Parks Department – and the public art commission publishes a brochure that provides information on each piece and its creator. The commission annually solicits area residents to vote for their favorite artwork, and the artist of the biggest vote-getter receives an additional $500 People’s Choice Award. Every year, the city also purchases one of the loaned artworks for its permanent collection, and Swanson has been the recipient of both a People’s Choice Award and a purchase.

REGROWTH, 2009. Metal, found I-beam formed by hand hammering, 800 lbs. 6 ft. tall X 3 ft. wide X 2 ft. deep. On loan for $550 for one full year.

 

Every art loan program requires that the artist keep his or her work in place for the entire contract period, regardless of whether or not someone purchases the work. Sales do take place from time to time, and these occasions are handled in different ways. If a work included in the corporate art loan program of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts is bought by a museum corporate member, the artist receives the full purchase price. On the other hand, the Marble Falls Community Art Program in Texas takes a 25 percent commission on any sales that result from the year-long exhibition in the city’s downtown.

An honorarium for the artist, or even help with the cost of moving and installing artwork, is not a given at many city public arts agencies, and insurance against damage and theft also may be left to the individual artist. The City of Santa Fe, Anna Blyth noted, expects the artist to carry any insurance on his or her work, while other municipalities will assume the costs of insurance but require the artist to cover the deductible. Lago Vista, Texas sculptor Michael Epps loaned one of his works to a nearby city (“I don’t want to mention the city by name, because I still work with people there”), and the piece was sited in a parking lot across from a saloon. Late one December night several years ago, a patron of the saloon backed into his sculpture, driving over it and then taking some piece of it away. Neither the saloon patron nor the missing piece was ever found, and the sculpture was a total loss. The city’s insurance policy for the artwork had a $2,000 deductible, which was subtracted from the settlement that the artist received, in addition to a 30 percent commission that the city took for the sale of the sculpture.

The contract with the City of Bee Cave, Texas informs artists taking part in its art loan program that the insurance policy “is for the protection of the City against liability created by placement of the Sculpture on City Property” and does not cover damage or theft, which remain the responsibility of the artists. Normal wear-and-tear, damage from severe weather occurrences and vandalism do take place, and The City of Palo Alto (California) states in a written contract with artists participating in its art loan program that “The Artist, at his or her sole cost and expense, will maintain and repair the Sculpture and the Base during the term of this Agreement.”

Jack Cowart stated that “we’re very careful” where works by Lichtenstein are placed by the borrowing institution. “When asked by the occasional university, we trust it won’t be placed on fraternity row. We would prefer it in front of the university museum, a bit set back and with security.” One work that suffered damaged was placed in a park in Switzerland that local teens regularly used for games of soccer and Frisbee. “I guess the locals got annoyed by the presence of the work. They parked their bikes up against it. It was tagged once or twice. We had no idea.”

Since Lichtenstein’s sculptures aren’t placed on pedestals but are set directly into the ground (“Roy liked the idea of his work coming up from the ground, as though it were a tree”), the foundation stipulates to borrowing institutions that groundskeepers not drive their lawnmowers and trimmers right up to the works.

Not every artist has found the experience of lending artwork rewarding. Mike Baur, a sculptor in West Chicago, Illinois, found no buyers or commissions resulting from his various loans to different city public art agencies, and having pieces gone for a year or more “meant that my galleries had fewer pieces to sell.” Gary Beals, a sculptor in Phoenix, Arizona, noted that there was no honorarium for his loan to the City of Santa Fe, and his work needed to be refurbished when it was returned. “Cities should compensate the artist, changing their programs from loan programs to rental programs,” he said. “It need not be overburdening to the city. It just needs to be an acknowledgement of the artist’s effort and worth.” Rick DeTroyer, a sculptor in Chelsea, Michigan, has a “rental program,” but has “had very little response to my offer.”

The opportunity to have one’s work seen by far more people than visit art galleries is an irresistible temptation for artists, and lending pieces to cities, universities and other institutions may result in commissions and other opportunities to exhibit elsewhere. There are no honoraria for artists at gallery shows, and these displays rarely last more than a month, although they do draw the more select group of people who are more prone to buy artwork. Reven Swanson claimed that more public awareness and excitement attends the installation of her work in public settings than when there is a gallery exhibit. “In smaller towns, you get treated like royalty,” she said. “The mayor comes out to greet you. You get written up in the newspaper; the local television station interviews you.” In addition, there is a more immediate reaction – one way or another – to one’s work. “Works that don’t get a positive response I’ll later cut up and do something else.”

By Daniel Grant

Artist in residence via http://www.jeremyriad.com

Summer to autumn is a key period for residency applications, and quite opportunely correlates with what, for many, marks the completion of art school.

Residencies are an attractive prospect for fresh art graduates losing the foothold of an institution. I recall during the final months of my degree that obtaining one was seen as a kind of Holy Grail, particularly for those who made less commercially viable artwork. In addition to regaining a studio and building towards the first exhibition, post-degree show, a residency feels like a validation of your work, where an outside body can see worth and places faith in what you do. It is the first step in beginning your professional practice, not too permanent to be overly daunting, and when experiencing the first few drifting months of the post-graduation sink there is often plenty of time to apply for as many as possible.

A scattergun approach can soon follow – once starting out it is very easy to disregard practical considerations in terms of the needs of your practice and approach whatever opportunity is available. What is worse than wasting time on such residencies is wasting money on them too.

studio image via mes3900.wordpress.com

 

Part of my position as a co-director of a studio group involves compiling monthly opportunity mail-outs for the studio members. As a result I spend a long time sifting through several residency listings and finding genuine opportunities amongst pay-to-practice setups. Such “rental residencies” are actually short-term studio lets with massively hiked fees that offer the resident no real support, and are becoming increasingly common.

I took a small sample of ResArtis, an unmonitored art residency listing site where one must be a member to post opportunities. Out of the first 50 listings under “upcoming deadlines”, 15 did not require the successful applicant to pay fees, and 3 offered a fee reduction. 32 required the applicant to pay for their studio. Prices were around €170-250 per week (one memorable opportunity was €18000 for 3 months, VAT exclusive), some offering extras like accommodation or simply just a studio.

Stepping aside from personal opinions of what a residency could be or should be defined as, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this format if people are willing to pay what’s proposed. Such an approach could be of benefit to both the artist and the studio, allowing for increased fluidity of artists in a group, whilst some artists would not actually benefit from leasing a studio themselves in the long-term. In addition many studio groups are not-for-profit and lack funds, perhaps unable to afford to offer a free space and need to raise funds.

Yet this approach presents two prominent issues. The first being that, just as increased fluidity could be a benefit, it can be to a studio’s detriment. It is a system that greatly limits the scope of artists that can reside in a studio, and shifts emphasis on applicants from suitability and strength of practice to the ability to pay the residency fees. In addition it limits the length of time any artist can stay, not allowing for the artist to contribute to the local art scene in depth or develop their practice within that location for any amount of time. This in turn impacts the type of artists that can apply for such space, where work with a large physical presence, or length of process, are impinged. From my experience this type of residency in fact seems to be less common in non-profit studio spaces, perhaps more inclined to finding alternative funding for such schemes than other profit-based ventures. Many spaces seem to operate only with these paid-for residencies, with no long-term studios available.

Secondly these types of opportunities are often not forthcoming as to their nature. For many of the opportunities in my small survey the payment of studio rent was not mentioned in the initial posting – it often required some digging to find the payment rates within their websites. Some were vague in this too, mentioning fellowships that are in fact external funding bodies to be approached to help with fees.

Whilst applying for a residency that is not as it seems is a waste of time for an artist, it can in some instances also be to the detriment of the locale. If studio space is reserved for those who can pay a premium to be there in the short-term, less space is available for local artists, and there is less long-term career investment in the area. According to Alliance of Artists Communities 60% of residencies are in rural areas and small towns. A small and idyllic town may become a retreat at best, stymieing the opportunity for anything more.

As each residency is a part of a wide spectrum there are not many general guides available, let alone on this particular issue. Here The Guardian has collated some advice, and Artquest provide a guide for working in select countries what to expect. Ultimately embarking on such an “opportunity” is a personal choice – but I would encourage and expect no artist to be out-of-pocket to do his or her work.

By Dorothy Hunter

Josiah Robertson, Artist at Work.

When working with artists I find that most don’t use one of the easiest tools to take a pulse of the market, check up on their competition and grow their business – talking to their customers! Good organizations are in continuous contact with their customers, not just a “Hello or how are you doing?” when they make a purchase.

Whether you have an extensive customer list or are just starting out in your art business, finding out more about your customers is one activity that can make a real difference to your bottom line. If you don’t have any customers yet, then a good strategy is to find a competitor with work similar to yours and find out what their customers are all about.

I like to use the art analogy of “painting a picture” or “sculpting a sculpture” of your customer. What do they look like in terms of art tastes, their likes and dislikes, income levels, demographics, geographic location, lifestyle, traditional and online media habits, and social media preferences? If you can paint a picture of your customer, then reaching out to them and others who are like them is a lot easier and more cost effective.

In order to get to know your customers, you are going to have to make an effort.  Knowing your customers probably won’t come to you in a dream and Googling “Tell me about my customers” will likely be fruitless. What you think about your customers may not match the reality, set aside some time to get started and make talking to your customers a part of your business routine.

David Cregeen sculpting Lady Thatcher.

 

1. Choose which customers to survey (talk to)

Try to pick a sample of your customers so you have a cross section that is representative of your business.  Choose customers that are large and small, new and established, those who buy frequently and those who buy not so often – in short a random sample. Be sure to include customers that you know are satisfied, those that you are unsure of and maybe even those you know who are dissatisfied. If you don’t have any customers yet, then try to find who your competitor’s customers are.

It might be useful to segment your customers into similar groups to get a better idea of your whole customer base. You may need to ask different questions to each group or word your questions so that they are appropriate and understood.

Some examples of ways to segment your customers might be:

• Collectors, galleries, art investors, individuals, businesses, gift givers, retail buyers
• Age – young, old, middle age…
• By income levels
• By the type of art they buy
• By geographic region or country
• Where they live such as inner city, suburban, rural etc.
• Anything else you can think of that will help you group similar customers

Be sure to note on your completed surveys something to identify the customer segments you have chosen.

2. Choose your survey method

You have a variety of options available to you on how you can conduct your surveys. It could be as simple as taking your customers out to lunch, talking with them on the phone or sending them your survey by email. Don’t forget that social media can be an invaluable way to get feedback from your network.

If you want to do a more formal survey there are several free services on the internet such as Survey Monkey. These are easy to set up and administer, and most provide a basic analysis of the results.  Typically for a few dollars more these services will allow you to expand your survey efforts as well as go beyond a basic data analysis.

3. Develop your survey questions

Involve others when developing the questions to ask to your customers. This could be your artist friends, others in your organization or business professionals your trust. When it comes to developing surveys a second set of eyes can be most useful. Try to keep your survey simple and short enough to gather the needed information without being too long that your customers lose interest. Here are a few basic areas which you should include:

• How did you find out about me?
• What and why do you buy from me?
• What do you think I do well/poorly?
• How would you rate my service, pricing, value?
• How do you go about choosing who to buy art from?
• Do you know of other artists that are similar to me?
• What do you like/dislike about these other artists?
• Is there any additional art or services that you would like me to provide?
• What do you think of my advertising, marketing and sales efforts?
• What art publications and websites do you read/visit?
• What social media sites do you participate in?
• What ideas or tips could you give me on improving my company and growing my brand?
• Do you know others who would be interested in my art?
• Interest in new works or ideas

1. Conduct your survey

I suggest that you initially start out slow and fine tune your survey so that you are getting the information you need and your questions are understood. Develop a schedule of when and how many customers you survey, keep track of their names and when they responded.

When approaching customers to survey, tell them “I need your help” – most people are willing to help and this will improve your chances of getting more and better responses. Lastly, don’t forget to thank your customers for helping you out!

4. Analyze and act on the survey results

There are a number of ways to analyze your results from a simple list of comments to using statistical methods. The important thing is that you read the responses, consider your customer’s ideas and take action if needed. Make customer feedback and ideas a regular part of running and marketing your art business!

Survey results sitting in a box or computer are not like wine – they don’t get better with age, quite the contrary they are more like wine turning to vinegar. Act on the feedback you get from your customers and look for new ideas and opportunities on how to grow your brand!

The bottom line(s)…

Talking to your customers and getting feedback is a great way to build a profile of your customers and to find out what really makes them “tick”.  Talking to your customers will also help you solidify existing relationships, find out how you are doing and maybe even get some good ideas, and who knows – even selling more of your art!

By Neil McKenzie

When artists agree to be represented by a gallery, they usually work out with the gallery owner – formally or informally – the terms of their understanding: the amount of the dealer’s commission; how often their work will be exhibited in solo or group shows; the price of their artworks and the permitted range of discounts for buyers; whether or not there will be advertising and who pays for it; whether or not the artist-dealer relationship is exclusive. That sort of thing.

Another expectation, which may or may not be stated explicitly, is that the dealer will keep track of the artist’s work even after it has been sold. And more than just keep track but try to find buyers for works on the secondary market, even bidding up pieces themselves when artworks are consigned to auction.

“I have bid up prices to appropriate levels, when auction houses have estimated too low works by artists whom I represent,” said Manhattan gallery owner Renato Danese. “I want to protect the work from going below the low estimate or not selling at all, because that puts a cloud over the work and over the artist.” The secondary market is closely linked to the primary market, with disappointing results at auction potentially coming back to haunt works sold at the gallery. “I don’t like to spend fruitless hours explaining why a good piece went for a quarter of the price I charge at the gallery.”

He added that “artists expect me to protect their market and their reputations.” Public auctions may be high stakes gambles for artists and their careers, informing the world that someone wants to get rid of artworks they own, and strong prices for and interest in the work up for sale cannot be guaranteed. As a result, Danese tries to convince owners of his artists’ works to resell works through his gallery, where he has a longer period of time to find buyers and a lack of collector interest can be hidden.

Some dealers go further, requiring buyers of certain artists’ works on the primary market to sign an agreement assuring that the works will be resold exclusively through them or donated to a museum. “I have used these clauses on every invoice since I opened the gallery,” New York gallery owner Andrea Rosen said.

Still, auctions of contemporary art are filled with artworks, and the front seats in the sales rooms at these auctions are filled with dealers, according to a spokesman for Sotheby’s: “You’ll see them in the room, up front in the same places all the time.”

These dealers may be acting as agents for other collectors, who wish to remain anonymous, or they might be building up gallery inventory. “We take an active interest in the secondary market, especially the auctions,” said Louis Newman, director of New York’s David Findlay Jr. gallery. “When an important work by one of our artists comes on the market we often make a bid for it. Occasionally we will overpay for a rare work and put it aside for a period of time. Often hindsight proves that the purchase was, in fact, a good investment for us.”

Michael Rosenfeld, a Manhattan gallery owner, noted that he regularly buys works by artists in his gallery – both living artists and those whose estates he represents – at auction, sometimes setting auction records for those artists. One recent example was a 1957-58 painting “Park Avenue Façade” by Michael Goldberg at Christie’s New York last May, paying $461,000, well above the $100,000-150,000 estimate set by the auction house and double the previous auction record of $230,500. “The $100,000 low estimate was ridiculously low, and I know I will eventually sell it for $1 million.” On an even larger scale, the London art dealer Jay Jopling paid £2,546,500 ($4,365,678) at a contemporary art sale at Christie’s London in July for the 1998 “My Bed” by Tracey Emin, whom he represents. That price was five times the previous auction record for the artist.

Auction houses regularly contact, and send sales catalogues to, the known collectors of the artists in their sales, and they also “notify artists’ dealers when we are offering works by the artists they represent,” according to a spokeswoman for Bonhams auction house. By the time of the sale, the auction houses have some idea of the level of interest in various lots, and they “may tell the dealer that there isn’t so much presale interest in an artist’s work, so you might want to come in as a bidder,” said Pilar Ordovas, former European head of Christie’s contemporary art department and now a private dealer in London. “There are many reasons that dealers bid for works in sales, and one of them is to protect the market for the artists they represent.”

Kiki Smith. Photograph by Chris Sanders

 

Artists often look to their dealers to do something when their work comes onto the secondary market. “We are in conversation with our living artists about work that arrives at auction, and we attempt first to place works in collections that are not speculative,” said John Cheim, partner in the Manhattan contemporary art gallery Cheim and Read. Artist Kiki Smith, who is represented by New York’s Pace Gallery, said that she expects her dealer “to care about my work and the market for it, and do whatever they need to do to make sure nothing goes wrong.” Not every artist feels that way – sculptor Vito Acconci claimed that he never thinks about the relationship between his primary and secondary markets, and painter Bill Jensen “told my dealer not to be involved with the secondary market. I will not manipulate the market” – but many do.

Rosenfeld stated that the gallery buying works by its artists at auction “gives clients confidence that we believe in the artist. It’s very reassuring to them,” and it also is keeping a commitment that is made when the gallery is negotiating to represent the artist. “We tell them, ‘we will protect your market.’”

By Daniel Grant

Every field of endeavor has its own language and jargon that mean something to those involved, maybe or maybe not much to outsiders. The legal profession, for instance, is filled with Latinisms (a fortiori – even more so; ab initio – from the beginning) and the sports world sometimes seems nothing but slang (juice – steroids; wheelhouse – comfort zone).

The art world has its own insider vocabulary where terms may seem a bit comical (houseable – the artwork fits in a normal-sized living room) and occasionally contradictory (objects in a museum may be on “permanent loan” – a loan no one has any intention of taking back – or donated as a “fractional gift,” which indicates that the institution owns an ever-increasing percentage of the piece until it reaches 100 percent).

Auction houses take “chandelier bids” (bids that no one actually made or were seemingly made by the ceiling-hung chandeliers in order to get the price higher) at major sales that increasingly are “curated” (organized in a way to increase prices). Let’s look a bit further.

Art Prints

Art galleries sell “original prints” (multiple versions of the same image) that are produced in “limited editions.” One might assume that the meaning of the term limited edition is self-evident, that a fixed number of copies have been made of one image: A limited edition of 20 means that only 20 of these prints exist. However, this is where customary use of language and art world practices diverge.

New York State’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Law does not prohibit publishers from printing up more copies of the same image, and publishers might even call these later printings limited editions if they print them at different sizes (for example, 4″ x 5″ and 8″ x 10″) or in different colors or on different types of paper, call one an American edition and the other a European edition, use different printing technology or give them different numbering – roman numeral as opposed to Arabic, for instance. Multiple limited editions isn’t an art world term, but it should be.

Then, there is the question of “proofs” – printers’ proofs, publishers’ proofs, presentation proofs, artists’ proofs, B.A.T.s (bon-a-tirer, or final working proofs) and hors de commerce (not-for-sale proofs, which sometimes are put up for sale anyway) – which may equal or exceed the number in the edition itself. Proofs often are prized, as they traditionally have been used as rough drafts of the final image, with notations (often written in by the artist on the proof) for adjustments in color or something else; theoretically, a proof gets one closer to the actual thinking of the artist. Nowadays, there’s no difference between the edition and the proofs (printers just run off extras) but, because of that long-lost mystique of uniqueness, sellers charge 20 percent more for proofs than for works in the regular edition.

Digital Photography

The realm of contemporary fine art photography has become more confusing over the past dozen or so years. It used to be that one could choose between black-and-white or color photographs, with the occasional platinum print available, but that’s when everyone had cameras that used actual film to record an image and traditional photographic paper to print it on. Nowadays, photographers may use digital cameras but print on photographic paper or produce a photographic negative but print on an inkjet printer, while others are digital all the way. Should there be new language to describe what we used to just call photographs?

There is, but it just isn’t a shared language. Fine art photographer Emmet Gowin, refers to some of his computer-enhanced work as “digital inkjet prints,” which tells what type of machine was used to produce the final work, while Judith Joy Ross describes her photographs as “archival pigment prints,” which means the same thing but informs prospective buyers that something about the paper and inks will make the artwork longer-lasting than what comes out of your office printer. Laurent Baheux creates what he calls “giclees” (pronounced ZHEE-clays, a French term coined in the 1980s by a Californian to describe inkjet prints), while Chuck Close has created “digital pigment” prints. Sounds as though it should be similar. Shoja Azari has created “digital C-prints,” which kind-of means the same thing as Alec Soth’s “digital chromogenic” prints and Edward Burtynsky’s “digital color coupler” prints.

The Plastic Bronze

Bronze, which is 95 percent composed of copper, has become very expensive, forcing artists who have to pay foundry costs upfront to search for ways to economize. Some do so by only casting only one sculpture at a time, rather than an entire edition, as they find buyers, but a growing number of artists are looking to other materials, such as Aqua-Resin, concrete, Fiberglas, gypsum- and polyurethane-based resins, plaster and terra cotta, which are less expensive and can be produced right in the studio, without the high labor costs of a foundry. Artists also are buying metal and mica powders that are poured into molds or applied as a patina to give a “faux finish” that resembles bronze or other metals. In fact, resin sculptures are often labeled as “cold cast bronze” or “bonded bronze,” which may lead some buyers to believe that a traditional bronze is what they are purchasing, whereas the actual sculpture is made from a polymer in which some bronze powder was poured in.

Buyers are supposed to beware, but it is the seller’s job to instill confidence into those who would purchase an item that the object is worth the money and that they won’t feel duped. When artists add vague language to the discussion of their art, they make their prospective buyers less confident and more wary about the artwork and the person who made it. Just saying.

By Daniel Grant

There is an old sales adage that says “sell the sizzle not the steak”. For most art and creative products there should be a lot of sizzle to talk about. Have you ever noticed that in some restaurants that the kitchen is out in the open or that the waiters walk by the tables with sizzling platters? They do this because the sights, sounds and smells of a tasty dish evoke emotions and spark interest – in essence they are selling the sizzle not the steak and you can too!

Selling the Steak

Selling the steak is when you talk about the specifications, features and materials that go into your art. While it is important that a piece of art is painted in oil on a certain type or quality of canvas, this is probably not the reason people would buy the art. Look at the “steak” as the “nuts and bolts” of a product and something you would see in a manufacturer’s specification sheet. While specs are important, people are swayed by the sizzle.

Many fine art photographers seem more interested in telling their customers about what camera the image was produced on, what kind of printer and paper the image was printed on and how long it will last.  While these facts may be important they have little to do with why a particular print is bought. Don’t dwell too much on the specifications but if they are important to what makes your art “sizzle” then be sure to include them!

Selling the Sizzle

People buy products (and that includes art) because it provides a benefit, solves their problems and fulfills some need. Your selling job as an artist is to identify these benefits, solve these problems and highlight the needs that your art fulfills.

Here are some things that go into the sizzle:

• What is different about your art?
• What is compelling about your art?
• Why can’t they do without your art?
• What is the experience your art provides?
• What is the style, genre or fashion or your work?
• What emotions does your art invoke?
• What problems does your art solve?
• Does your art give your customer a feeling of being special or exclusivity?
• Is there and investment potential in your work?
• Does your art allow your customer to express their feelings, beliefs or way of life?

Determining your Sizzle

It may not be that easy to figure out what makes your art sizzle but you need to get to the things that make a prospect want to buy. A worn out word like “unique” probably has little meaning and after all isn’t most art unique (unless you are selling prints or limited editions)?

One way to determine your sizzle it to talk to your present customers and ask them what they think makes up your sizzle. Many times you will learn something new about the benefits that your work provides – make it a habit of getting feedback from your customers!    You should use this information in your marketing materials and in your sales presentations.

A Steak and Sizzle Exercise

Here is an exercise to help you separate the steak from the sizzle for your art. Get a piece of paper and divide it into two columns. In one column you will list what describes the “steak’ or the attributes of your art. In the other column you will list what describes the “sizzle” or the benefits your art provides. Do this exercise for each of your products (or types or genres of art). Look carefully to see if your different art works have some commonality in “sizzle” – these will become important in selling and marketing your creations.

The Sizzle Is Not Just For a Sales Presentation

Selling the sizzle is something you need to do with all of the touch points you have with your prospects and customers. Places where you should sell the sizzle include:

• Your sales presentations
• Your business cards
• Your elevator speech
• Advertising of all kinds including brochures, posters, print, and broadcast
• Your webpage
• Your public relations efforts
• Your social media presence

Ok, now you should know the difference between selling the sizzle versus selling the steak. You will get customer interest by selling the “sizzle” and reinforce their willingness to buy with the attributes or the “steak” – go for it!

By Neil McKenzie

Young artists coming out of art school often hear the suggestion that they learn about the business of art, and make connections in it, through becoming an artist’s assistant. Sounds reasonable, but it raises the question, What kind of employers are artists?

Obviously, not all artists are the same in their relationships with the assistants they hire. Some prove quite helpful to the careers of the young hopefuls working for them, while others just want their trash taken out and don’t make me ask twice. Certainly, no one gets rich working as an artist’s assistant – $10-15 per hour, when needed, with no sick or vacation pay and no health insurance is the norm – and not every professional artist will permit their assistants to use their studios and tools during their off hours.

Gina Campanella, who graduated SkidmoreCollege in 1989 and set to work as an artist’s assistant, first for Michael David, later for Joyce Kozloff and Barbara Zucker, had some luck.She wanted to work for a woman artist, because “I thought a woman artist would be more of a mentor to me,” taking interest in her work and helping launch her career.

In fact, some of her hopes were realized. A print publisher who visited Michael David’s studio when she was still working for him, struck up a conversation with her, took her out to lunch and introduced her to Joyce Kozloff. Kozloff, for whom she soon went to work as an assistant, introduced Campanella to Barbara Zucker, and it was Zucker who recommended her to fill a short-term teaching spot (a sabbatical replacement) at the University of Vermont where Zucker herself worked. Both Kozloff and Zucker also chipped in $250 apiece to pay for Campanella to attend the VermontStudioCenter as an artist-in-residence. Campanella became part of a network of artists (“Joyce has never missed a show I’ve had”) and, through working for some artists who are more established, learned something about what it is to be an artist. “I saw how they found materials and how they researched their subjects,” she said. Through conversations in the studio, she understood “how their personal and professional lives intertwined.”

Few job descriptions are as nebulous as that of artist’s assistant, because each job reflects the personality, temperament and work-style of the artist involved. Assistants may be asked to work alongside the artist on a new piece or sweep up after the work is done. “I made coffee, answered the telephone, took instructions,” Campanella said. “There was a lot of that.”

Assistants with baccalaureate and Master’s degree in art may find it demeaning to sweep an artist’s floor or fetch the mail. “Who is supposed to clean the floors?” installation artist Whitfield Lovell asked. “Am I supposed to get on my hands and knees to clean the floors? I don’t ask my assistants to clean my whole house, just the studio. They are here to make my life easier, and that’s not negotiable.”

Perhaps, male artists find the maid jobs (answer the telephone, fetch lunch, make coffee, clean up) that artists sometimes ask their assistants to do more galling and, therefore, more difficult to perform properly than female assistants, causing friction in the studio. Practically every artist who has ever hired assistants has had to fire some, frequently because of a contest of egos and sometimes because assistants believe they have been hired to be artists and not gophers. Artistic egos may collide. “Once upon a time, I had an apprentice,” sculptor William King said, “but there were days when there was nothing for him to do. I asked him to clean up the shop, and he didn’t want to do that. He was a budding artist, not a janitor.”

Menial jobs become a source of friction. “If you won’t take out the garbage, you’re not much help to me,” artist Vito Acconci said. Mimi Gross noted that she has a much easier time with female assistants, because they are more willing to do the housekeeping, office management tasks than males. “When I had a small child, I’d ask a female assistant to babysit while she was in the studio,” she said. “I wouldn’t ever think of asking a male assistant to watch my child. They’re more into their attitude and, if you ask them to do something they don’t want to do, they won’t focus on it and do it badly.”

Campanella’s experience may be anomalous, as mentoring rarely takes place. Some artists become quite resentful when they feel an expectation to make introductions for someone in their employ or when asked to write a graduate school recommendation for one of their assistants. Jonathan Williams’ experience of Frank Stella did not include much conversation other than shop talk. “Everything that mattered with Stella was the work at hand, and we really didn’t talk about anything else,” Williams said. “I don’t remember him ever asking me much about myself.”

There may be a certain lifespan to the job of being an artist’s assistant: The artistic ego can only be repressed so long if one’s ambitions are to be an artist. As much as they see artists working with others (sometimes whole crews) around them, artists need to be self-reliant, believing in what they are doing artistically and proactive about their own careers. Burn-out exists in the world of being an assistant, especially when the hoped-for introduction to a willing dealer or collector never takes place. Campanella said that working for other artists was “fine when I was 22 or 23 and right out of school. By the time I was 30, though, I wanted something more. I didn’t want to still be making $10 an hour and living like this.” The break may come about when another opportunity arises (Campanella found a job at Tommy Hilfiger) or when an assistant’s own career begins to take off (by 1978, Saunders claimed, “my work was starting to sell and I didn’t need to work for someone else”). Sometimes, assistants just quit and try to assess what they want to do next. Julia Jacquette, who worked for painter Richard Haas off and on for 10 years, stretching canvas, mixing colors, handling bookkeeping, organizing slides, working on his maquettes and painting sections of his murals, stated that she “grew out of” being an assistant. “I realized that I needed to not be working for another artist if I was to show my work and to have my own sense of self.” She “segued into teaching and occasionally selling my work. Teaching is not as hard of your self-esteem.”

By Daniel Grant

Ok, you have probably seen them and if you have the proper app you may have even scanned one using your mobile phone. QR codes or 2D barcodes are like product barcodes on packaging where a series of lines or squares (in this case) represent information. In the case of QR codes this information is used to connect the person scanning the code to a website or other internet address, display text, send a text message or fill out a virtual address card (Vcard).

The QR barcode was developed in 1994 by Denso-Wave a subsidiary of Toyota as a way to quickly scan a larger amount of data than a typical barcode could store. It is now a worldwide standard and its uses have grown from its manufacturing and inventory control roots to a potentially useful marketing tool. It is worth a look to see if QR codes have a place in marketing your art.

A QR code can:

• Can store up to approximately 4300 alphanumeric characters depending on the size and number of squares in the matrix
• Easily store URL or web address or other links
• Contain information on a vCard, email or text message
• Be easily scanned with a mobile phone’s camera and a scanner app. In many parts of the world mobile phones are QR ready out of the box.

Your mobile phone is also a QR Scanner

Once you have downloaded one of the many QR Scanner apps into your mobile phone you run the app and then take a picture of the QR code with your phone’s camera. When the camera locks onto the code and captures the picture it will display the information contained or website address. You can then proceed to read the information, visit the website or receive a text message.

Some examples of how others are using QR codes:

• To enable easy user connections to websites and other digital content with just a click of the user’s mobile device
• Inventory control and tracking of parts in a manufacturing operation
• Online ticketing where you purchase tickets for an event or movie online and a QR code is sent to your mobile device – the image of the QR code serves as your ticket. When you enter the venue you show them the code on your mobile device which is then scanned in lieu of a paper ticket.
• In magazine or newspaper advertisements to direct the reader to a site to find out more.
• With coupons and direct mail pieces
• Billboard ads, displays and signage.
• Contests or sweepstakes where the winning code is contained in certain pieces
• Virtual couponing where a coupon or special offer is sent to the mobile device
• In the real estate industry on yard signs
• There are now funerary services that will attach a QR code to a grave site headstone where the QR code leads to a website that tells the story about the deceased.
• Just about any advertising medium where you want to get out more information, capture your audience’s attention and track your results.

Creatives and Business Twitter QR code

How artists can use QR codes

One of the cool things about using QR codes is that if you can get someone to scan your code you already have their attention – this is a big step in any advertising or promotional effort! Once you have their attention, QR codes make it easy for you to have further communications with your audience. With QR codes there is no writing down or remembering a particular website, advertisement or product, a quick scan takes care of that. QR codes can bridge an important step in getting your audience’s attention and turning that into finding out more. Here are some ways artists can use QR codes:

• Direct people to your website, online store, YouTube videos, social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter.
• Give people physical directions to a show or event using Google Maps
• Create codes for individual pieces artwork to help you keep track of inventory
• On your business card
• On your brochures or promotional materials
• In your printed ads, signage, posters, and flyers
• In video advertisements and digital displays – QR codes can be read from digital displays and projectors
• In a gallery placed on your signs next to your individual artworks with a message something like this, “To Learn The Story Behind This Piece and the Artist Please Scan This Code” – Think Virtual Gallery assistant!
• On your artwork (I’m thinking of the QR codes on the back but a few artists are placing them on the front of their artwork in the signature area)
• On your packaging, wrappers, bags or tags
• Any place where you want people to easily be able to connect with you

Creating a QR code

There are several ways to create your own QR code and many are free. If you search the internet for QR codes you will find many sites that offer an online service to create your QR code. You simply enter your URL, message or other content and it creates a QR code graphic which you can download and use in your marketing materials. Take note that some of these services will direct the person who scans your QR code first through their website and then on to the one you specified (redirects). Most of these companies are really in the business of keeping track of and generating statistics on your QR code usage – for a fee.

There are other web services who simply offer QR code generation without any redirects such as http://beqrious.com. In case you don’t have a smart phone with a QR reader app you can still decode (read) your QR code by uploading its image and using a tool such as this Online QR Code Decoder.

The mobile marketing opportunity for artists

The growth of mobile devices is skyrocketing in the US and within a few years most cell phone users will have a powerful mobile device capable of reading QR codes. By many estimates, the use of mobile devices to access the internet has now surpassed the use of desktop computers to access the internet.

Trends in the mobile industry include:

• Many apps available for entertainment, shopping and just about anything else you can think of
• Mobile devices may become people’s main connection with the virtual world replacing the laptop and desktop computer
• Websites now need to be “mobile ready” and provide a great viewing experience on the smaller screens
• The US is now catching up with the rest of the world in using powerful mobile devices
• Prices are dropping and even the lowest priced phone is “smart” and soon everyone will have a smart phone
• People in the US will become more familiar with QR codes and their use may become an everyday occurrence. Right now the usage of QR codes in the US is small although it continues to grow at a rapid pace.

The bottom line(s)…

Now is the time to take a look at using QR codes in your art business. Like any other marketing tool you need to make sure that QR codes are a fit for your brand and will be likely be used by your customers and prospects – experiment and see what works.  If you have used QR codes in your art business I would be interested to see your comments.  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

Printed Matter after hurricane Sandy.

Free advice often is worth every penny (so they say), but a pair of arts organizations have produced free online-accessible booklets for artists that offer quite useful suggestions on protecting their studios, their careers and their estates.

The Craft Emergency Relief Fund in Montpelier, Vermont has produced the two-part Studio Protector: The Artist’s Guide to Emergencies (Part I & Part II), which provide a checklist of recommendations that may help if the worst happens. Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, which caused approximately half a billion dollars in damage to artwork in private homes and commercial art galleries in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, provided the impetus for this. Art gallery owners in the tri-state area and elsewhere have seen their insurance premiums rise between five and 20 percent in the aftermath of the storm. “These are increases in premiums across the board, all along the Eastern seaboard,” said Colin Quinn, vice-president and director of claims management at AXA, one of the major insurance carriers for art collections, which paid out roughly $40 million in claims after the storm. Deductibles have been raised on many policies, written disaster plans have needed to be submitted to insurance carriers, and some galleries – especially in the flood-zone of lower Manhattan – have found insurance coverage impossible to obtain, forcing them to close or move elsewhere.

One of the more severe Hurricane Sandy losses occurred at Printed Matter, in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, which is not a gallery but a nonprofit organization devoted to the exhibition of artist books. “Much of our inventory was underground, in the basement,” said executive director James Jenkin, consisting of 9,000 books and other artworks, as well as the organization’s archives dating back to 1976. He valued the loss of the books and other artifacts at “several hundred thousand dollars,” but Printed Matter was unable to make an insurance claim, as it is insured as a book store rather than as an art gallery and is covered by a general policy that didn’t include a separate art rider. “The cost of a fine art insurance policy is too high for us. For us, it is better to be pragmatic.”

For artists, being pragmatic involves planning for certain contingencies that the Studio Protector outlines. Some of the concerns are flooding and other types of water damage, but others are fire, windstorms and earthquakes.

Artists are advised to know the risks they face in terms of where they live and the potentially hazardous materials that they use. In areas prone to flooding, storage of artwork and other valuables in a basement is inadvisable, while it is recommended for others in tornado or earthquake zones to install impact-resistant windows and doors, as well as anchoring equipment and fuel tanks to floors or walls. Copies of important documents, such as contracts, financial and tax records, inventory of artwork and one’s insurance policy, should be stored at a safe off-site location. Obtaining adequate insurance coverage and knowing what is included in one’s policy, are vitally important. (The Studio Protector also includes the names of, and contact information for, a number of insurance carriers that work regularly with artists and craftspeople.) Other suggestions include mapping out evacuation routes for oneself, studio assistants and family members, identifying someone who will be an emergency contact and doing periodic practice runs so that everyone knows what to do.

In addition to the recommendations in Studio Protector, it also makes sense to ask for suggestions from one’s insurance carrier for an effective plan to protect objects, machinery and materials. One also might purchase emergency equipment in the event of a power outage, such as a portable generator and flashlights, as well as extra wrapping and packing material for a large number of objects that might need to be moved quickly. “Some galleries did a little but not enough,” said AXA’s Colin Quinn, such as putting “artworks up three feet, but Hurricane Sandy surged to five feet.” Others placed objects onto eight foot-tall racks, but the force of the water knocked those racks over. Some galleries sandbagged and nailed shut the doors, but water forced its way in anyway, and gallery staff simply found that it was more difficult to get back inside.

The New York City-based Joan Mitchell Foundation, which has grants programs for professional painters and sculptors, those pursuing Master of Fine Arts degrees, as well as an emergency aid for those impacted by manmade or natural disasters, compiled a significant amount of information for artists in their later years who need to inventory and document their artwork and careers. The Foundation established Creating a Living Legacy, or CALL, as a separate Web site, which identifies the experience of a number of artists who have made use of these services and provides a workbook for artists in order that they may do much of this work on their own.

The workbook identifies the importance of documenting one’s work and creating an archive for artists at all stages of their careers. Emerging artists, for example, may seek to “apply for a grant, fellowship, and/or commission and need to present documentation of prior projects and work,” while mid-career artists “[m]ay have an opportunity to create a book or catalogue of their work that surveys all or some aspect of their career.” An established artist, on the other hand, would need this archive for a museum retrospective or for research conducted by an art historian. Additionally, documenting one’s work and career will help heirs sort out material “when you are no longer around.”

The end stages of anyone’s life are likely to be somewhat chaotic. In 1996, multimedia sculptor Nam June Paik (1932-2006) suffered a stroke that largely curtailed his ability to create new installations, but his career was far from over. Exhibitions of his work were being planned, new pieces were still being fabricated and existing works continued to be put up for sale at galleries. What’s more, a series of sculptures purportedly by Paik, but which the artist denied were his, were put up for sale, leading to two lawsuits against Paik, which his lawyers chose to settle, because Paik was not deemed mentally competent to testify at trial. “You can see this as people taking advantage of a senile artist,” said Paik’s nephew and estate executor, Ken Hakuta. “He was sick.” The lawsuits were eventually resolved out of court. Had Paik maintained a documentary record for all his work, the confusion might have been resolved more quickly and with less expense.

Among the problems that may occur, especially for older artists, are artworks that have been loaned to a gallery, collector or museum and are forgotten. (The recipients may construe the loans as gifts, sometimes selling the works.) Additionally, artists may forget which pieces were consigned to a particular gallery (galleries, too, sometimes forget to pay artists), elements involved in the process of creating a multiples edition, such as mock-ups, proofs, maquettes, molds or drawings (they may be subsequently used or sold by the publisher, fabricator or foundry), as well as images that are licensed for commercial use (sometimes, “royalty payers forget to pay the artist or the artist’s estate or heirs. Sometimes, they just stop paying and wait to see if anyone complains,” said Elliot Hoffman, a lawyer with an arts practice in New York City).

The CALL workbook describes manageable record-keeping systems, spreadsheets and databases, and there are recommendations for how to photograph one’s work, the cost of storage (or storage materials), and whether or not to hire an assistant to help in the process of creating and maintaining an archive. “Consider your time,” the workbook suggests: “It can be a choice between spending your time working on this, or spending your time working on proposals for projects. Consider whether this is the best use of your time, or whether you’d prefer to hire someone to help.”

The Joan Mitchell Foundation will underwrite this process by hiring an archivist and paying for a computer (if need be) and the creation of an image and text database rather than providing money to an artist directly. “If you just give artists money, they might not spend it on archives,” said Carolyn Somers, executive director of the foundation. “While they are alive, artists can do their own catalogue raisonné.”

By Daniel Grant

Exhibition visitors. Photo by: Jeff Taylor – uncommon photography

One of the exercises I conduct with my Artrepreneurship students at the Center for Innovation at Metropolitan State University of Denver is to brainstorm on what makes a great gallery experience.  Many artists show and sell their work in a physical gallery, many have only an online presence and many have both.  No matter whether your work is displayed in a physical location or in the virtual world, a great gallery experience matters.

A great brand experience makes you stand out from the competition

When you show your work, one of your highest priorities should be to create a great experience for those who attend your show and view your work. If you only have an online presence you will need to be creative in providing your viewer with a great experience.  The thing that makes great brands or companies stand out from their competition is providing a great experience that their audience remembers and talks about. A great experience encompasses many things such as:

• Having a great product or service
• Using the product or service is fun, educational, enlightening and functional
• Being able to understand the product and its benefits
• The product’s design, features and esthetics
• The product’s packaging
• Meeting or exceeding the customer’s expectations
• Touching as many senses such as touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing
• Great customer service and a desire to come back and tell their friends

Artrepreneurship students brainstorm and build a “Mind Map” on what it takes to create “A Great Gallery Experience. Click thumbnail for larger image.

 

Brainstorming ideas

Here are some of the ideas that my Artrepreneurship students came up with in their brainstorming session.  Some may seem a little bit off the wall but you never know…  I have also included a “Mind Map” of what the latest class came up with.  Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

The senses – sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch

• Experiment with engaging more of the senses
• Use colors in an effective manner
• Proper lighting
• Dramatic lighting
• Laser lighting
• 3-D glasses
• Utilize scents and smells
• Creative food and drink
• Have music or a concert
• Allow the audience to touch the work or the materials used where appropriate

The artist

• Greeting and meeting those attending the show
• The artist telling the story about themselves and their work
• Make it easy and convenient to contact the artist
• Show the artist at work
• Personal follow up by the artist on names and email addresses collected
• Ask attendees their impression of the gallery experience

The show and the audience

• Make the gallery show a positive experience
• Encourage audience participation
• Make the experience interactive
• Hold classes in conjunction with the show
• Bring in guest artists
• Create a fun experience
• Create an educational experience
• Have a contest or game
• Incorporate social media and/or mobile marketing
• Do a live webcast and/or online video
• A video or presentation of how the work was made
• Confetti, balloons, fireworks

The art, pricing and promotions

• Have unique art offerings
• Show only the best work
• Use QR codes to identify the works and make it easy for visitor to contact you
• Make sure the price and name for a piece are easy to find
• Do a promotion such as purchase an art piece and get …
• Offer free consultation, placing or hanging with the purchase of a piece
• Have works at various price points so that people will not walk out empty handed
• Give things away for free or don’t give things away for free
• Have great price points

The venue and gallery staff

• Have a location that is a cool place to be
• Have a location that is a destination and convenient
• Have gallery guests greeted in a friendly manner
• Have gallery staff that can explain the work on display
• Have gallery staff that is friendly and personable

Community Involvement

• Hold gallery show in conjunction with community event
• Sponsor a fundraiser
• Bring in community celebrities

Exhibition visitors. Photo by: Jeff Taylor – uncommon photography

 

The bottom lines(s)…

OK, now you have some ideas on how to create a great gallery experience.  The more senses you can touch and more ways you can engage your audience, the more memorable your gallery experience will be.  You might want to experiment with some of these ideas and see what works for you.   If you have some examples of the things you have done to enhance your gallery experience the readers and I would be interested in your comments.  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

Investing in one’s career is often touted as a sound business move, an act of confidence in the future, the cost of doing business, taking responsibility – that kind of talk. But, which career investments actually give you a return on that investment? For artists, most would agree that art school tuition was a vital expense, as are art supplies, a studio rental and the cost of creating a Web site to display and promote their work. Other forms of investment are more debatable, such as publishing a catalogue of your own artwork, hiring a publicist or career coach. (Certainly, some artists claim these expenditures are a major part of their success.)

Glendale, Arizona artist Bill Mittag “can’t determine the effectiveness of advertising,” but he still spends $6,000 or so per year on ads in such publications as Art of the West and Western Art Collector. “Every time I place an ad, the number of hits on my Web site picks up significantly.” Even more telling, “when a gallery has a show and puts a work of mine in the ad, I notice that every time that work sells.”

Still, Mittag is not confident that $6,000 or so he spends does much good – “no one has called me up to say, ‘I want that work I saw in your ad,’” – but it is a cost of doing business, of investing in his career, and he worries that not advertising would make things worse.

Advertising by fine artists is an area rife with question marks and the occasional success story. “My very first ad in the Maine Antique Digest, which cost me $500, resulted in the sale of a $36,000 sculpture,” said artist Andrew DeVries of Huntington, Massachusetts, adding that other ads he has placed in that monthly have earned him calls from prospective buyers, some of which led to sales. However, when he took out half a dozen ads in Art & Auction (there was a price discount for buying a series of ads, he noted), he claimed to have spent $20,000 and “got two sales out of it of $1,000 apiece.” Advertising is a “tricky thing,” he concluded, but he still averages $10,000-15,000 in advertising annually, some years going as high as $35,000 and other years far less.

Certainly, many art publications – some aimed at an artist readership, such as The Crafts Report, Plein Air or Sculpture Magazine, while others target collectors, including American Art Review, Fine Art Connoisseur and Art & Auction – are happy to accept ads from artists. Do artists get their money’s worth?

Placing ads is more associated with the design fields, such as illustration, than with fine art. Patricia McKiernan, executive director of the Graphic Artists Guild, noted that most of the artists in the Guild establish an advertising and promotion budget of between 10 and 30 percent of their gross income, and much of that advertising is in the design field print and online directories that prospective employers use. That sounds like a lot of money, but “if you earn $100,000 one year and decide to save that money instead of spending 10-30 percent on advertising, you won’t make $100,000 again.”

There is no rule-of-thumb sense of the percentage of one’s income that should be reinvested into advertising in the fine arts, but the concept of buying ads as a regular type of promotion is not foreign to some artists. “If I don’t advertise, how will people ever hear of me,” said artist Carl Borgia of Boynton Beach, Florida, a retired accounting professor at FloridaAtlanticUniversity, who spends $8,000-10,000 per year on ads in such publications as ARTnews, Modern Painters and Florida Design Magazine. “I have been pursuing art as a business for 10 years and applying the entrepreneurial skills that I have been teaching to my art.” Of those three publications, it has been the non-art one, Florida Design Magazine, that has resulted in the best results, which has included some sales and some requests to appear in shows at art galleries and art fairs.

That makes sense to Caroll Michels, an artist career coach in Sarasota, Florida, who recommends to her clients that they not “buy display ads in art magazines or on their websites. For the most part, the majority of art magazine readers are other artists, who are not in the market for buying other artists artwork. If you decide to purchase advertising space, select upscale consumer and interior design publications.” She noted that one of her clients had invested inherited money in “four full-page color display ads that ran for four months in Art in America. She said that the only response she received was from other artists who thought she was a gallery.”

On the other hand, Cushing, Wisconsin textile artist Jean M. Judd regularly places ads – usually consisting of an image of her work plus contact information – in art publications, including American Art Collector, ARTnews and The Crafts Report, spending $5,000-7,000 per year, or 15 percent of her total yearly income. These ads have resulted in “calls from dealers and commissions from art collectors.” Those commissions amount to one-third of her income, she said. “As long as I keep getting enough sales and commissions to keep me fully booked, I’ll keep advertising at the same rate.”

The principal reason she places ads is that she lives in a remote, rural area (“nothing but woods and fields”) and doesn’t have the time or means to bring her work to galleries in major cities. Advertising in national publications has brought people from distant states (“as far away as Arizona and San Francisco”) to her.

Certainly, many other artists have placed ads in these and other publications to no avail. “My ads in ARTnews have not directly brought in sales, dealers or collectors, so I cannot say they at this point pay for themselves,” said San Diego sculptor Maidy Morhous, who also has advertised in Laguna Beach Magazine, Art in America and in the catalogues published by various art fairs, such as ArtExpo and Spectrum Miami, with similar results.

Belief in advertising often leads to beliefs about how to advertise. Anatoly Dverin, a painter in Plainville, Massachusetts, stated that he only buys full-page ads, because “I don’t want to share the page with another artist; it creates competition. The other artist may use, I don’t know, some combination of red and blue that kills the balance of color in my painting.” People only start recognizing your name, said Andrew DeVries, if there is something else going on, such as an exhibition or an opportunity to meet the artist where potential buyers can go in person – “by themselves, ads can’t do it all.” Gail Wells-Hess, a painter in Portland, Oregon, claimed that certain colors and subjects were “guaranteed to sell” and should be included in ads, such as red poppies in Summer issues and “a pear or still-life in the Winter.” Both Bill Mittag and Jean Judd stated that strong, contrasting colors are the key.

The purpose and nature of advertising is a subject on which there is considerable disagreement, although there is one point on which everyone agrees: One needs to think of advertising as a long-term, rather than a one-shot, effort. To develop name and artistic recognition, the same or similar images must be present in ads that follow one magazine issue after another. Many artists split the costs of advertising with their galleries in advance of an exhibition, and some galleries carry the entire expense, but it is rare for a gallery to pay in full or in part to advertise an artist when there isn’t a show. If the concept is to keep one’s name and images before the public on an ongoing basis, one-shot ads are not likely to produce the desired results. Too, galleries generally have a local audience, and the advertisements they place are likely to be in local or regional publications rather than national ones.

Different gallery owners have their own purposes in mind when they place an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine, and they may not be quite the same as the artist’s. Most long-term, successful galleries rely on a group of collectors to purchase the bulk of the artwork they put on display, and the gallery owners notify this group privately well in advance of an exhibition’s start date: That is the reason a show may be wholly or partially sold out before it opens to the public. Few successful galleries get by on walk-in traffic, lured by a notice in the local newspaper, so there are usually other reasons that ads are placed. “Seventy-five percent of our sales come from our mailing list,” Sique Spence, director of New York’s Nancy Hoffman Gallery, stated. As a result, the gallery’s advertisements tend to be black-and-white, typeset and image-less, merely stating the name of the artist who will next have an exhibition and the dates of the show. “The ads we place are a reinforcement for the information sent out to our mailing list.” Certainly, advertisements may bring visitors into the gallery who may one day turn into buyers – of the particular artist in the advertisement or someone else. The ads may serve as a reminder to specific collectors on a gallery’s mailing list about the event.

“Advertising, especially advertising with illustrations, effects attendance, not so much sales,” said Bridget Moore, president of New York’s DC Moore Gallery. Other dealers report that ads with reproductions result in a number of telephone inquiries as to price and the availability of works, which also do not quickly translate into sales.

Taking out an advertisement, some dealers believe, also increases the chances of seeing a write-up of the exhibition in the particular publication. The ability to afford a large ad with photographic reproductions is seen occasionally as a sign of success, impressing artists and collectors. With other dealers, ads have greater importance for the long-term viability of the gallery than for the short-term exhibition. “An advertisement attracts attention,” New York gallery owner Thomas Erben said. “It secures the gallery’s position in the market. People have to see that we are still here. In effect, I’m advertising myself through the market.”

Yet another reason to place ads is purely psychological, according to Edward De Luca, director of DC Moore Gallery, since these notices “massage an artist’s ego,” that is, they let artists know that money is being spent on them and that, in turn, makes artists feel better about their relationship with the gallery. “Artists want to see their names in print and their work being advertised, and they ask us to have ads run in certain magazines.”

By Daniel Grant

This is my first article for the International Sculpture Center Blog and I am looking forward to being a part of your blog community.  I am also looking forward to learning about the art of sculpture – this should be very cool!  I will be writing articles to help you market your art, stand out in a competitive world and build your brand.  There is probably not a better place to start than by taking a look at your brand.

Your brand is one of the most important things in your art business and it will have a large impact on your overall business success. One thing about your brand is that other people will define it, so it’s imperative that you develop and manage its perception and reality.  Another thing about brand is that is defined by everything you do in your art business.  This not only includes your marketing but how you make your art, your operations and management, your studio and facilities and even a bit of your accounting.

Brands are everywhere, you have seen them: Coke, Pepsi, Nike, Ford, Mercedes, Dollar Store, Neiman Marcus, Oprah, Martha Stewart, PBS, Fox News, Prada, Walmart, Bic, Mount Blanc, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Louvre, and the list goes on and on. Each brand name has an experience and expectation associated with it and your brand does too!

Here are a few names that you might not associate with a brand: Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, Christo and Jeane-Claude, Henry Moore, Salvador Dali, Richard Avedon, Ansel Adams, Jasper Johns, Robert Mapplethorpe, Georgia O’Keefe, Jackson Pollock, Norman Rockwell, and the list goes on and on. Each name has an experience and expectation associated with it and your name does too!

The above examples are brands, some are businesses and some are more personal. For many artists it may be hard to separate your personal brand from your business brand – they may be in the same.

The traditional view of brand

Brands started out as a way to mark livestock so that a rancher could keep track of his herd. As the economy grew and became more industrialized there was a rise of products available to consumers.  The concept of brand was applied to these products in the form of logos, designs, packaging and trademarks in order to differentiate them on the store shelf.

Brands can be local, regional, national or worldwide. There are probably many brands in your local area that are not known to a wider geographic area. There are also brands like Coke that are familiar on every corner of the earth.  With the rise of the internet it is now easier than ever for you to expand your brand reach.

An expanded view of brand

In looking at your marketing efforts and how you run your business, it is helpful to take a much broader view of brand. Think of brand as a term that describes all of the activities/things that make up your business and all of the people that your business touches, such as customers, prospects, suppliers, employees, the media and the public in general.

Some of the things that go into your brand:

• Your unique creative style
• Your level of expertise and professionalism
• The genre, quality, and selection of the art you create
• How you create or manufacture your art and the techniques you use
• The mission for your business and the vision of the future and values you hold
• The story you tell about you, your art and your art business
• Your brand as experienced by all that it touches
• Your network of people both in-person and online
• Your level of community involvement and environmental sensitivity
• Your location, facilities, studio, workshop or gallery representation
• Yours, your employee’s and your representative’s attitude, dress, demeanor and manners
• Your business’s reputation with customers, prospects, employees, suppliers, industry influentials, the press, your peers and the general public
• Your logo, designs and intellectual property such as copyrights and trademarks
• Your marketing materials, web presence, advertising and other marketing activities and how they reinforce your brand
• How and where your art is distributed and sold
• Your customer service, return policies, pricing, and payment terms
• How and how well your company is managed and how others in your organization or network are brand champions for your business
• Your promise of value to your customers and how well you keep it!

In short:  Your brand is everything your business does and everybody you touch either directly or indirectly, in person or online. Your brand is what OTHER people are saying about your business – you have the power and responsibility to create and manage what this message is.

The bottom lines(s)…

At the end of the day, your brand whether business or personal is what others are saying about you, their expectations, and their perceptions. Your brand should not only guide you through the planning and marketing of your art business, it should also serve as a basis for everyday actions – everything you do should support your brand!

To help get you started on taking a look at your brand I have included a worksheet that will give you some ideas on identifying and developing your own unique brand experience.  Once you have a good idea of what your brand experience is, use it as a basis for your marketing messages and as a guide for all of the other things you do in your art business.  Remember that your brand is not static – it may change as your interests, way of doing business and the market change.  You can download the worksheet here: Your Brand Experience.

If you don’t define and nurture your brand others may do it for you – take charge of your own future and take your brand and all that goes into it seriously.  Your brand is one of your most valuable assets!  Good Luck!

By Neil McKenzie

Don’t pay the utility company, and your electricity will be cut off. Miss some auto loan payments, and your car will be repossessed. Forget about the credit card charges, and a collection agency will be in touch and your credit rating affected. Don’t pay the artist for his or her painting, and you can keep the artwork and your money. What’s wrong with this picture?

When artists go unpaid, they usually have two options: Hire a lawyer whose legal work is likely to cost far more than the value of the artwork itself (lawyers’ fees and court costs are rarely included in a settlement), or vent and fume.

In general, artists go unpaid in two different ways: Their dealers sell works but continually find excuses for not turning over the cash (minus sales commission) to the artists; collectors who buy directly from artists, taking possession of the works with an agreement to pay for them over time, simply stop sending the artists money. In order to determine what to do after artists find themselves owed money, it is useful to examine what they might do before a sale is made.

“You need a clear understanding with the dealer or collector of the terms and conditions of payment,” said John Henry Merryman, a professor at Stanford University Law School and co-author of Law, Ethics and the Visual Arts. “How much are you going to be paid? When are you supposed to be paid? What is the price of the artwork? Are there any discounts? What is the dealer’s commission? If the dealer or buyer has a clear understanding with the artist about payment, that person is more likely to pay the full amount and on time.”

There are a variety of ways in which an artist may receive satisfaction that do not necessarily involve the high-priced legal system. Mediation may work in cases where the parties are willing to discuss compromises in the presence of a third party who directs the discussion. A growing number of volunteer lawyers for the arts organizations are offering mediation as a low-cost service, and others may direct artists to mediators elsewhere.

Many dealers and galleries belong to associations, which will set up arbitration (at no cost to the artist or gallery) when complaints are lodged against a member. Another possible approach to getting payment in full or in part is contacting a collection agency. “Debtors know that eventually the creditors are going to get tired of calling and asking for their money, that they will get on with other things in their life, and that’s just what they want,” said Mike Shoop, president of the Denver-based Professional Finance Company, Inc. “But for us, collecting bad debt is all we do, and we will write to the debtor and telephone the debtor and visit the debtor, in order to convince that person of the benefits of paying the debt and the consequences of not paying the debt, until the debt is paid.”

One of the consequences of being pursued by a collection agency is that a negative report is usually placed on one’s credit report, which may prove troublesome for the dealer or private collector when that person looks to obtain a loan. Most galleries, as most businesses in general, survive on borrowed money.

There are thousands of collection agencies in the United States, but not all of them take on individual clients. More frequently, agencies serve the big company — such as a department store, with hundreds of potentially lucrative accounts — in their struggle to obtain payment from individuals. Most agencies work on a contingency fee basis, receiving as much as 50 percent of the money received from the debtor. (A source of information and prospective agencies is the American Collectors Association, P.O. Box 390106, Minneapolis, MN 55439, 952-926-6547, www.acainternational.org.)

As with everyone else, when artists are wronged, they want justice but may only receive small consolation. The legal system is not predictable in its results, for those willing to invest money and often years in resolving a dispute. Even those who win a lawsuit may still not be able to collect, for people who owe artists money are likely owe money to landlords, utility companies, credit firms and others — there may be no money there to collect. In that case, artists would have to write off the loss as a bad debt on their taxes and hope to approach their next dealers or buyers with more knowledge about what could go wrong.

By Daniel Grant

Amidst the ongoing struggle to obtain government (local, state and federal) support for the nonprofit arts and the din of what once was called the “culture wars” has been a growing interest around the country in helping artists create more work. Some of this has been on the part of government, as one city after another has looked to use grants, loans and tax credits to produce affordable places for artists to live and work, while other programs that financially assist artists are private, nonprofit endeavors (Center for Cultural Innovation, Creative Capital and United States Artists, among others). Another form of help to artists that has been on the rise is residency programs, where artists are provided time and space to do their artwork.

“Most residency programs for artists have been created in the last 30 years,” said Caitlin Strokosch, director of the Alliance of Artists’ Communities (www.artistcommunities.org), which has over 250 members around the United States. She noted that between one-quarter and one-third of the Alliance’s members look principally for emerging to mid-career artists, “and most of the newer programs appear to be aimed at emerging artists.”

The definition of an artist-in-residence program has been expanding with the number of programs. An artist-in-residence at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, for example, is one more adjunct studio faculty member, who (according to the school’s Web site) will “teach and sit in on classes and seminars, supervise students, consult with faculty, and of course demonstrate his/her talents.” The artists-in-residence at Yaddo, the renowned artist community in Saratoga Springs, on the other hand, are housed and fed three meals a day, as well as provided a stipend of varying amounts while given time and space to work on their own art. Between the two is a wide range of variations, including artist communities that one must pay to attend, others that provide housing but no food and no stipends, yet others that require 20 hours per week of community service or groundskeeping or contributing an object the artist has created, and some that are bed-and-breakfasts or resorts holding art workshops.

Approximately 12,000 artists (in literary, performing and visual arts) are in-residence at one retreat or another, and most of them are in rural areas, where the idea is to get away from all the distractions that keep artists from pursuing or completing their work. There are opportunities for fellow resident artists to socialize at Yaddo, for instance, at sit-down breakfasts and dinners in a common room, and people are free to choose their own company in the evenings. However, during the day, artists are expected to work on their own without interrupting others, and bag lunches are left at their studios so that their creativity and thought processes are not disturbed. Yaddo is, perhaps, more than the exception than the rule in the field of artist communities, where being around other artists is often as important as having time and solitude to do one’s work, but in every residency program there is a focus on the work.

“In our definition,” Strokosch said, “an artist-in-residence program provides dedicated time and space for an artist to do work. It’s not permanent, like a live-work site, but usually for between a few weeks and a year. There are also competitive criteria for artists to be there, in that they are selected by some means, such as through jurying or a curator.” Finally, the sponsoring organization need not necessarily be a nonprofit – it may charge fees – but “it is subsidizing artists, for instance by having them pay.

In-residence programs come in a variety of types. The National Park Service (1849 C Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20240, 202-208-6843, www.nps.gov) has an artist-in-residence program for writers, performing and visual artists, and 29 parks around the country participate. As opposed to artist communities, the National Park Service program brings in one artist at a time. Housing but no stipend is provided, and an individual residency lasts for a period of three weeks. Artists are required to donate to the Park Service’s collection some piece of their art that represents their stay, and they also may be asked to hold a demonstration or a talk for park visitors. Click here to see a list of participating parks.

Most residencies are not free to the participants – even the program of the National Park Service assumes that artists will provide their own food and art materials, as well as pay their rent and any other expenses at home – and finding the means to pay for them is no simple matter. A high percentage of the participants at artists’ communities are faculty members on sabbatical, and summers tend to be when these facilities are most full (“They accommodate academic schedules,” Strokosch said). Others seeking help paying for a residency have some options. A number of state arts agencies around the country offer career and professional development grants to individual artists, which may be used to pay for workshops, seminars, mentoring and specialized training, as well as (in some cases) travel costs to where they will take place. Nineteen states’ arts commissions permit that money to be used to pay residencies at artist communities (Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mo Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington State, West Virginia, and Wyoming).

Additionally, at least one local arts agency (Marin Arts Council, 555 Northgate Drive, San Rafael, CA 94903, 415-499-8350) offers Career Development Grants that help Marin County artists pursue opportunities, such as at an artist community, to further their professional artistic development. The grants go up to $1,500. The Sponsoring Partners program of the Headlands Center for the Arts (944 Fort Barry, Sausalito, CA 94965, 415-331-2787), an artist community, also works with the North Carolina Arts Council and the Ohio Arts Council to underwrite residencies for artists in those states at Headlands.

Several nonprofit organizations allow artists to apply for funding that may be used to pay for the cost of a residency:

Jerome Foundation
400 Sibley Street Suite 125
St. Paul, MN 55101-1928
(651) 224-9431
www.jeromefdn.org
The Travel and Study Grant Program awards grants to emerging creative artists. Funds support periods of travel for the purpose of study, exploration, and growth. (May be used for residencies when teaching or collaborative activities are involved) Open to residents of Minnesota and New York City.

Leeway Foundation
The Philadelphia Building
1315 walnut street, suite 832
Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 545-4078
www.leeway.org
Specific grants are available for emerging and established women artists. There is also a Window of Opportunity Grant which help artists take advantage of unique, time-limited opportunities that could significantly benefit their work or increase its recognition.

New York Foundation for the Arts
155 Avenue of the Americas, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10013-1507
(212) 366-6900
www.nyfa.org
Strategic Opportunity Stipends (SOS), a project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, working in collaboration with arts councils and cultural organizations across New York State, are designed to help individual artists of all disciplines take advantage of unique opportunities that will significantly benefit their work or career development. Literary, media, visual, music and performing artists may request support ranging from $100 to $600 for specific, forthcoming opportunities that are distinct from work in progress.

Another private funding source, the Herb Alpert Foundation (1414 Sixth Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401-2510, www.herbalpertfoundation.org/foundation_home.shtml), pays for residencies at a shifting group of artist communities. However, recipients of these awards are nominated, and the foundation will not accept applications.

Participating Parks

Photo by Rebecca Schear on flickr

Just a day before a New York district judge had given his approval on November 20th, a Long Island City property owner brought in a team of painters, not to decorate his buildings but to whitewash them, in advance of having them torn down. What they covered over was the work of other painters, a group of graffiti artists, or “aerosol artists” (as they refer to themselves) known collectively as 5Pointz, who had been creating designs over every inch of this group of rundown low-rise office buildings in Queens since 2002.

The 5Pointz artists had sought to stop the demolition through a lawsuit by claiming that their artwork was protected under the federal Visual Artists Rights Act, an amendment to the U.S. Copyright Law, and that its destruction would harm their honor and reputations. In his decision, the Judge Frederic Block said that although “the Court wished it had the power to preserve” the numerous graffiti images, the artists “knew that the buildings were coming down” and therefore could not have expected that their work would be permanent.

The district court decision ends the legal dispute that arose on October 10th when Jonathan Cohen, who uses the tag name Meres One and is the unofficial curator of 5Pointz, challenged the right of the property owner, Gerald Wolkoff, to tear down this group of buildings in Queens to make way for a 1,000-unit high rent apartment complex. The artist group sought a permanent injunction on the destruction of the buildings on which their art has been created. The artists claimed that, under the Visual Artists Rights Act, their work is of recognized stature (one of the requirements to bring a legal action) and that its destruction also would deny the artists the opportunity to earn income through licensing these images.

It was not disputed that since 1993 Wolkoff gave them permission “to use the interior and exterior walls…for works of art,” according to the lawsuit. In addition, the building owner provided the group with keys to the building, as well as “several secure spaces” in which they could store their paints, ladders and other supplies. The only restrictions that Wolkoff placed on their artwork were that images could not contain political messages, religious or pornographic imagery.

The group of buildings contain more than 350 works of art on interior and exterior walls.

Photo by Pelle Sten on flickr.

 

Wolkoff did not pay the artists for their work and, according to the complaint, the building owner did not request that title or copyright to the spray painted images be transferred to him. In 2002, Cohen formed a nonprofit corporation, 5 Pointz Aerosol Art Center, and the site has been listed in scores of travel guides and visited by artists and tourists around the world.

The decorated buildings also have been featured in fashion advertising, music videos, television and film productions, according to the lawsuit.

The only exemptions from VARA are “works made for hire, when the artist is an employee, which wasn’t the case here, and if the artists signed a written waiver to their VARA rights, which they didn’t do,” said Roland Acevedo, the lawyer representing the 10 artists suing Wolkoff. He added that artworks may be protected under VARA even when there is no written commissioning agreement or exchange of money. “The landlord gave the artists permission to do their art, which isn’t being disputed.”

Among the legal questions to be resolved are whether or not the landlord had made any promises to the artists about how long their work would be displayed and if the artwork is believed to be of “recognized stature,” which is one of the qualifications for VARA protection of pieces planned for destruction. “Most courts hold a low bar to ‘recognition,’” according to Manhattan arts lawyer Sergio Sarmiento, “meaning that the work does not have to have been included in the Whitney Biennial or been written up in The New York Times.”

By Daniel Grant

Teaching art isn’t for everyone, and teaching art to prison inmates probably appeals to an even more select group. “It took me three years to get used to walking through cell blocks without having butterflies in my stomach,” said Lynne Vantriglia, a Key West, Florida artist who has taught male and female inmates at prisons in Florida and South Carolina as a volunteer through an Art Behind Bars (http://www.prisonactivist.org/resources/art-behind-bars-inc) program she founded in 1994. Her reaction is not atypical. Penitentiaries are associated with brutality, a holding pen for monsters, the dark side of civilization, perhaps, but certainly not with creativity. However, the inmates themselves “are always so appreciative that you’re doing something for them. There is so little productive for inmates to do, and it may be the only positive experience they have while inside.”

Eventually, Vantriglia lost those butterflies, and her enjoyment of instructing inmates grew and deepened (“I’ve never taught anywhere else”). She is not alone, as more and more artists have ventured into jails and prisons, gaining teaching experience and striving to make a difference in the world through this work. “The students are great,” said Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, a painter and professor in the art education school of the University of Iowa, who has taught in prisons off and on since the early 1990s. “They’re polite and eager to learn, and the diversity — and I don’t mean just racial, but language and learning levels as well — is wide.”

The good that art does for prison inmates seems self-evident — provides accomplishments, offers a different avenue for self-expression than violence, builds confidence, frequently leads to other areas of learning — but has not been studied and quantified, although the directors of several prison art programs offer anecdotes of former inmates who have left the path of crime. In part, the lack of research reflects the varying state definitions of recidivism (ex-convicts returning to criminal activities) — does it mean back to jail in six months or two years? Does a suspended sentence or parole count? — in addition to the fact that criminologists have not regarded the benefits of prison art programs as worthy of quantitative analysis.

Prison art programs have two principal goals: As with any form of teaching, these classes aim to teach skills and discipline, developing a creative outlet for personal expression. On occasion, there are prison art exhibitions, sometimes used as fundraisers for various causes (Texas prisons operate hobby-craft shops where inmate-produced art and other objects are sold with the proceeds used for civic improvement); at other times inmates make use of these skills to embellish letters to family members with images and designs. If one were to classify it, this is outsider art. Still, few people make high claims on behalf of the art produced in prisons. The other goal is giving inmates something positive to do.

The Butterfly Effect
© 2011 City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program | Brad Carney, Daniel Ostrov, and Cesar Viveros
Hancock Recreation Center, 147 Master Street, Philadelphia, PA
Photo by Steve Weinik. Reprinted by permission.

 

“You can’t just throw them away, no matter what they did,” Williams said. “People who do well in art classes gain confidence and take other class, which is important since most inmates have very little education. They are motivated to try to change their lives. Would I rather have someone leave prison who has had a chance to reflect on what he or she has done than someone else who did nothing improving and just came out angry and ready to commit another crime?”

As many inmates have little education or workplace skills, the ability to draw — especially to render likenesses — is high prized in prisons, according to many artists who teach in these facilities. Inmates who can draw are often asked to create portraits for other inmates who are writing letters to family members, as well as to design tattoos, for which they may be paid in some form of prison barter. Helping inmates trade portraits for cigarettes, money or even some contraband “may not be something you or the prison officials want to encourage,” Williams conceded, and Phyllis Kornfeld, a painter in Stockbridge, Massachusetts who has taught in prisons since 1984, stated that she has asked inmates to leave her classes when learning how to render likenesses appeared to be their principal goal: “If an inmates wants pencils to do portraits, so he can get something, then the experience isn’t transformative,” she said. “There’s no seriousness, no commitment.” Still, Williams stated, these are skills, and they offer other outlets than violence or anger to fill the time.

Like Vantriglia, both Williams and Kornfeld recalled nervousness during their first entry into prisons but claimed that they quickly got over it, preferring inmates to some other students in less restrictive settings. “There are long waiting lists to get into an art class, so they wouldn’t want to jeopardize it by hurting me,” Kornfeld said, noting that her favorite inmate students are in maximum security prisons. “The higher the security, the more I like it. They’re focused; they know they will be in there for a long time, and they want something to do with their time.” Short-term inmates, whose crimes may be less heinous, on the other hand, usually are less interested in investing their time in what an outside instructor has to offer, she added. The inmates in a prison art class are not chosen at random but have signed up to be there; that self-selection weeds out more disruptive types whom artists would likely be glad are not there.

Still, artists are not left on their own but are often outfitted with an alarm that would quickly summon guards, or there may be guards posted at the door of the art room. “I’ve never been threatened,” said Grady Hillman, a poet and president of Southwest Correctional Art Network, which places artists of various disciplines in prisons. “There have never been any physical threats. No one has ever pulled a knife. I’ve encountered my share of sociopaths, but it’s no worse than teaching in a junior high school.”

Artist entering a prison receive a certain amount of training, either from a sponsoring organization or from prison officials. Often, they will be patted down and searched on entering and leaving the institution. In all cases, they are told not to provide personal information, such as a last name, an address or work affiliation, as well as the names of siblings or other family members. Hugging and other forms of touching also are to be avoided. Artists may not accept gifts or take out of the prison a written note. Vantriglia noted that “a few people have fallen in love with me; someone sent me a wedding contract.” Williams, who has primarily worked with women inmates, noted that some relationship have become more personal “after I’ve gotten to know them for a number of years.” She even attended a former inmate’s wedding, but clear boundaries exist for a reason. The husband of an inmate in one of her art classes once “came to my house, bringing me something he wanted me to give to his wife, and that was a little weird.” She refused (with no repercussions). Since respect is often a major issue among inmates, especially younger ones, Hillman stated, artists should not humiliate their students — “don’t make jokes at the expense of someone, or set someone up as an example.”

Artists usually are advised not to turn their backs on students, to wear modest clothing — no exposed midriffs, no torn pants — and not to make comments that are risqué, regardless of the intent. “It’s a waste of time to make jokes,” Kornfeld said. “This isn’t a social event. I want them to stay focused, not to banter.”

Participants in the Mural Arts Program’s Guild Program at work. Photo by Robyn Buseman. Reprinted by permission.

 

Not offering personal information is perhaps the most notable difference between teaching in a prison and anywhere else, but it becomes easier over time, since inmates similarly don’t reveal much to each other. Prison rules are quite strict for a reason, and artists need to maintain a structured environment rather than create an art school’s do-your-own-thing sensibility in these classes. A limited number of supplies may be bought in or supplied by the prison — nothing with sharp points, such as scissors, nothing with toxic odors, such as oil paints, nothing that must be assembled can be disassembled — and each item is likely to be counted at the beginning and end of a given class. Not all prisons follow the same security rules (some facilities allow inmates to take paper and pencils back to their cells, in order to practice skills between classes), but safety is always a concern.

Prison art classes may last from 90 minutes to five hours (including set-up and clean-up time), depending upon the project inmates are working on, and take place one or more times per week. In most instances, artists are paid by a sponsoring organization, a particular prison or a governmental agency, at the rate of between $35 and $50 per hour, although some artists also go in as volunteers. Auburn University in Alabama, Brown University in Rhode Island and the University of Michigan each run prison arts programs in which students are sent into correctional facilities as teachers for school credit.

For professional artists, the diversity of a class may seem more daunting than anything else, with a wider range of natural abilities and education among inmates than artists are likely to find in other teaching opportunities. “Many of them don’t have long attention spans, and many cannot follow complicated instructions,” Vantriglia said. As a result, she usually has four or five different activities taking place within a class, all of them focused on community service, such as making Valentines Day cards for patients at a Veterans Administration hospital, Christmas cards for those in nursing homes, painted t-shirts for at-risk teenagers and canvas paintings for more skilled inmates. “You don’t want an art class to become one more thing they can fail at.”

Participants in the Mural Arts Program’s Guild Program at work. Photo by Robyn Buseman. Reprinted by permission.

 

Williams noted that artists going into prisons should “prepare themselves for a feeling of ambivalence. On the one hand, everyone seems very nice and respectful; they’re very appreciative that you’ve come there to do this for them. You also know that they have done, in many cases, really horrible things. You’re sitting across from someone who might otherwise seem like a monster.” Not knowing the particular crimes they have committed, and not asking, enables her to focus on teaching art skills, and she also stated that “people are not their crimes” — that sentiment is universal among the artists who go into penitentiaries. They are not there to forgive or provide therapy or to be voyeurs. While not discounting personal responsibility, Williams and others involved in this realm of teaching said that most inmates come from single-parent impoverished households in low-rent communities, are members of minority groups and have limited education and skills. “Whatever they may have done, these are human beings, who need to be treated humanely and given creative things to do,” she said. It is an argument people in this field have found themselves making when confronted by members of victims rights advocacy groups. Susan Wolfe, a painter in Wichita, Kansas who taught art to inmates at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility in Hutchinson, Kansas for a number of years, countered criticism of her work inside a penitentiary by citing the Gospel According to Matthew (26.43-5), “The Bible says we should minister to people in the prisons,” she said. A larger program, the Healing Walls Project of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based Mural Arts Program, has prisoners and victims of crime work together to create murals. Producing murals that will be placed in the various neighborhoods from which they came results in inmates taking pride in their communities. “It’s a civic engagement and creating art at the same time,” said Jane Golden, a muralist and director of the Mural Arts Program. “By giving back, they start to figure out how to reconstruct the narrative of their own lives. Art can play a significant role in their rehabilitation.”

Opportunities abound for artists to work in correctional institutions. There are currently 5,000 or so jails (short-term incarceration) and prisons (long-term) around the United States, housing approximately 2.2 million convicted criminals, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Prisons Foundation (which has an art gallery displaying images created at facilities around the country). One-fifth of these lock-ups have creational programs — jails tend to offer fewer classes than prisons, because of the more rapid turnover of inmates. A clear drawback of teaching in prisons is distance, since these facilities usually are sited in remote, mural areas, requiring drives of up to an hour or more each way. State and country bureaus of correction are likely to know of private programs that place artists in prisons, and many correctional institutions have their own recreation and treatment director who works with outside groups or arranges to bring in individuals to teach. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, on the other hand, refers inquiries from artists to directors of individual institutions.

 Score a semi-big win for appropriation art, not to mention appropriation artist Richard Prince and New York’s Gagosian Gallery. The U.S. Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that found Prince had violated the copyright of French photographer Patrick Cariou, when the artist produced his own collage paintings using Cariou’s images of Jamaican Rastafarians from his 2000 book Yes Rasta.

In the ever-changing landscape of what constitutes copyright infringement and fair use, this ruling is likely to set a precedent for other courts and the art world in general, where the borrowing of and commenting on existing copyrighted images is a widespread practice known as appropriation.

In the April 25th ruling, Appellate Judge Barrington Parker agreed with Prince and the Gagosian Gallery, where the painter’s works had been exhibited and sold in December 2008, that Prince’s work “is transformative and constitutes fair use of Cariou’s copyrighted photographs, and that the district court imposed an incorrect legal standard when it concluded that, in order to qualify for fair use defense, Prince’s work must ‘comment on Cariou, on Cariou’s Photos, or on aspects of popular culture closely associated with Cariou or the Photos.’” (http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/5da8dc66-179e-4dc0-94cc-09e213bfffe3/1/doc/11-1197_complete_opn.pdf)

 During the lower court trial, Prince made no claims that his paintings were comments on or parodies of Cariou’s photographs, going so far as to claim that the paintings “don’t really have a message” of any sort. That led District Court Judge Deborah Batts to view Prince’s use of the photographic images as pure stealing. “If an infringement of copyrightable expression could be justified as fair use solely on the basis of the infringer’s claim to a higher or different artistic use . . . there would be no practicable boundary to the fair use defense,” she wrote. However, the Appellate Court took exception to that reasoning, claiming that “Prince’s work could be transformative even without commenting on Cariou’s work or on culture, and even without Prince’s stated intention to do so.”

There were 30 paintings in that Gagosian Gallery exhibition, and the Appeals Court found that 25 of them fit that transformative standard. The remaining five are to be sent back down for a lower court to rule on. Arts lawyer Donn Zaretsky pointed out in his Art Law Blog (http://www.theartlawblog.blogspot.com) that this failure to rule on all of Prince’s paintings makes this an incomplete victory for fair use. “What is the district court supposed to do now?  Stare at them side-by-side a little longer?  If the appellate court couldn’t ‘say for sure whether [this work] constitutes fair use or whether Prince has transformed Cariou’s work enough to render it transformative’ (my emphasis), what more can the district court do to resolve that question?”

In his artwork, Prince scanned several of Cariou’s images of people and landscapes into his computer and printed them directly onto his canvases, defacing them in limited ways (placing an electric guitar in one Rastafarian’s hands and daubing paint onto the face, for instance), as well as adding other elements to the paintings. Prince “didn’t transform these photographs, he just used them,” said Cariou’s lawyer Daniel Brooks, but it was Prince’s contention that he took the photographer’s images as raw material – in the manner of an assemblage sculptor’s “found objects.” When sculptor John Chamberlain created sculptures based on parts from damaged automobiles that he found in junkyards, Ford and General Motors did not sue him for taking and using what was theirs.

Brooks noted that Prince could have avoided the problem altogether by traveling to Jamaica and taking his own photographs that he scanned onto his canvases, but the entire point of Prince’s art is commentary on images that already exist in the world.

Other artists have stumbled into a gray area of the law, and it is quite likely that others will as well. “It’s meant to be a gray area, because the copyright law is designed to be flexible,” said John Koegel, a lawyer who successfully represented artist Jeff Koons in a similar infringement lawsuit by a commercial photographer, Andrea Blanch, in 2005. “The law states that the use of a copyrighted image is transformative based on the ordinary lay observer’s sense of if the new work is different and how different it is. It is very much of a visual thing, and there is no bright line that artists can go by.”

In fact, Koons has been sued twice by photographers for copyright infringement, the first time in 1989 in a case that he lost and the second time where he prevailed. In the 1989 case, a photographer, Art Rogers, had created a line of notecards with an image of a man and woman holding a litter of puppies, entitling the picture “Puppies.” Koons purchased one of these cards, tore off Rogers’ name and copyright notice, and sent the card to Italian artisans (with whom he had worked in the past) with the instruction that they should copy the image as a sculpture, which was entitled “String of Puppies.” Koons claimed that artistic freedom would be abrogated if artists could not make parodies or create work that somehow showed the influence of other artists. The court’s reading of the copyright law, however, did not support Koons, finding that the artist had not parodied but simply copied the photographic image and “that Koons’ copying of the photograph ‘Puppies’ was done in bad faith, primarily for profit-making motives, and did not constitute a parody of the original work.”  In the second case, Andrea Blanch’s photograph, titled “Silk Sandals by Gucci,” shows the lower part of a woman’s bar legs crossed at the ankles, resting on a man’s knee. The woman is wearing Gucci sandals, one of which dangles from her toes. The photograph appeared in an August 2000 issue of Allure Magazine. Koons acknowledged that his painting “Niagara” copied the woman’s legs, feet and sandals, omitting background element in Blanch’s photograph, inverting the image so that the legs are vertical, feet down, rather than horizontal, and adding three other pairs of women’s legs and feet. The judge in that case labeled Koons’ use of Blanch’s imagery “transformational,” legitimizing Koons’ actions under the fair use provision of the federal copyright law.

Left, a photo of a Rastafarian from Patrick Cariou’s “Yes, Rasta” and, right, a painting from Prince’s Canal Zone series

 

Working against artists, Koegel claimed, is the fact that “the law hasn’t accepted two principals that are well understood in the art world. The first is that a change in medium is transformative. If you go from two to three dimensions, you are transforming something and it is experienced very differently than it had been. The second is that re-presentation is transformative; when you are taking something and making a comment on it, even when the thing you are commenting on is relatively unknown, that comment makes it protected as a fair use of a copyrighted image.”

Like so much in the field of copyright law, those two principals are not absolute. Shifting from one medium to another is not a way of avoiding a lawsuit. For instance, turning a novel into a film makes a shift in medium, but without the permission of – and, probably, a payment to – the author, the filmmaker would be in violation of the writer’s copyright, because the author has the exclusive right to make “derivative” works or license the making of a film. “Where derivativeness ends and transformative begins is not at all clear,” said Robert J. Kasunic, principal legal advisor at the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. Also, he noted, a sculptural version of a copyrighted two-dimensional work would not necessarily be considered transformational if there weren’t some element of creativity added to the new work. Similarly, justifying appropriation of copyrighted material on the basis of making a commentary or parody only works “if the average person can see” that some comment is being made, he said.

The ordinary viewer may not be familiar with the customs and logic of the art world, taking what they see at face value rather than as irony. It is that collision of two worlds that makes copyright issues fraught with uncertainty. Jessica Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, claimed that part of the reason that Koons lost the first case but won the second was that “the first time he came into court with a lot of art world attitude about ‘I’m the artist, I can do whatever I want,’ and the second time he made a more reasonable statement about the kind of message that appropriation art sends. That goes a long way.” The nature of the infringement was also different in the two instances, but the overall trend of court decisions between 1989 and 2005 (and the present) is to allow greater latitude for the claim of the new artwork being transformative. “There is more sympathy in the legal environment, maybe it has gone too far,” Kasunic said.

There is no road map for artists whose subject matter includes existing images. To be safe, artists might request permission from the copyright holder of images they might use, although such a request might suggest that they knew they were infringing if a lawsuit is filed by a copyright holder who didn’t agree to the use, although an artist then could counter that he or she sought to negotiate in good faith. What a headache. Koegel noted that there is no specific amount of changes to be made in a copyrighted image that allows it to be considered “transformed” into something else. Artists might want to consult a lawyer for an opinion on their artwork or “just to get a sense of the law.” What constitutes copyright infringement, however, is determined on a case by case basis.

This case, however, may have cleared the way for a more artist-friendly vision of copyright law.

By Daniel Grant

.
Presumably, we all are aware that people with college degrees earn on the average two-and-a-half times that earned by those with only high school diplomas and that college graduates have suffered less from the recent recession than those who don’t hold a Bachelor’s degree. But is any of this true for college graduates who majored in art or just for those who earned degrees in science and technology?

According to a recent study published by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, titled “What It’s Worth: The Economic Value of College Majors,” artists haven’t done all that badly, earning an annual average $44,000 and suffering only eight percent unemployment. “Turning that around, you see it is really good news,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, professor and director of the Center on Education and the Workforce who was one of the three authors of the report. “Ninety-two percent of them are employed.” He noted that artists (grouped in clusters of designers, filmmakers and photographers, musicians, those in drama and theater arts, and others in the categories of fine arts, studio arts, visual and performing arts) generally have lower expectations than graduates of other programs, “so they tend to be more content to be employed and earning enough to live on.”

 More grumbling, he claimed, has come from architects and engineers who had experienced a strong demand for their services during the housing boom of the 1990s and up until 2007, subsequently finding themselves unemployed for varying periods of time and taking lower salaried jobs since then. “A lot of it is your expectations,” Carnevale said.

Drawing from U.S. Census figures, the Center looked a variety of employment fields, such as agriculture, business, education, engineering, health industry, journalism, law, social services and technology, and the report concluded that “for most students, when asked whether to go to college, the answer should be a resounding ‘yes.’”

Those with degrees in the filmmaking, photography, fine arts and design fields (a median of $45,000-46,000) tended to do a bit better than those with baccalaureates in music and drama (a median of $40,000-42,000). One-quarter of those who majored in the arts are employed in their field, while 14 percent work in some management category (in business, government or a nonprofit organization), 12 percent work in sales, another 12 percent are employed in an office and eight percent work in education.

The arts accounted for 4.6 percent of all majors, and 91 percent of the graduates are White. (Another seven percent are Asian, seven percent are Latino and five percent are African-American.) Women earned 61 percent of the arts degrees, although they tended to lag behind their male counterparts in salaries by an average of $8,000. As a group, women earned $2,000 less per year than African-Americans as a group who majored in the arts.

The findings of this report supports a 2010 research study of approximately 13,000 graduates of performing and visual arts programs who received their degrees between 1990 and 2009, which found that the overwhelming majority of them were employed, predominantly in fields related to their professional training, and that most of them were satisfied with their lives and careers. The study, conducted by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project, a joint program of Indiana and Vanderbilt universities, was based on completed questionnaires by graduates of more than 150 arts programs at liberal arts colleges, state universities and independent art schools around the country.

Of those 13,000 individuals, 2,817 had undergraduate or graduate degrees from college studio art programs, according to Steven J. Tepper, associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University who organized the study, and almost 83 percent of them worked the majority of their time in some arts occupation, such as art teaching or in a nonprofit arts organization. “Artists are plucky, resourceful people,” he said, “and most of them are doing what their training trained them to do.” Sixty percent of these fine artists work more than one job, “but they find what they put together satisfying. It is often said that ‘those who can’t teach,’ but based on this survey we found that many artists do teach and are happy teaching.” In addition, more than one third of the survey respondents reported working full-time as professional artists.

One myth may be that artists hate school (rote learning, too confining, artists are misunderstood), but the survey found that visual and performing artists generally had quite positive things to say about the colleges and universities where they received undergraduate and graduate degrees. For instance, 37 percent reported being “somewhat satisfied” and 45 percent were “very satisfied” with the degree of “freedom and encouragement to take risks” at these schools; another 87 percent were either somewhat or very satisfied with their schools’ instructors; 75 percent claimed that their school helped them “quite a bit” or “very much” in terms of “thinking creatively,” and 73 percent would go to the same school again if they had the option to start over. The only area in which there was an even mix of responses along the spectrum of “very dissatisfied” to “very satisfied” was in career advising.

By Daniel Grant

The process of applying and being accepted for a public or private art commission is long and involved but, once it is over, the artist can concentrate totally on his or her artwork, right? Unfortunately, the end of one stage simply means the beginning of another, perhaps not as long in duration but just as – or more – complex. Welcome to the commission agreement.

Some artists draft their own agreements. It makes sense to run such a document by a lawyer, perhaps someone at a Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts organization – they exist in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia – or one might contact an attorney whose practice involves entertainment law (the state bar association may offer a recommendation) to make certain that all the salient points are addressed. “I’ve written up my own contracts. I know what they need to contain,” said muralist Richard Haas, who added that he has “saved a lot of money over the years by doing this part of the job myself.”

In all instances, however, artists should be familiar with the basic concepts of an art commissioning agreement.

• The artists (or artists, if more than one) and the organization, individual or agency commissioning the artwork should be identified at the top. It should be clearly stated that the artist (as an independent contractor and not an employee) is in charge of the design, selection of materials and fabrication of the artwork, how the piece is to be installed and who is in charge of insuring it. When installed, there should be some plaque crediting the artwork to the artist, as well as listing the date of the piece and that the artist retains copyright. The party commissioning the artwork is responsible for obtaining any and all licenses and permits, preparing the site where the object will be installed and informing the artist of any laws or regulations that may affect the design of the piece.

• What are the dimensions, materials, subject matter, making processes and finishes of the artwork being created? How will it be mounted, framed, hung or otherwise installed? Where exactly will it be installed? The artist also will warrant that the final artwork has no defects in materials and workmanship.

• The artist should provide a realistic completion date, which may be very specific (June 15th) or approximate, using such language as “on or about” or “by such a date at the latest” or “between such and such dates.”

• The artist should write up a budget, detailing all expenses, using realistic numbers rather than inflated (in order to bilk the commissioning party) or heavily discounted (to seem like a bargain) figures.

• How will the artist be paid? There should be a method of payment, and many agreements employ the one-third rule – one-third on signing the commission, another third when work is two-thirds complete and the final amount when the work is completed and installed — or some variation).

• Even after a proposal is selected, there is an approval process, usually in stages, that may consist of rough sketches, drawings, maquettes. These stages usually are equal to the number of payments, and they also permit dialogue and discussion about the artwork and any modifications that may be needed. However, changes resulting from discussions may increase costs, and those expenses need to be negotiated.Disputes may develop during the process, which may be resolved informally or through the mechanism of mediation or arbitration. A contractual clause covering dispute resolution may keep a commission from being cancelled or the parties hiring lawyers and going to court.

• The person who is negotiating with the artist should have final authority for commissioning the project and approving the designs, as well as accepting and paying for the completed work.

• Often, artists are asked to waive their “moral rights” under the federal Visual Artists Rights Act, thereby allowing their work to be removed or even discarded without their permission. Still, artists may ask that, the owners decide to remove the artwork, it be offered back to them with the artist paying the cost of removal.

• The owners of the commissioned artwork may want to create small or other copies of the piece for promotional purposes, but “artists should resist giving up their copyright,” Chicago arts lawyer Scott Hodes stated, only permitting limited use of the images under separate licensing contracts.

• It is reasonable for artists to warrant the design, fabrication flaws and structural integrity of the materials for a period of one year but not more than that. Manhattan arts lawyer Donn Zaretsky advises artists not to accept any liability for injuries as part of a public art commission. “The commissioning agency should pay all legal fees and judgments,” he said. “I call it the artist-can-sleep-at-night clause.”

• As physical objects, artwork may require regular care or conservation treatments. Artists should provide detailed written instructions on the type of care needed and how often. During their lifetimes, they should be given the opportunity to make or supervise repairs and restorations at a reasonable fee.

 
The end stages of anyone’s life are likely to be somewhat chaotic. Ailments consume one’s thoughts, strength wanes, memory fades, and the ability to take care of ordinary activities, albeit work or just shopping for food, declines. Those with jobs are apt to retire – the business will go on – and devote the remainder of their lives to a less stressful existence. In 1996, multimedia sculptor Nam June Paik (1932-2006) suffered a stroke that largely curtailed his ability to create new installations, but his career was far from over. Exhibitions of his work were being planned, new pieces were still being fabricated and existing works continued to be put up for sale at galleries. What’s more, a series of sculptures purportedly by Paik, but which the artist denied were his, were put up for sale, leading to two lawsuits against Paik, which his lawyers chose to settle, because Paik was not deemed mentally competent to testify at trial. “You can see this as people taking advantage of a senile artist,” said Paik’s nephew and estate executor, Ken Hakuta. “He was sick.”

The lawsuits were eventually resolved out of court. Had Paik maintained a documentary record for all his work – “So-and-So Gallery or studio assistant is authorized to produce this-many pieces, to be titled this, this and that and sold for these prices,” signed and initialed by all parties involved – the confusion might have been resolved more quickly and with less expense. Good recordkeeping, unfortunately, is not one of the characteristics of highly successful artists. Diminished brain function, however, may prove catastrophic for an artist whose business is run completely out of his or her head. “Just getting old is hard,” said Dr. John Zeisel, director of the Woburn, Massachusetts-based organization Artists for Alzheimer’s. “Bills don’t get paid; things don’t get put away. Most creative types have things lying around anyway and, when they develop dementia, it becomes much harder to organize.”

• Images that are licensed for commercial use, also forgotten. “Postmortem royalties, with few exceptions, tend to taper off,” said Elliot Hoffman, a lawyer with an arts practice in New York City, “but sometimes royalty payers forget to pay the artist or the artist’s estate or heirs. Sometimes, they just stop paying and wait to see if anyone complains.”

• Elements involved in the process of creating a multiples edition, such as mock-ups, proofs, maquets, molds or drawings, are overlooked by the artist but are subsequently used or sold by the publisher, fabricator or foundry.

• Artworks that are not documented with photographs or written information (title, size, year, medium), which may pose later problems of attribution. Artists are generally thought to be the best judges of their own work (although there are instances where some have been less than truthful, denying early pieces they now dislike or, in the case of Giorgio di Chirico, intentionally misdating works) but, when the artist suffers memory loss (as in the case of Nam June Paik) or dies, the problem of attribution is magnified. Determining when a work was created and by whom becomes a more drawn-out and expensive process.

“Artists, by definition, are not business-minded,” Hoffman said, which is neither true nor a definition, but thee have been numerous instances of artists neglecting to keep good records on their artwork, loans, licenses and consignments, leading to headaches and lawsuits during an artist’s lifetime and beyond.

If artists kept better records on their work and careers, there might be less need for lawsuits, authentication committees – art fakes hardly would be profitable – and catalogue raisonnés. Toward that goal, the Joan Mitchell Foundation (155 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013, 212-524-0100, www.joanmitchellfoundation.org) established a grant program enabling artists to document their work. The foundation will underwrite this process by hiring an archivist and paying for a computer (if need be) and the creation of an image and text database rather than providing money to an artist directly. “If you just give artists money, they might not spend it on archives,” said Carolyn Somers, executive director of the foundation. “While they are alive, artists can do their own catalogue raisonné.”

By Daniel Grant

Like dandelions, the issue of resale royalties for fine artists just keeps coming back. And, like dandelions, it keeps spreading, having most recently migrating from continental Europe to England, and the United States seems poised to take on the issue – again.

In December of 2011, New York Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler and Wisconsin Democratic Senator Herb Kohl jointly introduced the Equity for Visual Artists Act that would pay artists a percentage of the sale price of their work when it is sold on the secondary market, and the federal Copyright Office solicited comments on the proposal from the public, and the comments have been published online (www.copyright.gov/docs/resaleroyalty/comments/77fr58175). They make interesting reading.

The proposed bill would set aside seven percent of the price of artworks resold at auction for more than $10,000, with half of the money going to the living artist or the artist’s heirs and the other half to a fund for nonprofit art museums. A collecting society would be responsible for collecting and distributing the resale royalty.
The concept of resale royalties is based on the view, codified in the Berne Copyright Convention to which the United States and 62 other countries around the world are signators, that artists maintain an ongoing relationship with the works they create. Intentionally altering, damaging or destroying a work of art may adversely affect an artist’s reputation, and laws in all of these countries (in the U.S., the Visual Artists Rights Act) permit artists to sue the owners of their work for damages. Resale royalties (or droit de suite in France, where the concept was first enacted into law in 1920) continue that idea of the artist’s connection with their work, but in a different direction. The value of the artwork may increase over time as a result of the artist’s rising level of success and prestige. An an example, there would be little market for, or interest in, Picasso’s early work if it weren’t for his later work, which established his significance in the history of art. That early work was sold for very little money and, supporters of resale royalties contend, Picasso — or in this case, his heirs — deserve a percentage of the increased value, because the artist is responsible for the increase. The German resale royalty statute is premised on the view that the increased value represents the amount of money the artist should have received originally: Not paying a royalty to artists punishes them for their prescience. Belgian law identifies the increased value as “unjust enrichment” on the part of the collector. Yet another argument for resale royalties, advanced by its supporters, is that the resale of a work of art like a replay of a song, and therefore the author is entitled to compensation each time it is replayed.

The U.K. adopted an artist resale royalty law six years ago, instituting it in two stages. From 2006 to the end of 2011, the royalty – which was based on a sliding scale based on the value of the resold artworks over €1,000 (starting at four percent for items selling up to €50,000, rising to one-quarter of one percent for pieces exceeding €500,000) – applied only to living artists; as of January 2012, the law expanded to include the heirs and estates of deceased artists.

The law was controversial before and since its enactment, and representatives of the British Art Market Federation has worried publicly that the statute would drive buyers and sellers away from London to other countries where no resale royalty law exists. However, many U.K. dealers have not found the resale royalty law a hindrance on their trade. “Sales have been as healthy as before the law came into effect,” said Glenn Scott-Wright, director of London’s Victoria Moro Gallery. “Clients haven’t indicated that they were unwilling to buy because of the royalty. In fact, there hasn’t really been much discussion of the law.”

According to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Copyright Office, Gayle Osterberg, there may be an additional call-for-comments period if other questions about the legislation are raised, and there also may be public hearings.

The Nadler-Kohl bills are not the first time that artist resale royalties have been proposed in Congress as an amendment to the federal copyright law. The now-deceased Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy offered a bill in the late 1970s, modeled after California’s law that was enacted in 1977, for which there were hearings but no action taken. The California law was struck down as unconstitutional last May by a federal district judge in Los Angeles, Jacqueline H. Nguyen, who ruled that the state’s effort to control art sales “wholly outside the boundaries” of California violated the federal government’s commerce clause. Judge Nguyen’s ruling has been appealed.

Daniel Grant

To some artists, having a dealer means that they never again need to concern themselves with the mechanics of selling works to collectors – someone else is in charge of that problem. Other artists, however, find that collectors prefer to buy from them directly, instead of from their dealers, and beat a path to their studios. Frequently, those collectors believe that they can purchase artwork for less money than when a dealer is involved – the price may be halved, these buyers think, because there won’t be a 50 percent gallery commission.

As a rule, artists should never undersell their dealers. However, some artist-dealer issues are less clear-cut, especially when the artist also sells his or her work directly.

For instance, dealers frequently, or even regularly, offer discounts off the stated price — usually, 10 percent — to encourage potential buyers. Is it equally permissible for the artist to offer the same percentage discount when selling their work privately? Considering the fact that dealers generally charge a 50 percent commission for sales of the artwork they are representing, what is wrong with an artist even taking a 50 percent discount for a studio sale?

Artists and their dealers may have opposing views on this. For artists, it is just as viable for the artist to sell work with a discount as the dealer. On the other hand, Gilbert Edelson, administrative vice-president and counsel of the Art Dealers Association of America, said that “a discount by the artist undercuts the dealer, even if the discount and the final price is the same as what the collector would get at the gallery. Collectors talk to each other, ‘Don’t buy from the dealer. You’ll get a better price from the artist’ – this hurts the dealer and eventually the artist after the dealer decides he no longer wants to handle the artist because the artist has become his competitor. Artists should tell people who want to buy their work directly, ‘I don’t sell from my studio. You should go to my dealer.’”

In general, the only time that artists might sell work at a larger discount would be to their dealers – known as a “trade” discount, which may be as large as 40 or 50 percent, in effect the regular gallery price minus the regular dealer commission.

No less thorny is the question of whether or not an artist owes his or her dealer a commission on the sale of a work from that artist’s studio. For instance, a work is exhibited in the dealer’s gallery and then returned to the artist; if someone who may have seen that work on display approaches the artist directly to purchase it, is the dealer owed a commission?

Again, artists and dealers view this issue differently, although there is no unanymity of opinion on either side. Many surveyed artists have said, “If the dealer can’t sell it, I wouldn’t owe him anything,” while sculptor Alice Aycock stated that “I would owe the dealer a commission, but maybe not the full 50 percent. I would try to figure out what the dealer has done and what I’ve done, basing the amount of the commission on that.”

However, George Adams, co-owner of New York City’s Frumkin/Adams Gallery, took the view that the dealer is owed the regularly agreed-upon commission because “the sale would not have been made but for the patronage of the gallery. A gallery provides all kinds of support services as well as a forum for presenting the artist’s work, and the dealer would rightly expect that these costs would be paid for by the commission.”

At times, an artist who is in a long-standing relationship with a gallery or dealer privately sells a work that was never displayed in the gallery, and the commission question arises again.

In this instance, most artists tend to agree with Denver, Colorado artist’s career advisor Sue Viders that “you shouldn’t have to pay a commission on a sale when the dealer had nothing to do with it,” although those artists who receive a regular stipend from their dealers are more likely to feel an obligation to pay the commission.

Dealers themselves, even those who do not pay stipends, consider that some commission may be due them. “The artist’s name and reputation was presumably made by the dealer,” Gilbert Edelson stated. “But for the dealer’s efforts, no one would have tracked down the artist to buy from him or her directly.”

The issue of whether or not to pay the dealer’s commission, of course, only applies to artists who are not in “exclusive” relationships with their dealers – that is, they have not formally agreed to name the dealer as their sole agent for sales. In some instances, artists write into the consignment agreements with their dealers that collectors whom the artist has personally cultivated are an aspect of the market that fall outside the realm of exclusivity.

In general, it is wise for artists to discuss these and other issues with their dealers at the beginning of their relationship – formalizing their agreements in either a letter or formal contract – and as circumstances arise. You don’t want the dealer to find out that something has been taking place behind his back. As an example of this kind of negotiation, it is not uncommon that the artist (who has the final word on the prices for his or her work) allows the gallery to discount works a certain percentage but demands that this discount be deducted entirely from the dealer’s commission.

Some dealers do far more than others for the artists they represent, of course, and some artist-dealer relationships seem more adversarial than mutual. In order to minimize direct competition between the two, for instance, many dealers discourage their artists from selling privately in the same market area. In an ideal and a practical sense, the two should be working toward the same goals; the payment of a commission tests this bond.

By Daniel Grant

For Charley Friedman, a “typical day would be going to the studio and fixing something at a property.” What he does at the studio – sculptural pieces in a conceptual art vein – would be easily understood by most artists, and perhaps so would be the “fixing something” at one of the commercial properties owned by his in-laws in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is a part-time handyman (and occasional sales and rental agent), part-time visiting instructor at the University of Nebraska and part-time artist. If you want to reach him, call his Brooklyn, New York cell phone, because he and his wife keep an apartment there. (You can’t be a New York artist if you don’t have a New York address.)

“My wife and I have rushed to New York City in a dither for 48 hours just to have a studio visit with a curator,” Friedman said, and they also take more planned trips during the year to take in art shows and see friends. Until the recent recession and even during the anemic recovery, the two were permanent Brooklyn residents, but ongoing problems in the economy made it difficult for them to afford the life there, so their home of 20 years became a pied-a-terre, and his part-time life began.

Which of the various activities takes most of his time changes from one week to the next, largely dependent on what needs fixing at those properties. “To be sure, it is part-time work, but like any job you want to do it well, so it takes time,” he said. “If a tenant calls me at 1:00 a.m.,” because a toilet is clogged or electrical power has been lost, he will “have to attend to those needs.” On the side of his truck are printed the words “Real Estate/Conceptual Art,” and he leaves it to Nebraska locals to puzzle that out.

The story of many artists is doing something, often unrelated to art, to pay the bills until the art began to sell. Over time, serious artists become adept at carving out time in the evening, on weekends, during vacations and even on sick days in order to produce artwork and find exhibition opportunities. The term “day job” itself has a pejorative sound, like “paperwork,” that suggests a degree of unimportance or time being filled. If an artist proves successful, art critics and art historians tend to omit mention of the day job, or it becomes a point of trivia – Julian Schnabel worked as a cook and Richard Serra was a man-with-van mover – because the job has little to no relationship with the art that they create. However, those jobs paid the rent and groceries, and it was not – and is not – an easy decision to give up even the least interesting salaried job for the uncertainty of an art career. Schnabel decided that he would quit cooking when his paintings reached the $6,000 mark, and probably every artist needs some objective benchmark that confirms not only that they feel ready but are ready to devote all their time to art.

Leaving the full-time creation of art to take on part-time work is not the happy story of art, but the current recession has made this scenario the reality for quite a few. Still, Friedman and others look forward to a day when art can be their principal occupation, and it is important for artists to look ahead: What are the signposts that indicate that an art career is viable? When should I give up the day job?

For Lynn Basa, a sculptor and textile artist in Chicago, that tipping point occurred in 2000, when she earned $60,000 from individual and corporate commissions, which was more than she was being paid as a corporate art curator. “My husband said to me, ‘You’re actually losing money by staying in that job,’” she said. “We penciled it out, and he was right.” Part of Basa’s success in selling her pieces stems from working 17 years in the corporate art field, since she knows many of these curators “or I know how to find them.” A large percentage of her sales come from just these private and corporate art buyers. “I talk their talk, and I know how to quickly assess what they’re looking for.”

The tipping point arrived for Washington, D.C. artist Sam Gilliam after he received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1967 and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1968, enabling him to quit his job as a public school art teacher in the nation’s capitol. “With that kind of money and time to pursue my art, I thought the risk of being a full-time artist was worth it,” he said. Actual sales of his artwork were infrequent events at the time, and he hadn’t prepared himself by saving money. “It scared my wife to death that I was leaving my job,” he stated. “I’d be talking with people about art in one part of the room and, in the other side of the room, people were telling my wife, ‘You’re going to starve.’ It became an issue for us. For a while, my wife’s name for me was, Oh You Poor Baby.”

By Daniel Grant

A lot of misfortunes can befall an artist: His studio burns down, her work is stolen, one or more pieces are damaged in transit. Here’s another, the artist’s dealer declares bankruptcy, and the artworks in the dealer’s possession are part of the assets that creditors are claiming. Banks, suppliers and contractors all get in line to assert their right to have their debts paid off first, and artists (and artists’ heirs) who have consigned their work to the dealer have to jockey for position. Will an artist have to cross swords with a bank?

No. Under New York State’s Arts and Cultural Affairs law (and similar laws of 30 other states around the country), the consigned artwork is deemed to be held in trust, beyond the reach of the dealer’s creditors, and the artists or their heirs have priority to their work. It should not be used to pay off the dealer’s debts. The process by which that would happen is that the artist or artist’s heir files a proof of claim with the bankruptcy court, stating that he or she is the artist or the heir of the artist whose work was consigned. Helpful in the process is a signed and dated consignment agreement between the artist and the dealer, which identifies the particular artworks being consigned to the dealer. More about consignment agreements.

The Arts and Cultural Affairs law also stipulates that if any consigned pieces were sold, the proceeds of the sale also must be held in trust, and the artist or artist’s heir has priority over other creditors in retrieving that money. If no escrowed money is found or the money has been spent by the dealer, the artist or heirs may join the list of creditors in the bankruptcy process.

(Consignors to an art gallery who are not the artist or the heir of an artist may gain that priority standing if they have filed a Uniform Commercial Code form, which exists on the state level in every state, in person or online through the Department of State of the particular state in which the gallery is located at the time in which the object was consigned. The cost of filing the form is usually under $50. There is no need to fill out a separate form for each artwork, as multiple pieces may be identified on a single form.) Here is an example of a UCC form from Texas.

Unfortunately, the process of retrieving one’s artwork is not immediate. Bankruptcy courts establish an elaborate and formalized protocol by which creditors can put forth their claims, some of which take precedence over others, and the process can take years. Banks, generally, are first in line to be reimbursed (theirs are “secured” claims), followed by suppliers and others (who have “unsecured” claims). The telephone company might be the last to get paid, and its bill might not be paid at all if the dealer’s assets have been exhausted. New York’s Arts and Cultural Affairs law, however, places artists and their heirs ahead of the banks.

What also may hold up the process, as far as artists and their heirs are concerned, is if any of the other creditors raises an objection to the artist receiving priority. If that occurs, the dispute will need to be resolved in front of the judge. Another delay may occur when the dealer places artworks in a fine art storage warehouse before declaring bankruptcy.  The artist’s pieces cannot be retrieved until the warehouse is paid, and that payment may remain tied up in the overall bankruptcy process, and in the end there may be no money left to pay the warehouse. The artist him- or herself may just have to pay the warehouse to get the artworks back.

The other 30 states with art consignment statutes are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin. New Jersey’s consignment law is described here.

Every artist has heard it. Masonville, Colorado sculptor Daniel B. Glanz certainly has heard it. Someone looks at one of his small bronze pieces of animals or human figures, sees the price and asks, “Why does this little sculpture cost so much?” He has an answer to this, but sometimes it is easier to show people, and for that reason he offers demonstrations of the process of making a sculpture several times a year at the galleries that represent his work (there are three in Colorado and one in Texas) and, occasionally, at a museum.

The demonstrations last a couple of hours each. Some visitors stay for the entire time, while others go in and out. Talking through each stage of the process, Glanz brings a lump of clay, a wax figure, an armature, a mold, the bronze piece and the bronze after it has been smoothed and patinated in its final version. He will do something with each of the stages to reveal what is involved. “People have no idea how labor-intensive the process of producing a bronze is,” he said, and his demonstrations usually elicit lots of questions: “Why do you do it this way? Why did you make that decision?” By the end of the demonstration, he noted, the why-does-it-cost-so-much question “often becomes, ‘There is so much work involved. How can you afford to do it?’”

Daniel Glanz sculpting

Chalk the modest expense of setting up a demonstration, and his time doing it, to the cost of marketing. “I do it for promotional reasons, to educate people about what goes into making a sculpture,” Glanz said, “and get them to thinking about buying one.” These demonstrations have resulted in purchases right at the site of the demonstration – he brings a number of fully made artworks to sell – as well as commissions to create other works down the road, in addition to visits to his Web site (www.glanzsculptures.com) where other pieces are on constant view. (He also makes sure to bring flyers, postcards and other promotional material that lists his Web site and studio address in Loveland, Colorado for visitors to take with them.)

Hunting up prospective buyers is not the only benefit for artists to demonstrate how they work. Karen Nastuk, a watercolorist in Danvers, Massachusetts, has been asked by a number of art associations to present demonstrations of between two and five hours for their members (she has been paid between $75 and $250 per demonstration), and it is from these gatherings that she has found private students. “In a lot of these associations, you may have one or two people with advanced skills,” she said, “but most of them are more like Sunday painters, and they really appreciate someone showing them how to do certain things and explaining how to do it at the same time.”

At other times, a demonstration may offer no immediate payback but, instead, serve a public service function. Many of the arts and crafts fairs in which Albuquerque, New Mexico ceramicist Sandra Lipka has taken a booth feature demonstrations by some of the participating artists, and Lipka often has shown visitors how to throw clay. “It is truly touching to see a child’s eyes light up when you take a lump of clay and turn it into a bowl,” she said. “It gets them, and their parents and other people, too, to realize that bowls don’t just come from big box stores, that you can make them yourself.”

Opportunities to hold a demonstration are abundant, at art galleries, arts and community centers, and at many art museums. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles are just two institutions around the country that offer regular series of artists’ lectures and demonstrations for the public. Last April 28th, Glanz held a demonstration on bronze sculpture-making at the Loveland Museum & Gallery as part of the state’s annual Governor’s Invitational Art Show and Sale (a work of his was selected to be in the show). Of all the places to hold a demonstration, Glanz liked the museum the best. “It’s much more comfortable than in the shows where you set up a booth and have to show people things within a cramped space,” he said. Other benefits include meeting “a lot of potential clients” and getting the event written up in newspapers and magazines.

Feature image: “Courtship” (Black-browed Albatross) by Daniel Glanz

It’s the cry of every scorned artist – “The critics hated the Impressionists, too!” – but the claim is only partly true. Within a decade or so of their first major exhibitions, the critical tide had turned in the Impressionists’ favor, especially as unceasing stylistic developments within the School of Paris soon made the work of Monet and company look relatively tame. By the time he was in his late 70s, Monet was lionized, an acknowledged Old Master of modernism.

Most artists, however, are unwilling to wait that long. Artists, especially those who have achieved some recognition, tend to shrug off negative reviews of their work and stress how it’s more important to concentrate on one’s own art. However, not far below the surface, anger at some art critic or critics in general lies waiting to be tapped.

“One reviewer said about my work, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘Is this art? Why did someone go to the bother to make this thing?’” sculptor Donna Dennis said. “Another time, a critic with a Marxist point of view said that the scale of my work suggested the upper classes looking down on poor people. My problem with art critics is that they often have a set point of view to which they want your work to conform, and they refuse to open their minds to see where you’re coming from.”

No one appreciates a negative review. They are “irritating,” “annoying,” “pointless” – the more artists you ask, the more the adjectives fly. Sculptor Marisol, when she has become angry or depressed by a review that seems “nasty or personal,” has gone to the lengths of sending the critic “a letter insulting him, in order to get even.” Clearly, success doesn’t make an artist’s anger or insecurities go away when a review is unfavorable. In fact, success may seem to raise the stakes on whether or not the write-up is favorable or otherwise. Donna Dennis noted that “a poor review affects me financially now whereas, when I first started out, it only hurt my feelings.”

Perhaps, commercial success should compensate for criticism’s version of Bronx cheers, and it may be that the critical nay-saying is a result of the commercial success. Newsweek’s former art critic Peter Plagens noted that “critics seem to say, ‘This artist already makes a lot of money and is so popular, why should I add to it?’”

Coping with criticism, both adverse and positive, is one of the most difficult tasks for any artist. Is there any truth in what someone else is saying? Does a negative review mean that the work is bad? Do misinterpretations by a critic suggest that the work isn’t communicating clearly with the public?

There may be a great temptation for artists to respond to misinformation. Environmental artist Christo noted that the titles of his work are frequently mispelled, and facts such as his nationality (Bulgarian) are often incorrect. “Some critics wrote that I am Czechoslavakian,” he said. “One person wrote that I was born in Belgium.” Donna Dennis pointed out that the scale of her work doesn’t reflect class differences (as the Marxist critic had written) but “the scale of my own body, which a feminist critic would have understood.” Most artists, however, see reasons to check the impulse to respond.

Beyond the questions of the critic’s value in making public mention of the artist and of responding to potential misinterpretations is the deeper issue of whether or not criticism resonates as true. Some artists that criticism may prove most valuable and constructive when it parallels one’s own private doubts and concerns. Criticism, whether favorable or otherwise, is often able to open up ideas and provoke discussion.

Actually, most art reviews are favorable. Smaller circulation newspapers rarely knock artwork, and editors often try to help locals – artists or galleries. Only a handful of major newspapers will ever say anything negative about an art exhibition, and even then it’s rare. Usually, the artists who receive any sort of negative criticism are well established – “critic-proof,” as they say.

Artists may be able to hear criticism only from critics, from friends, peers, family members or, perhaps, from no one. Some people respond to criticism in certain ways, regardless of whether they are artists or shoemakers, but the real issue is how confident the creator is his or her own work. Criticism can come too early and too hard for some artists, and creators might want to hold off displaying their art until they feel secure in what they have made – secure enough to make it public and, as a child, let it go off into the world. Once a work of art leaves the studio, it no longer belongs exclusively to the artist; rather, it belongs to the world. It is liked and understood according to the tastes and knowledge of the people who see it, and the creator becomes just one more person in this chain. Sometimes, criticism opens an artist’s eyes to facets of the work that he or she hadn’t before realized. The artist learns to step back, watch the processes of the art world, pick up what good can be gleaned and go on to the next creation.

Feature image: Claude Monet – Garden at Giverny

Publishing books to assist artists in their careers has become a small industry, with new titles being released all the time. (Disclaimer: I am part of this industry, too, having produced a number of career guides for fine artists.) Artists often have very specific questions – Can I deduct this? Is doing that legal? How can I sell work from my own studio? – to which they hope to find specific answers in these books, and it requires the authors know something about what preys on the minds of artists. Some books reveal a bit more about the interests of the authors than of their audience.

Among the more recent releases in this field are three paperback originals – Starting Your Career as an Artist by Angie Wojak and Stacy Miller (Allworth Press, $19.95), An Artist’s Guide to the Law by Richard Amada (Focus Publishing, $16.95) and New Tax Guide for Writers, Artists, Performers & Other Creative People by Peter Jason Riley (Focus Publishing, $19.95) – that provide clear, intelligent answers to the questions that come up in an artist’s career.

 Wojak and Miller structure Starting Your Career as an Artist in a question-and-answer format, with boldface questions and topics (What are some tips for communicating with curators or critics? What professional practices do you recommend for an emerging artist?) followed by concise discussions written in a conversational style. In some instances, these are actual conversations, as the authors – Wojak is the career services director at Columbia University and Miller is former director of professional development at the College Art Association – interviewed a variety of people in the fine arts and design fields (including art critic Jerry Saltz and Liz Claiborne chief creative officer Tim Gunn), writing up their comments.

 The authors don’t tell artists what to do but provide a wealth of ideas. It is even more difficult to advise artists in the realm of law, since every situation is and can be a bit different and every case is “fact-based.” Richard Amada, a Washington, D.C. lawyer, offers an overview of intellectual property (copyright, patents, trademarks) and contract law, as well as what rights are protected by the First Amendment. Clearly, an artist facing a legal quandary would be well advised to contact a lawyer, or a volunteer lawyers for the arts organization, but readers of An Artist’s Guide to the Law may certainly claim to be forewarned of situations that pose legal risks.

 Peter Jason Riley, a certified public accountant in Newburyport, Massachusetts, has worked with writers, fine and performing artists for many years, and his New Tax Guide asks and answers most of the questions that clients have brought him over the years. Most of the book dealing with fine artists looks at what may be deducted, listing 26 different realms of expenses and providing a fictitious case example of an artist who travels to another city where her work is to be exhibited and sold in order to identify all of the potential deductible expenses. He includes several pages of a deduction checklist that artists may use when figuring their taxes or to assist a preparer of their tax returns. In each chapter are reproductions of the relevant Internal Revenue tax forms that artists would be filling out, which might seem a bit like filler to more experienced artists, but that is a minor quibble.

In all, these three books offer quite digestible information on many of the business questions that artists face.

— Daniel Grant

To prosper as an artist, career counselors to visual artists continually advise, one has to devote as much serious attention to the business aspects of this work as creating it. There is the matter of contacting prospective customers and art galleries, working out consignment agreements with dealers, photographing, crating, shipping and keeping track of where every artwork is, preparing and mailing out promotional material, taking telephone calls, writing and answering letters as well as keeping a budget, overseeing accounts payable and receivable, determining business expenses for tax purposes and all the other this-and-thats.

To some people, the business part of art may take precedence over anything else. “I always tell artists that they should research the market and have a marketing plan in place before they create for the market,” Sue Viders, an artist’s advisor in Denver, Colorado, said. “There is no use creating something for which there is no market.”

But what if you are not just very good at the business stuff or, like Santa Fe, New Mexico sculptor Glenna Goodacre, you find juggling art and business just too much. Then, an artist might want to consider hiring a business manager, which Goodacre did years ago, hiring Daniel Anthony as her business manager. He is paid a base salary plus commissions on sales (between three and 15 percent, depending upon whether he personally arranged the sale or it took place in a gallery) plus “incentives” (another five-to-10 percent after certain projected sales figures have been reached).

Anthony assists the artist with a variety of tasks, from selling to answering the telephone. “When I started here in 1987, Glenna didn’t even have a secretary,” Anthony, who used to manage a bronze foundry, said. “She sculpted with a phone cradle, so that she could work with both hands when answering a call. Now, she doesn’t have to talk to dealers, collectors, the foundry, reporters, suppliers. She has more than doubled her output.”

Increasing output (for selling artists) is vital, if only to earn the additional money required to pay such intermediaries as secretaries and business managers, not to mention the costs of their health insurance, Social Security and other taxes and benefits. “What I gained is time and money,” Goodacre said. “Time is money. The amount of time I’ve gained from not having to deal personally with the foundries about every little thing is enormous right there.” She added that “I can’t chart exactly that I earn so much more to cover the added expenses, but I feel it.”

Not all business managers are full-time employees and, in fact, most are not. Friends and spouses frequently handle selling and administrative work for artists and, for many of the artists who earn enough money from their art – usually, in excess of $100,000 annually – to afford to hire others, their dealers or art galleries assume many of those tasks.

Yet a different style of business management is found with Susanna Singer, who has been a manager for three artists, Sol Lewitt, Robert Mangold and Adrian Piper. Paid a salary split by all three, the only things she doesn’t do for these artists is create their work or become involved in selling it. Among her tasks, she indicated, has been to set prices, keep track of inventory, maintain computer catalogue raisonnes, select writers for catalogues and edit those catalogues as well as approve their design, handle all correspondence and telephone inquiries, OK private and public art commissions, serve as intermediary between the artists and both galleries and museums, crate and ship their work, insure that the artists have been paid what they are owed, authenticate their work, have their work photographed and prepare all promotional material.

“The requirements for this job is that I am the artists’ Number One fan and that I know more about their work than anyone else,” she said. “Sol [Lewitt] once said to someone, ‘When you’re talking with Susanna, you’re talking with me. When you’re dealing with Susanna, you’re dealing with me.’

For artists who can afford a payroll or just some extra help, a business manager may make their creative time more productive and enjoyable. Managers don’t ease all business worries for artists, however. Corpus Christi, Texas sculptor Kent Ullberg noted that the only drawback to the arrangement he has with a business manager is “feeling a little extra pressure, because I’m responsible not only for myself and my own family but for someone else’s family. I can’t just decide to sleep in some days or decide to take a sabbatical, taking off for Africa for two years. I know that I have to keep producing to keep him busy, especially because he works largely on a commission basis.”

Featured image: Red Effect by 2009 Student Award recipient Rachael Won

A few years ago, Afterall magazine, a quarterly based at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, started publishing a book series called “One Work,” each book focusing on a single influential work by a contemporary artist. Bruce Jenkins’s book on Conical Intersect is the 21st in the series, and arguably one of the most important.

Conical Intersect (1975) was a key work in the development of an artist who marks a generational transition from Minimalism and Earth Art to a more performative, theatrical, and ephemeral mode that remains extremely influential today. Matta-Clark had already created some of his most recognizable work (including Splitting (1974) a house with a seam cutting it in half, opening it to the light and air. Conical Intersect resulted from the artist’s invitation to show work at the Paris Biennale, and rather than show documentation of his previous work (which is what the Biennale expected) he pushed to create an urban intervention in the city of Paris.

Jenkins follows documents and films from the time to create a narrative of the gestation of the work that is compelling both as an evocation and a story. In the second half of the book, the author explores both the artists who influenced Matta-Clark and some of the specific influences that the artist still has on artists and on the art world.

Conical Intersect was a telescoping cone cut into a pair of buildings adjacent to then-under-construction Pompidou Center, and as such Matta-Clark’s work provided a viewing mechanism through which to appraise the architectural monumentality that was in the process of transforming the Les Halles neighborhood of Paris. Matta Clark saw his work as “non-u-mental” or “anarchitecture,” having himself been trained as an architect, after growing up in a family that included a famous father (Roberto Matta) and godfather (Marcel Duchamp).

Jenkins traces a coherent line of development leading to and through the “one work” that is the subject of his book, and in the process gives one of the best glimpses into the artist’s working process as well as the significance of his work. As the series editors state as the aim of the overall project, Gordon Matta-Clark: Conical Intersect indeed proves “that a single contemporary work of art…, through a unique and radical aesthetic articulation or invention, can affect our understanding of art in general,” and Matta-Clark is an ideal subject for such a demonstration.

‑Glenn Harper

Book Description:

Gordon Matta-Clark: Conical Intersect
By Bruce Jenkins
London: Afterall Books, 2011 (distributed by MIT Press)
112 pages, $16.00
ISBN: 978-1-84638-073-0