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curated by sierra gonzalez 
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Banking on the arts

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Dancer Sayako Tomiyoshi from the English National Ballet displays a Damien Hirst-designed sign at the British Museum. Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

British artists, performers, museum directors, and leaders in theater and film rallied at the British Museum last week for the release of Cultural Capital: A Manifesto for the Future, a new report that demonstrates the economic contributions of the arts and culture sector. These leaders hope to discourage the British government from slashing funding in response to the country's huge deficit, arguing that the arts—especially theatre, music, and museums—both create jobs and contribute to the nation's GDP.

Last year, similar worries over arts funding in America prompted Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein to publish a study takes the argument one step further: artists contribute directly through their own fields, but they have also historically played a major role in scientific and technological innovation. What's more, the most successful scientists are more likely to pursue artistic expression:

...almost all Nobel laureates in the sciences actively engage in arts as adults. They are twenty-five times as likely as the average scientist to sing, dance, or act; seventeen times as likely to be a visual artist; twelve times more likely to write poetry and literature; eight times more likely to do woodworking or some other craft; four times as likely to be a musician; and twice as likely to be a photographer. Many connect their art to their scientific ability with some riff on Nobel prizewinning physicist Max Planck words: "The creative scientist needs an artistic imagination."

Their succinct article in Psychology Today gives many examples of scientific discoveries and technological innovations borne of artistic pursuits. "Successful scientists and inventors are artistic people," the authors argue. "Hobble the arts and you hobble innovation. It's a lesson our legislators need to learn."

Filed under  //   art   britain   economy   innovation   science  

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Target for the arts

Art is integral to how we do business. It’s in our DNA.

Laysha Ward, Target’s president for community relations

According to Robin Pogrebin's NYTimes article on Target's philanthropy, the company continues to give 5 percent of its income (roughly $3 million a week) to causes in the arts, education, social services and volunteerism, despite the economic downturn. Pogrebin observes that many of Target's beneficiaries are arts institutions across the nation, who often hold "Target days" offering free or discounted admission to a program, performance or museum exhibition. Laysha Ward's comment above serves a dual purpose within the article: it reminds readers both that Target supports arts organizations through philanthropy, and that they strive for beautifully designed products on their shelves (Ward cites the work of Michael Graves as an example of their commitment to creativity in Target's stores).

Other interesting articles in the NYTimes' Giving section online cover SFMOMA's challenge to find space for Don Fisher's collection, raising awareness (and funds) using social media, and the look of cause marketing during the recession.

Filed under  //   economy   museum   nonprofit   philanthropy   sfmoma   target  

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SFMOMA plans to expand

The San Francisco Chronicle's art critic announced today that SFMOMA hopes to double its exhibition space by adding to its current footprint. However, the museum is still in the exploratory phase and is investigating the necessary permits and funds to make the expansion possible. Says museum director Neal Benezra,

It's an optimistic announcement, but we're being very modest about it. It's important that people don't think we're announcing a capital campaign in the middle of a recession.

Filed under  //   economy   fundraising   museum   museum expansion   san francisco  

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"Price less" works of art [NYPost]

I feel that the museum respects that you can pay what the economy allows you to pay. That way, you can come more often.

Retired Long Island teacher Joan Smyth, 60, who normally pays the full $20 "suggested admission" at the Met but on Monday decided to pay half

Filed under  //   economy   museum   museum admission   new york   value of art  

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NYTimes annual museums special highlights economic hardships

The annual NYTimes section on museums has a predictably somber tone: in these economic times, how do these organizations cope? I haven't read 'em all, but these are the stories directly linking museums and the current economy. Of course, there are articles on other topics too, but grouping these articles together gives a sense of the big-picture impact and the areas of museum management that must develop strategies for survival.

Shovels sit idle as some projects are delayed: economy forces museums to downsize and delay projects

Wish you were here: as resources dwindle, museums pioneer new ways to reach out

In zoo cuts, it's man vs. beast: budget cuts are forcing zoos to make tough decisions

They didn't love Lucy: In Seattle, Lucy's famous fossils fail to attract crowds

The good stuff in the back room
: Showcasing archives, museums bring out the good stuff

Taking a step-by-step approach to growth: In San Francisco, a museum director takes a pragmatic approach to growth

New York's local museums feel the pinch

Filed under  //   art market   economy   museum   recession  

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Is anybody buying art these days?

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine includes an interesting profile of the Mugrabi family, New York art dealers whose collection of Warhol, Hirst, Basquiat and other modern artists, is one of the largest and most valuable in the world. The Mugrabis' collection of Warhols (around 800 pieces last year, according to the Wall Street Journal) essentially singlehandedly controls the price of the remaining Warhols on the market. According to that WSJ article, "Most people don't realize that Warhol is the Dow Industrial Average" for the art world, said Richard Polsky, a longtime private dealer in Sausalito.

The article looks at the economic climate through the Mugrabis' eyes—they attended a record-shattering Sotheby's auction on the same day Lehman Bothers declared bankruptcy. I encourage you to read the whole article, but here are a few teasers of the things I found most interesting (emphasis mine, of course):

Jose [Mugrabi, the patriarch] had been talking about the incongruity between the day’s financial news and the auction frenzy, and ventured an interpretation: “When the empires fall — Roman, Greek — all that is left is the art.”
“You can’t have an impact buying one or two pictures per artist. We’re not buying art like Ron Lauder — just to put it on a wall. We want inventory.” [Older son Alberto] equated inventory with liquidity: “It gives you staying power.” In the commodities sector, the analogue would be making a run on a precious metal — in order to manipulate the price.
Last year, when Jose learned that a sculpture by the Cuban duo Los Carpinteros he’d just donated to the Guggenheim was requisitioned to storage, he bought it back. “From now on, if I make a gift, I tell them, ‘You have to expose the art,’ ” he said.

The sheer volume of the family’s collection strikes some people as something that is in opposition to the public good. “It’s not that they don’t love art,” Charlie Finch, a columnist for Artnet.com, said. “They’ve just been hogging everything. Come on, let someone else in on the game.”

[Artist George Condo] considered [the Mugrabis' interest in his works] a pretty big stamp of commercial approval: “They’re prestigious collectors. To see your own paintings in one of their apartments, hanging next to a beautiful Basquiat — it feels great.”

“They said it was Black Monday — well, not for Damien,” Tony Shafrazi, a gallerist from New York, said. “It was magic, it was. It was rainbows. This proves that art is more important than money.”

“Damien Hirst should be running Lehman Brothers,” Alberto said.

Related note: The De Young in San Francisco just opened Warhol Live, an exhibit that showcases Warhol's relationship with music. I haven't checked it out yet but have heard that it's enjoyable.

Filed under  //   art   art business   auction   collector   economy   new york  

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Scaling down the Met brand

As if responding to my suggestion of the Met's interest in thrifty marketing, the museum announced Monday that its endowment has taken a 25% hit, membership and attendance is down, and Emily Rafferty, the Met’s president, said that “we cannot eliminate the possibility of a head-count reduction.” This falls in line with experiences at other cultural institutions, but the Met is also responding to the economy by curbing one of its most unique assets: its nationwide retail operation.

According to the New York Times, the Met had 23 stores across the country last year; now, they're scaling down to 8, with plans to focus on their online and catalog sales (they also have a handful of international locations). I've always been curious about the business/marketing decision to take the Met store off site, and even thousands of miles away from the museum. It might be that the Met earned $90 million annually in store revenue with a gross margin of about 50 percent, as James Twitchell reported in 2004.*

Museum stores are curious things: as part of non-profit institutions, store revenue directly supports the operating costs of the museum, including maintaining collections and organizing educational programs. On the other hand, museum stores put a discrete price on culture: you can buy reproductions of Egyptian jewelry, copies of Buddhist sculptures, and Art Nouveau-inspired perfume bottles, all carrying the additional cultural cachet of museum approval. (Curators and art historians OK all store products before they hit the shelves to ensure "authenticity.") Bradford Kelleher, who built the Met Store empire, once said, “Our test is whether the curator concerned with the object can tell the reproduction from the real thing.”

Some museums have national brands (like MoMA/SFMOMA) or even international reach (the Guggenheim and the Louvre are both planning outposts in Dubai), but they've all got multiple museum locations. Not counting the Cloisters (the Met's Manhattan branch dedicated to medieval art) the Metropolitan Museum of Art is using its store—and not the original objects in its collection—to build international awareness. Kelleher said, “If it’s a faithful reproduction, it has educational value and it’s a way of giving the object wider circulation outside of the museum."

*Twitchell's Branded Nation, p. 250; net income for the Met Stores is around $1 million.

[Sorry for the lengthier post, I reverted to my grad school days a little bit here.]

Filed under  //   cultural capital   economy   merchandising   museum   new york   store  

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Stimulating the arts

Are you suggesting that somehow if you work in [the arts], it isn't real when you lose your job, your mortgage or your health insurance? We're trying to treat people who work in the arts the same way as anybody else.

On Friday, Wisconsin Representative David Obey (a Democrat, unsurprisingly) successfully argued on the House floor to include the arts in the stimulus plan.  Though the earlier plan that passed through the Senate did not include any arts funding, the plan that Obama will sign includes $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, which would be able to pass the money along to museums, theaters and art centers. (Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had tried to bar these organizations from receiving stimulus money in an amendment that lumped them with casinos, golf courses, and swimming pools as "wasteful, non-stimulative" projects.)

While arts funding has long been a point of contention and a part of the culture war between Democrats and Republicans, the arts industry provides 6 million jobs, $30 billion in tax revenue and $166 billion in annual economic impact; it's also at a 12.5% unemployment rate, according to the NYTimes article that reported NEA's stimulus funding. As in other sectors, the full impact of the current economy on the arts is still unknown, but likewise, the stimulus funding—though it won't be a quick fix—will be a step towards recovery.

Filed under  //   art   economy   museum   politics  

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Design in downturns

"What designers do really well is work within constraints, work with what they have," said Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. "This might be the time when designers can really do their job, and do it in a humanistic spirit."

A few articles have come out recently on designers' roles during a depression:

Design Loves a Depression [Michael Cannell, NYT]
The Antonelli quote above comes from Cannell's look at the designs that have emerged--and endured--during rough times. The Modern design that came out of the Great Depression and WWII benefited from cheap materials and informal home life; today's economic crisis will likely focus on call for less less manufacturing waste and fewer products heading to landfills.  Cannell predicts that new designs must be affordable, durable, and sustainable in order to sell during lean times.

Creative Solutions in Tough Times [Alice Rawsthorn, IHT]
Rawsthorn focuses on the design community's ability to concentrate on "service" or "social" design intended to address worldwide concerns, including poverty, global warming, technology infrastructures, sustainability, and economic caution in general. (Rawsthorn has also covered the decline of design-art and other opportunities and consequences for designers in crunch times in earlier articles.)

Designing Through the Recession [Michael Beirut, Design Observer]
Beirut offers a veteran designer's perspective on what happens in creative fields during a downturn--and what designers can do to work through it.

And on the architecture front...

It Was Fun Till the Money Ran Out [Nicolai Ouroussoff, NYT]
Ouroussoff notes that starchitecture, design-art's cousin, must fade away in these tough economic times: until now, "serious architecture was beginning to look like a service for the rich, like private jets and spa treatments," but wary developers unwilling to invest in new project leaves architects to tackle social problems like schools, highways and public housing.

A Letter to the New York Times [Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr, Architecture for Humanity]
The co-founders of Architecture for Humanity posted a rebuttal to Ouroussoff's article noting that architects are indeed already working on projects addressing the social issues above--we just don't recognize their names (yet). He says that starchitects are probably least suited for this kind of work, since their overwhelming buildings lack the sensitivity to environmental consequences and energy issues that characterize the challenges ahead.

All interesting reads.

Filed under  //   design career   design field   design-art   economy   recession  

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Economy & Culture: Museums taking a hit

Regardless of whether big-name donors like Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch make good on their pledges, many cultural institutions are already facing tough decisions to cope with big losses in their endowment funds or other financial losses.

  • While the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles has become the poster boy of troubled museums, it seems like the economic downturn merely exacerbated that institution's management problems. Lee "CultureGrrrl" Rosenbaum has an excellent play-by-play, including her take on separate offers by philanthropist Eli Broad and local museum LACMA to "bail out" MOCA.
  • Rosenbaum's blog also looks at questionable deaccessions at the National Gallery (the LA Times arts blog also has a look at how the deaccession took place).  The American Association of Museums, Association of Art Museum Directors, and the New York State Regents' Cultural Education Committee all quickly responded by denouncing the practice of selling artworks to cover operating costs.
  • Closer to home, SF Supervisor Aaron Peskin caused quite a stir by proposing 50% funding cuts to the San Francisco Opera, Ballet, and Symphony.  The city fund that dispenses the money, Grants for the Arts, also supports other educational and cultural programs.  The SF Board of Supervisors will vote on Peskin's proposal in January.
  • Lastly, the New York Times looks at a few museums who recently expanded and how they're coping with the economic downturn. The article puts some numbers to the situation, which helps give a sense of the scale of these museums' losses.


So, what can you do? Become a member of a museum, or pick up last-minute gifts at museum stores, where revenue often goes directly to support educational programs, exhibition development, and other operating costs.

Filed under  //   art   culture   economy   museum  

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