{"id":389,"date":"2009-06-26T17:09:12","date_gmt":"2009-06-26T21:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=389"},"modified":"2009-06-26T17:09:12","modified_gmt":"2009-06-26T21:09:12","slug":"teaching-the-business-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2009\/06\/26\/teaching-the-business-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching the Business of Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marita Holdaway of the Benham Gallery<\/a> in Seattle posted a comment today (see below), as follows:<\/p>\n

“I think a dialog about better preparing artists for the business of being an artist while in school would be great. I have interns and new employees come to me recently graduated from schools like Seattle Art Institute and Rhode Island School of Design without a clue of how to represent themselves, who to approach about their art or how to talk about it.<\/em><\/p>\n

“A semester-long course on the business of being an artist would go a long way in helping artists become more successful in their efforts to get their art out there in the world.”<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>\u2022<\/em><\/p>\n

\"adchead-hand_med\"<\/p>\n

I’m experimenting with how I and my subscribers can use this blog as a forum. One method involves putting up a new post on a particular theme, so that’s what I’m doing here. You can add your own comments below.<\/p>\n

I have uploaded an essay from 1987, “Identity Crisis: The State Of Photography Education Today,”<\/a> that provides some background on the evolution of the university, the art institute, and the polytechnic institute. And I’ve added the previously unpublished text of “2020 Vision: Photojournalism’s Next Two Decades,”<\/a> a talk I gave at the World Press Photo Awards Day in 2000, because in it I envision the education and post-graduation professional practice of a young photographer. The combination will give you some of my own reference points, at least.<\/p>\n

My own immediate response to Holdaway’s suggestion:<\/p>\n

From visiting art schools and photo programs around the country and internationally over the years I have the distinct impression that many already offer such courses. They include such subjects as preparing the portfolio, writing the grant proposal, writing the artist’s statement (usually with disastrous results), and other aspects of “getting your work out.” Some schools that don’t offer such courses within their curricula bring in outsiders like\u00a0Mary Virginia Swanson<\/a> to teach short, intensive workshops on these subjects. And of course one can take Swanson’s workshops independently; she presents them regularly in a variety of settings and locations. Others offer similar opportunities: key into Google the words “business of art seminar” and you’ll see some of the options.<\/p>\n

So I’m not convinced that the need Holdaway perceives results from a widespread shortage of such instruction. Certainly there’s more information about “the business of art” out there now, in the form of workshops, seminars, books, websites, and other media, than ever before. And some schools clearly excel in preparing their students that way. I don’t think it’s coincidental that the Yale School of Art<\/a> turns out grads with ample self-promotional skills, given that the Yale School of Management<\/a> offers one of the world’s most prestigious MBA degrees.<\/p>\n

Nor am I convinced that such instruction in practical business matters belongs within the pedagogical structures of higher education. None of the hard sciences, none of the social disciplines (economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology), and none of the humanities offer courses in self-promotion, marketing, and business strategies as part of undergraduate or graduate curricula. It’s surely no easier to “get your work out there in the world” as a PhD in comparative religion than it is as a newbie MFA. Why should student artists get special tutorials in “the business of being an artist” when no one seems to think that student anthropologists need special instruction in the business of being an anthropologist? Do we assume that young artists, as distinct from young physicists or historians or literary scholars, are special-needs cases meriting the pre-professional equivalent of training bras to ready them for the elementary truth that once they leave school they’ll have to earn a living somehow?<\/p>\n

\"Art<\/a>

Art School Confidential (2006)<\/p><\/div>\n

We live in the first culture in recorded history that has dramatically overproduced both art and artists \u2014 more art than we can possibly exhibit, purchase, conserve, and otherwise consume, more artists than we can possibly employ or otherwise subsidize. Granted, I\u2019d rather see tax monies and discretionary income spent on art than on neutron bombs, stealth fighter planes, and junk food. But that will simply aggravate the art glut. If some young artists fall by the wayside because they get out of art school unaware that they\u2019re entering a business environment and unprepared to do so, that\u2019s life. As my late colleague Richard Kirstel was wont to say, \u201cThose who can be discouraged, should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don’t just take Kirstel’s word for it, or mine. I give you the wisdom of Prof. Sandiford, the art-school faculty member played by John Malkovich in Terry Zwigoff’s 2006 comedy, Art School Confidential<\/em><\/a>. On the first day of the fall semester, Sandiford tells the entering freshmen in his life-drawing class,\u00a0“Don’t have unrealistic expectations<\/em>. If you want to make money, better drop out right now. Go to banking school, or website school, anywhere but art school. And remember, only one out of a hundred of you will ever make a living as an artist.” Amen to that.<\/p>\n

I welcome other voices to a dialogue, pro and con, on this subject.<\/p>\n

\u2014 A. D. Coleman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why should student artists get special tutorials in “the business of being an artist” when no one seems to think that student anthropologists need special instruction in the business of being an anthropologist? Do we assume that young artists, as distinct from young physicists or historians or literary scholars, are special-needs cases meriting the pre-professional equivalent of training bras to ready them for the elementary truth that once they leave school they’ll have to earn a living somehow? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1],"tags":[56,83,336,1136,559,562],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-education","category-uncategorized","tag-art-school-confidential","tag-business-of-art","tag-mary-virginia-swanson","tag-photo-education","tag-world-press-photo","tag-yale-school-of-art","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}