Resources
Advocacy Organizations:
CreativeFuture. A coalition of hundreds of companies and organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals across the creative industries that advocates for the economic value of creativity, the protection of copyright, and the prevention of digital theft.
Future of Music Coalition. Education, research, and advocacy for musicians.
Artists Rights Alliance. Fights for a revitalized and sustainable music ecosystem for musicians, performers, and songwriters.
Music Workers Alliance. Fights for economic justice and fair working conditions for musicians in live venues and the digital domain.
Union of Musicians and Allied Workers. Organizes music workers to fight for a more just music industry and a better society.
Musicians for Musicians. Brings musicians together in the cause of mutual betterment.
National Independent Venue Association. Coalition of 3000+ independent music and other theatrical venues.
W.A.G.E. (Working Artists in the Greater Economy). Works to establish sustainable economic relationships between visual artists and the institutions they work for and a more equitable distribution of revenues in the art world economy.
Alternative Economic Models:
OurGoods. Resource-sharing network for creative people.
Artists at Work. Public-private partnership piloting WPA-style model of artists’ support.
Reading
Art and Money:
Hans Abbing, Why Are Artists Poor?
Molly Crabapple, “Filthy Lucre”
Ben Davis, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class
Lewis Hyde, The Gift
Ben Lerner, 10:04 (novel)
A.O. Scott, “The Paradox of Art as Work”
The New Conditions:
Jessica Hische, “Should I Work for Free?” (flowchart)
Tim Kreider, “Slaves of the Internet, Unite!”
David Lowery, “Meet The New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss?”
n+1 (editorial), “The Free and the Antifree”
Rain Perry, The Shopkeeper (documentary film)
Scott Timberg, Culture Crash
Artists on Making a Living Today:
Lucy Bellwood, untitled talk at XOXO Festival 2016
Sharon Louden, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life and The Artist As Culture Producer
Manjula Martin, ed., Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living
Individual Arts:
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, “The Lemming Market”
Jason Bailey, “How the Death of Mid-Budget Cinema Left a Generation of Iconic Filmmakers MIA”
Jace Clayton, Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture
Chad Harbach, ed., MFA vs NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction
Travis Kurowski, et al., eds., Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century
Lynda Obst, Sleepless in Hollywood
John Seabrook, The Song Machine
Roger White, The Contemporaries: Travels in the 21st-Century Art World
The History of “Art”:
Larry Shimer, The Invention of Art
Raymond Williams, Keywords (entries on “art,” “creative,” “genius,” “originality”)
Creativity and “Creativity”:
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity
Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class
Art Schools:
Coco Fusco, “Debating an MFA? The Lowdown on Art School Risks and Returns”
Jessica Loudis, et al., eds., Should I Go To Grad School?
Mark McGurl, The Program Era
Nancy Popp, “Dismantling Art School”
Martha Rosler, “School, Debt, Bohemia: on the Disciplining of Artists”
Howard Singerman, Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American University
Piracy, Copyright, and Big Tech:
Brian Day, “Online Piracy… It’s Different” (video)
Franklin Foer, World Without Mind
Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future?
Chris Ruen, Freeloading
Ellen Seidler, Vox Indie (site with posts and links)
Astra Taylor, The People’s Platform
Jonathan Taplin, Move Fast and Break Things
David Wallace-Wells, “The Pirate’s Prophet: On Lewis Hyde”
Additional Sources:
Arthur Danto, After the End of Art
Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials
Dave Hickey, Air Guitar and Pirates and Farmers
Harold Rosenberg, Discovering the Present and The Tradition of the New
Amy Whitaker, Art Thinking