Artists Find Benefactors in Web Crowd
Submitted by Steve on March 17, 2012
From Patricia Cohen at The New York Times:
Online financial crowd-sourcing of artists still represents only a smidgen of the more than $8 billion that private individuals donate to the arts each year. Nonetheless, the speedy proliferation of such Web sites has attracted notice. “Everybody right now is looking for ways to exploit technology to maximize and customize the ways people engage with the arts,” said Sunil Iyengar, research director at the National Endowment for the Arts.
Recently United States Artists in Los Angeles, a nonprofit that supports American artists, began USA Projects, and New York Foundation for the Arts started Artspire, two nonprofit variations of online crowd-funding devoted solely to artists or fledgling cultural groups.
“This mass microphilanthropy is a really interesting phenomenon,” said Ruby Lerner, president of Creative Capital, a nonprofit that offers artists financial and career support. “We advise all our artists to do it.” Personal contributions — whether from the Medicis, village parishioners or passers-by who toss money into a busker’s hat — have always been the primary way artists have supported their work.