Google artist statement, and you will find a good dozen instructional websites enjoining artists to “follow these easy steps” to produce this essential bit of art-career ephemera.
GIA is pleased to republish this State Arts Agency Fact Sheet: Support for Individual Artists, originally developed by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA.) We look forward to the day when we’ll have this kind of data on support for individual artists from private philanthropy as well.
One of the most interesting aspects of GIA’s Research Initiative on Support for Individual Artists has been the opportunity to delve deeply into funders’ programs and practices. By its very nature, data collection requires creating categories and standard definitions, and then using this vocabulary to quantify what funders are actually doing.
This article, examining the ecology of funders’ use of intermediaries and regranting organizations, came about as a direct offshoot of GIA’s Research Initiative on Support for Individual Artists, begun in 2011. As the research team worked to map the pathways that support followed from funder to artist, a complex map of options and routes began to emerge, and intermediaries and regranters were often part of that picture. It became increasingly clear that this was an essential and important part of the overall system.
In 2010, Grantmakers in the Arts put capitalization on the national arts agenda by starting a conversation about what funders can do differently to address the chronic financial weakness undermining the vitality of the sector.
American artists are still emerging from a bumptious cycle of structural downs and ups and institutional changes. Since the watershed of the culture wars in the early 1990s, diverse publics and legislative bodies have questioned artists’ purposes and contributions. Supporters — patrons, funders, friends — have scrambled to help them survive. In ways that may be a great blessing, an older, constraining preoccupation with artistic excellence and peer-judged grants has eroded. More inclusive notions of who artists are and of their many missions are taking root.
As arts philanthropy evolves in the twenty-first century, one constant remains at the center — the artist. And longtime funder, advocate, and activist Ted Berger has devoted his professional career as well as an equally busy retirement to making artists a central focus of his life.
Building a Resilient Sector (9.2Mb)