Huffington Post is launching The Recessionary Arts: A HuffPost Culture Series, a series of articles that over the next two months “will explore how the recession is reshaping our nation's cultural state, and what this means for artists, consumers and the future of the arts.”
The first article comes from Lucas Kavner, a Huffington Post Culture and Media Reporter, titled Art In The Recession: In Tough Economy, Artists Act Anew:
Despite dim job prospects and ever-dwindling paychecks, more artists are living and working in America today than ever before. If as sociologist Charles Horton Cooley once said, “an artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one,” then success in America is at an all-time high.
At a time when making and distributing art to the masses is easier and more widely consumed than ever, at least 2.2 million people in the United States can be classified as professional artists, up from 1.9 million in 1996. And as artists have proliferated, arts organizations have followed suit; According to a report from Americans for the Arts, there are over 100,000 non-profit arts groups and 550,000 for-profit arts businesses in the U.S today. Between 2003 and 2009, a new nonprofit arts organization was created in the U.S. every three hours.
