Publications

Money matters

By: a-n

A selection of articles and other content dealing with artists’ income:

Abolish artists' subsidies? www.a-n.co.uk/air/article/576701 Hans Abbing's provocation on the Creative Scotland debate site posits that "general subsidies for artists should gradually be abolished..." "If sustain implies increasing the population of artists by seeing to it that enough youngsters enter the arts and by preventing artists from leaving the profession, there is no need for any policy. The artists' population is very good in sustaining itself. This is because the arts are still extremely attractive. "This is shown by the fact that artists are willing to work for very low incomes. (In the Netherlands almost half of the professional visual artists are poor in the sense that their overall income is at or below the level of social benefits. Moreover, 75% of artists can not make a living from their art work while 40% cannot cover their costs.) "The moment more money flows into the arts - whether from more demand (including more public commissions) or support (including subsidies and donations) - the number of artists tends to grow and so does the number of poor artists. In the case of support this is problematic: support leads to more artists being poor while hardly...

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