A recent report in The Art Newspaper addressed an issue of which I was entirely unaware – Visual artists are essentially being forced to pay for their own shows as a result of so much funding to museums and galleries being cut. I have run into situations where relatively new artists underestimated the cost/labor of the commission they agreed to do, but this seems to be a separate issue entirely.
Across the US, artists report being called on to subsidise budgets for museum exhibitions, public commissions and even acquisitions. In some cases, opportunities evaporate entirely when the artist and organisation are unable to raise the money needed for production.
They point to the funding cuts on the state and federal level, including the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of the reason artists are being asked to subsidize their work. Though the article says artists have always been burdened by this expectation to a degree.
If an organisation needs to cut spending immediately, it cuts production budgets,” says Stephen Reily, the founding director of Remuseum, … “That cost is then redistributed, often invisibly, to artists, galleries or external partners.”
[…]
For Ishii, the gap between some museums’ public rhetoric and on-the-ground economics is telling. “Historically, museums have defined their mission around stewardship of objects, not stewardship of artists,” she says. “Their accountability structures prioritise preservation, acquisition and scholarship. Supporting the labour of living artists has never been built into the financial architecture.”
The article notes that artists are rarely at the table when curatorial policy is discussed. It is generally people who view art through the lens of the market – “Collectors, trustees, dealers-—very few artists”
There are various solutions suggested such as changing tax deduction rules which allow collectors to deduct the full market value of the art they donate, but limits artists to deducting the cost of materials.
Other suggestions were related to how exhibitions open in museums, including allowing access to the public in the weeks prior to the official opening in a way that sounds similar to Broadway preview performances prior to opening night. The goal seems to be to provide time for the public to engage, perhaps create a little buzz that attracts sponsorships, and gain, heretofore hidden, insight into the process of creating works and pulling an exhibition together.
