Art and Economics

Abstract

College Art Association Annual Conference New York City February 9-12, 2011 Interest in practical, digital, and global matters was especially prominent at the ninety-ninth College Art Association annual conference, while the intellectual ecstasies of high theory subsided from that of previous years. Indeed, the October moment is over, although its effects still echoed through conference sessions analyzing the expansion of art history's discursive Held. There were, of course, panels on traditional scholarly topics such as Afterlife of Cubism, Symbolism: Its Origins and Consequences II, and Meisterfrage in Medieval and Northern Renaissance Art, Revisited. However, judging by the tweeting and blogging that went on during the four-day event, the most popular panels were concerned with the effects of the economic downturn on artists' practices, galleries, and academia, as well as on the growing presence and effects of new media. The panel Making a Living as an Artist: With or Without a Gallery yielded an animated discussion about how an artist might survive given that art galleries are both strapped for cash and inundated with unsolicited portfolios. Advice was varied. Make your own scene, said Sharon Butler, who maintains the blog Two Coats of Paint. Create less expensive work, suggested gallerist Ed Winkelman. Artists should integrate all their creative activities, claimed Bill Carroll, Director of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program. Diversify what you do creatively, said Peter Drake, Dean of the New York Academy of Art. Cultivate social skills, engage with others outside the studio, and build community, both local and global, said others. The theme of collaboration as a working model between individual artists, as well as between artists and institutions, wove through many conference sessions. Taking a broader view on what constitutes hard times was the standing-room-only session Crisis in Art History. David Murray, a medievalist at Columbia University, wryly noted that art history has deployed the rhetoric of crisis for three decades now. Critical dissatisfaction with the immediate past is typical of the medieval origins of academe, he said, going on to describe what he called the endism promoted by recent manifestos on the death of the old. Murray also noted the salutary effect of the digital, which he sees as a stimulus for collaboration. Patricia Rubin, director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, noted the changing episteme brought on by digital media, and lamented the commodification of learning in which knowledge is viewed as part of the GDP. …