April 24, 2009 • 1:42 am 1
Shepard Fairey is not a Crook, by Steven Heller
Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Art Prints, Culture Economey, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Painting, Shepard Fairey, Uncategorized , Fairey, Shepard
April 23, 2009 • 12:14 am 5
An Art Adventure, Visiting the Archie Bray
Walking the 26 acres through the ruins of the old brickyard that is home to the Archie Bray Foundation is a surreal experience, like that of Alice as she explored Wonderland.
My Alice on this trip was my youngest daughter Kate. Kate is an Art student at Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell Montana.
Clay excites her, just ask her about the possibilities of making art with clay and be ready for a long conversation. Kate had just returned home after she cut her spring break trip to Seattle a day short. With a day to spare, I suggested we take a quick day trip down to the Archie Bray to see what was going on. The Archie Bray is located just outside Helena Montana, about a three-hour drive each way from Columbia Falls Montana give or take a few deer crossings on the Swan Highway. If you’re not from Montana, you have to realize a 6 hour round trip is a short drive in a very big state.
Established in 1951 by Brick Maker Archie Bray, “…for all who are sincerely interested in any branches of the ceramic arts, a fine place to work.” Archie Bray, Sr. 1951
Archie Bray Foundation Website: http://www.archiebray.org/
As you enter the grounds, you immediately know you are some place speacial. Spread across the landscape is remains of Artist Residents past and present. Sculptural installations inserted into the ruins of the old brickyard along with discarded pots and ceramic sculpture left behind as former Resident Artists left this special place to make their marks on the art world. Many former Resident Artists, noted in every who’s who list of the modern art world have transformed the modern arts and crafts movement into what it is today. Ideas and the freedom to explore new ideas and methods through the creative process is the magic of the Archie Bray, a rare and unique opportunity in today’s society.
To attempt to explain the presence of place that you as a visitor experience in words, as you explore the grounds, is a poor substitute to recreate the feeling and mood of the Bray. Mysterious marvels hide in every corner high and low.
Venturing into the old Brick kilns is something like entering old forgotten temples of the past. Walls of thick glaze attached to the interiors of the kilns run over the firebrick, with greens and yellows that peer out of the darkness glimmering in the shafts of sunlight beaming in from vent holes above. Mysterious machines and tools litter the grounds often becoming part of art installations.
Fantastic structures rise up out of the landscape and create a surreal experience foreign to the natural landscape.
The ruins of Wonderland stimulate the imagination and the inner child artist in all of us. Make no mistake; in this Wonderland, the future of ceramic art and craft is now being invented and transformed. The New the Next great ideas are taking shape, form and they will become part of the history, and the legacy of the Bray as it has been now for nearly six decades.
As Kate and I explored the Bray, we were having a lot of fun with our own invented scavenger hunt. We were looking for the Tops created by former Bray Artist Richard Swanson. http://www.richard.swanson.com/Multi.html Swanson’s Tops are everywhere throughout the landscape in the likely and the most unlikely places. We wondered, how did he get that one up there? This is the story of the Archie Bray, treasures around every corner and on every pinnacle.
For you the reader to truly understand and experience the Archie Bray you just have to go there. The Bray is just one of those magic places that hold a different and unique adventure for everyone.
Your trip to the Archie Bray will be punctuated with encounters with current Resident Artists working in and out of their studios. The New Resident Studios are open to visitors and give you the opportunity to meet and watch the artists work.
The Bray Art Gallery is host to current and past artists; their work is on display and for sale. If you want to get your hands dirty, you can take classes and attend art clay workshops throughout the year taught by the leading Artists in the field today.
As we left Kate had the Archie Bray summer clay workshop schedule in hand. This years summer workshop schedule offers the young artist an impressive choice of opportunities to learn from today’s masters in the field. Kate also picked up a product catalog from the Archie Bray Clay Business. The Clay Business sells, well clay and all the material and tools the artist needs. After years of the best of the best, the Clay business is an impressive resource, and they ship. Kate was very excited about the variety and colors of glazes stocked in the shop.
So if you live in Montana or are going to visit, make the Archie Bray a mandatory stop or day-trip on your schedule, you won’t be disappointed.
As Kate and I keenly watched for deer on our three-hour trip back home through the Swan, our lively conversation about the Archie Bray fueled ideas and our imaginations.
New Wood-fired Kiln aera
Check out the Archie Bray Foundation Website. http://www.archiebray.org/
Filed under: American Folk Art, Art, Art Marketing, Art News, How to survive as a Working Artists, Journalism, News, Uncategorized , Archie Bray Foundation, Artists Trips, Ceramic Art, Clay, Modern Craft, Montana Art, Montana Artists, Montana Vacations, Wonderland
April 1, 2009 • 1:32 am 7
Do the Arts Need a National Bailout?
Times are tough for the Arts in America. Even the 50 million dollars in stimulus money won’t help much as endowment funds nationwide are trashed. Robert Lynch, points out the 50 million in new money will do little to cover losses art organizations have suffered this year. Lynch uses San Francisco as an example, where art organizations have lost an estimated 40 million in state funding alone. The current loss of revenue in the arts nationwide will surely amount to billions of dollars.
Conversation with Robert Lynch, NewsHour post by Jeffery Brown
Floyd Norris asks the question “What are art organization suppose to do”? He points out that many small organizations are devastated today and they have little financial power to offset their losses. He points out colleges are in the same boat. I would point out that the Big Art organizations are too.
In fact, I would suggest our largest art organizations may be in more trouble than our small ones. The big guys have big budgets and have suffered big losses. Big organizations also have the need and expense of large staffs. A small organization can in many instances reduce paid staff and maintain functional viability with a volunteer work force until the economy improves. Big organizations simply cannot or could not function without their professional staffs. Two very different worlds exist today where reality and needs are dramatically different as are fundamental funding realities. Many large museums spend more money on one exhibit or performance production than small organizations spend in their yearly operational budget expenditures. It may turn out that the weak market survives this crisis and in the end comes out much stronger.
The Money is Gone Now What by Floyd Norris NYT
“There was outrage earlier this year when Brandeis University announced plans to close its art museum and sell the paintings. The university’s endowment was devastated by bad investments.
What do people opposed to the sale of paintings think suddenly poor institutions should do? Close? Seek government bailouts? Should Brandeis close down a few academic departments, or cut back on scholarships, to keep its art?
Brandeis is hardly the only college whose endowment has contracted sharply. I suspect that when the final numbers are in — and colleges are not exactly rushing to disclose the sad details — it will turn out that colleges as a group did far worse than the stock market while the market was doing horribly”. Floyd Norris NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/business/20norris.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
The question remains “Do you sell off your assets to meet your budgetary needs”?
As Ford W. Bell says in his letter to the editor, to do so would violate the public trust.
Letter to the Editor from:
Ford W. Bell
President
American Association of Museums
Washington, March 23, 2009
“Allowing a museum to peddle its collection to cover operating debts would be like allowing a financial fiduciary, such as a bank, to raid assets held in trust to cover a hole in its own balance sheet”. Ford W. Bell
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/opinion/lweb31museums.html
The fact is the Banks essentially did exactly what Mr. Ford says museums should not do, they raided assets held in trust for their customers through a series of bad investments. Just ask your elderly parents who’s retirement accounts are now only worth a fraction of what they were a year ago. Just look at your IRA or just about any other secure investment account you have, even trust funds. The reality of the facts, the reality of the depth of this economic crisis is reflected in the figures. It is no different for the Arts.
This past Sunday I was trying to help my youngest daughter with her college economics homework, she is an art student taking an economics course. I would compare my help to a monkey trying to perform brain surgery with a stick. I was going compare the monkey with a paintbrush in hand creating a master work of art to myself as an artist. I quickly realized that the monkey may in fact be far more skilled than I; in the creation of masterpieces and probably would quickly develop a profitable market for his art. I am looking for a monkey all I have is two old dogs who sleep most of the day and won’t work.
We were looking at the Elasticity of markets, Supply and Demand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
The example we were using was the farm market. In the example variables increased production while demand remained the same. When demand is lower than production increases in supply drive down profits, so even if you produce more at less expense you still make the same profit or less. Only when demand is higher than available production do profits rise, but even then given the variables over all income can remain flat. For example if a natural disaster creates a loss of production the increased demand raises prices but the loss of production balances the profits.
So it seems to me that if for example museums start to sell off assets, works of art the fire sale will drive value and profit down and in the long run everyone will lose. Just look at the Auto Companies or the housing market. Great deals will emerge from the flood of art into a depressed market but the flood will devastate value and profit. Perhaps Art Organizations can learn from the lessons of farming. Farmers often store their grain until markets become favorable.
Perhaps as bad as it will sound Museums and other Art Organization should temporarily close or reduce schedules until the viability of the market returns. They then would still have their assets. Many large organizations could use their collections or their talent in better or more efficient ways to reduce operating costs and maintain profits. Maybe they could find other ways to generate income from their collections and at the same time help smaller organizations present exhibits and performances that are more dynamic.
As an example, a big organization could loan artwork to a small organization. The two could share revenue generated by the exhibit as partners. Done creatively smaller organizations could increase the quality of their exhibits and stimulate increased attendance/audience. The big organization could create income from under utilized parts of their collection and increase audience and income. After all most big museums only exhibit small portions of their collections at any given time. Activity creates income for everybody.
I am sure Brandeis University could find another organization that would love to show artwork from their collection. They could also earn income from the loans of artwork even if the Rose Museum temporarily closed. They could possibly find more value in keeping their collection intact than they will earn by selling it off as a depreciated asset. Of course, they would have to figure out how to make a program work in a distressed market, but they are a university. Surely, someone on the university staff can figure out a smart (Creative) way to proceed forward and create a profitable program.
Maybe they could ask the folks over at the Museum Loan Network for advice; they have been working with large organizations for years, helping those organizations use their collections more effectively.
Museum Loan Network
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/mln/about.html
As an example: One organization reduces operational activities. They collaborate with an organization that is in better shape. They charge a reasonable fee to package and ship the exhibit. Then both organizations share revenue generated by exhibit. Movie companies have operated this way successfully for years. Your local movie theaters make profit from supportive activities, like popcorn and soft drink sales. Surely, the brainpower in the Arts can figure out supportive revenue programs combined with admission fees and memberships sales. Even the last two areas will produce profit when program quality and interest increase.
Small potatoes, well small potatoes can add up to big profits. Just look at what Matt Jones in Seattle has accomplished with his Mashed Potatoes program at Gasworks Gallery in Seattle. The Cooperative Gallery charges an admission fee paid for in potatoes or food for the food bank. They have raised millions of pounds of potatoes and other food supplies for the local food bank one potato at a time. http://www.mashedpotatoes.org/
Gasworks Gallery: http://gasworksgallery.com/
Matt Jones Delivers 50,000 pounds of potatoes You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=122fGSv4T8o
My advice to the Art Organizations of America is get creative and find sustainable solutions to your problems before you sell the cow for some magic beans.
Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, Journalism, Media, Movies, News, Politics, Uncategorized , Art News, Art Organizations, Bail out, Bail Out for the Arts, Creative Art, Fundraising, Money for the Arts, Museum Management
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