When twenty-somethings realize being a part of the the art world often means enduring a hard, poorly compensated, unfair existence, sometimes they decide to pursue other options. Sadly, this week Whitney Kimball announced that after writing for Art F City for four years, she is leaving the art world. Read the farewell letter in which she says goodbye to all that. We’ll miss you in the blogosphere, Whitney, but keep in touch. Let us know what it’s like out there. (Art F City)
Strong recommendation: Go see Tal R’s new paintings at Cheim & Read because TODAY is the LAST DAY. (Image at top)
“Just like handbags are in style, and then two years later they�re not, an artist�s in, then he�s out.� Bloomberg runs a piece about how artists get chewed up and spit out by the art world. Read about Anselm Reyle, Barnaby Furnas and Tom Friedman’s sad career trajectories. (Bloomberg)
United Talent Agency, the firm that negotiates for actors like Angelina Jolie and Harrison Ford, is launching a fine arts division. Now uber artists can graduate from the art world and move on to Hollywood. Excellent. (The Art Newspaper)
Casualism has arrived in the fashion world via hair styles: �…drab non-hair… passive-aggressive hair…enviable without any help at all….If the ombre of seasons past telegraphed a beachy disregard for appointments and status quo, non-hair is a full-out (if faux) throw-the-Filofax-away refusal. And in its visually subtle noncompliance, it more successfully captures the laissez-faire attitude that imbues so many attempts at stylized apathy…� (New York Times)
Read why paying adjuncts poverty-level wages is a problem. (Washington Post). IMO, full-time faculty at state universities need to stop fretting about retirement benefits and pay raises and turn their attention to the festering adjunct pay problem, because very soon, if politicians have their way, everyone will either be an adjunct or teaching 4/4. Remember all the outcomes assessment initiatives of the past ten years? All those program and course rubrics will certainly make shifting to a primarily adjunct workforce faster and easier as full-timers retire. Shared governance will be a thing of the past as corporate education reformers with political connections take over the curricula at state institutions. Read the The New Yorker’s profile of Jeb Bush for more insight into how for-profit education corporations have inserted themselves into the process, converted millions (billions?) of taxpayer dollars to private profit, and busted teachers’ unions. But maybe I’m just being negative…?
“Keep your standard of living extremely low.” Lucy Lippard advises young writers in her acceptance speech for the College Art Association�s Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art (read more excerpts from her speech at ArtNews).
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