What do you imagine the future of art and culture to be?
How can art and culture participation sustain society in this future?
How might transmedia experience/materials figure into this future?
So we reach our final set of module questions for this term, and we look into the future. Add your thoughts, comments, and questions to this post in order to get our conversation started.
The future of art and culture has the potential to grow. Even with the loss of arts education in some schools systems, there are groups (both nonprofit organizations and individuals) who are standing up to fight these loses and reinstate arts education. Art and culture shape us to be who we are as a society and as individuals and this argument is at the forefront of the fight to keep arts education. At the same time, the loss of arts and culture in the school systems means the potential for growth in public art and community art organizations. It is similar to the saying “When one door closes, another door opens.” Someone will see the need and try to fill it. With the added change in technology and the rapid continuous changes we see everyday, the addition of transmedia in the future of arts and culture adds to the future potential. The use of the internet and social media by community art groups expands the accessibility and audience; meaning arts and culture will still be seen as a way we shape ourselves and society, as a way to express and entertain ourselves, and as a way to connect and participate with other people around us both physically and virtually.
The Ives & Tepper article lead me to intensely reflect on the future of our art worlds. I believe I am more optimistic for the future of art and culture in our world. I do think that it will change, and has clearly changed in the nine or so years since some of these papers were written. Ives & Tepper stated, “Rather than a democratization of culture, they track a growing monopolization of culture brought about by the convergence and consolidation of media and entertainment industries” (2006). Though it is accurate to describe this buying out as monopolization, I disagree that these large companies are the gatekeepers. With the evolution of things like Youtube and Etsy arts participants determine who or what is popular. Post-Modern Jukebox and Miranda Sings (link below, if you’re interested) are excellent examples of these groups and individuals who gained popularity just from their Youtube videos. Both tour and perform around the U.S. and have made a career out of sharing their videos on a public forum.
The audience as gatekeepers plays into the term “curatorial me.” I think this idea has become more relevant over time with the ability to like, share, and pick through music, videos, and other media. We are advancing to a point where the audience chooses the art, as opposed to academics or critics making the decision. There are truly talented artists who have been recognized due to other media outlets (i.e. Nick Pitera AKA One Man Disney Movie–see link below, he’s amazing), yet there are far less talented celebrities making millions on television shows (i.e. The Kardashians). I can’t decide whether this is for better or worse.
Miranda Sings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBtWQdlZ7z4
Nick Pitera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3pCklpnghE
I imagine the future of art and culture to become increasingly grounded in social and political issues. To, in a sense, become a means through which one can express their opinions or their discontent. Just this morning, I saw a Facebook post from the Dramatists Play Service that shared a letter written by the President of the Dramatist Guild of America which opposed “’casting a character outside his or her obvious race, gender or implicit characteristics. To do so without meaningful consultation with the writer is both a moral and a legal breach’” (DGA, Nov 18, 2015). This brings many questions to mind in the realm of how much liberty the director can take with a script, and how much power the playwright still has over their script once they agree to have it produced. However, I feel that art will increasingly become a platform for these issues. In Vancouver, BC, there is a theatre company, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades Theatre, (http://horseshoesandhandgrenades.ca) that, along with published plays, produces original plays that centre around important historical and political events. As a part of this, they have a trilogy of plays that centre around political events of the 1960’s. The third of these plays, Daisy, is premiering in Seattle at the ACT theatre this summer (http://www.acttheatre.org/Tickets/OnStage/Daisy). This is one example of how art is becoming a platform to express social and political issues.
I think art and culture participation can sustain this society in the future by continuing to ask the hard questions and to challenge us to think critically. As long as art continues to do this, it can continue to drive us as a society. Transmedia materials might figure into this fight because they make it easier to produce and share artforms. One article we read stated that “a new work of fiction is published in the United States every 30 seconds” (Tepper, 2006, p. 5). Therefore, there is more art being produced at a higher rate as a result of these transmedia platforms, and it will continue increasing into the future.
Dramatist Guild of America Article Retrieved from: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/dramatists-guild-blasts-directors-who-cast-characters-outside-his-or-her-obvious-race-gender-372251
According to American for the Arts organization, the total number of nonprofit art organizations increased from about 75,000 in 1999 to 113,000 in 2010. And according to the National Endowment for the Arts, in 2012, the production of arts and cultural goods added more than $698 billion to the U.S. economy, which equals 4.32% of GDP. This is a good sign for a healthy community cultural development process, as these organizations are creating jobs, encouraging innovation, and boosting cultural tourism. This also makes me optimistic about the future of arts, as more philanthropists and organizations are paying attention to the arts and its value in the society. With that said, I wish I am as optimistic when it comes to the quality of the produced art.
The philosopher of communication theory, Marshall McLuhan, saw art as” “whatever you can get away with.” Nowadays, with the revolution of technology, a lot of want-to-be artists are getting away with their products, as this technology made it also hard for critics to judge the products. It appears that anything could be seen as art now. It is true that technology is making it easier and cheaper to produce “art” for amateur artists, however, this effect is quantitative rather than qualitative. With the different transmedia materials these amateur artists have all kinds of platforms to find audience, and interact with them.
I imagine the future of arts and culture to be even more inclusive that it is now. Our access to various types of arts has increased exponentially with the assimilation of the internet into our everyday lives. Generally, arts and culture institutions and organizations are attempting to problem-solve the stereotypes of being elite or expensive through digital exhibitions, free showings, and even the simple student discount ticket. The Louisville Orchestra developed a method last year to engage younger generations by selling season tickets for only $25. This has been tremendously successful, and I expect many symphonies and dance companies to participate in similar marketing techniques.
Museums and orchestras are beginning to tap into the collaborative field with big-name and underground artists. This expands their market to include the Millennials, who are initiating the popular shift towards the underground arts and culture scene. Grimes recently performed at the Guggeheim in New York for their 2015 Gala sponsored by Dior. These 2 gigantic, internationally-known institutions are highlighting and supporting a less “mainstream” musical artist, and I hope events such as this one continue. With the accessibility of Bandcamp and Soundcloud, people can search and browse EPs, LPs, singles, remixes, and full albums of any artist, usually lesser-known. I want to see more websites such as these that are inclusive of amateur visual and performance art that people can post and share on social media as we do now with YouTube videos and articles. This will continue to spur the “Pro-Am” revolution and the idea of a “curatorial” me.
I see transmedia becoming a larger factor with the arts and participation world. Already so many artists and organizations are adapting to the internet age, so who knows what we might be able to do with even more advanced sharing technology in the future? Just recently, PBS aired Act One live from the Lincoln Center, and movie theaters are presenting special showings of productions from the Metropolitan Opera, so I hope that shows like these can become more downloadable and accessible for people who cannot afford travel to these places or even tickets to the show.
The future of arts and culture will also rely heavily on economics and politics. With the younger generations becoming more interested in creative processes and activities, I imagine attempts to revitalize an arts economy through benefits and more distribution of wealth. What if we only paid Aaron Rodgers $100 million instead of $110 million and distributed the remainder throughout the country for the support and production of art? Alas, sports are more important than the arts in the United States. I hope this will change so that artists no longer have to justify their jobs or hobbies and can produce without fear of poverty or disapproval by their parents or peers.
The future of art can mean a lot of things, so I’m going to assume the future means anytime between today and the next twenty years. I think that while art being represented by and through technology will continue to grow based on whatever new form of technology is created and released, there is still a large body of people that want or even need there to be physical representations of art. I don’t think that galleries or museums are dying out, like if you were to flash forward 100 years I don’t envision it to be all digital media and displayed through a digital platform or be like some kind of hologram. But I do think that technology will continue to make a shared connection with art and culture. I think that art and culture are always going to be present in any given society, maybe the ways in which it is present will change or shift given the time and new ideas but it’s not going anywhere. If rules are put in place that make things too restrictive, people will just get creative and figure out a way to combat that. The ways of participation might also change but there aren’t may things in this day and age that haven’t gone through some change, whether it turned out better or not is up for debate.
‘Art’ and ‘culture’ is always evolving and thus it is likely that they have a different meaning today and in the past. Yet, I am sure that they will exist and take an important role within our society. As the tenor of the readings has reflected, ‘art’ and ‘culture’ will be filled even more with a political meaning and addressing the social aspect. History has shown us, that the development of new art forms, in music or in the visual arts for example, was always related with current changes in politics and society as a new way of expression and to articulate new thoughts. Social networks have already made a striking impact on the shapes of our art worlds and will be opening the boarders for a more globalized understanding of art and culture. Art and culture will be reflecting the shifts of awareness, away from western-based points of views to be more equalizing and interchanging. Both terms will hopefully gain more diversity in forms of expressions, participating people and influences to better reflect our societies in its various forms.
Attempting to predict the future , and where art lies in it is difficult, and honestly, hard to digest the what may come in 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now. With the increase of technology, I can see more digital art in our future. In music, I see more electronic music played into bands. More DJ’s and less live bands, less acoustical music, and more technology throughout museums. But I do not believe that old fashion paintings, and galleries will not still be around. You can not replace the pure beauty of a paint brush on paper. We have gone through many decades of change, and art and music have survived through it all strongly. I think that arts participation will only increase with time, through the use of transmedia advertising, and easy access. Just maybe not in the physical sense.
I thought the article “Cultural Renaissance or Cultural Divide,” written by Bill Ivey and Steven Tepper, was quite interesting, in the ways they talk about the changing in our cultural societies. This article discusses how people interpret arts programming, and how art is constantly changing and developing. He states that there are three trends that have played a huge part in the transformation of American culture. The basis of them are, 1) technology 2) local and vernacular art and entertainment, 3)amateurs at home were overshadowed by the new class of creative”professionals.
In my personal opinion I think that technology is just moving to fast, and I am scared to see what the future holds. I think it can effect the size of the audience, for it is now getting easier and easier to just listen to music on your IPOD, or look at art on your computer at home. You can now stream a major orchestra playing a concert live, right on your computer. But no matter what, there will always be people who want to see the real thing live. (At least we hope!!) I do worry also about the lack of funding, affecting the arts in America. Its interesting comparing the arts culture in America, to lets say Germany. In Germany there many more full time orchestras, and in general, more people (young people) attend the concerts. They are funded well, and I know Americans (including one of my best friends) that moved there just so they can get a performance job. Its sad to see that America has orchestras closing up, while many more groups are flourishing in other countries. WIth the ever changing society, I do believe that arts and culture need to develop transmedia to match and fit into the future of how society is changing. Art needs to grow along with the rate of technology. Marketing is a big factor in this.
I believe the future of arts and culture to be what it has always been- a direct reflection of the voices, observations, and thoughts of each generation that creates it. While skeptics may, in reverence to some of Module 3’s readings, preach about the “allergy to originality” or the “conventionalized artistic process,” art and culture are not inherently doomed to a meaningless existence. The age of the snobby artistic consumer are over as “hierarchical markers of taste have eroded” (Ivey & Tepper, 2006) leading to a more “cosmopolitan consumer” (Ivey & Tepper, 2006) who does not stick to specific genre of interest, but experiments with many sorts of cultural experiences. Classical music and modern art both hold positions of influence in the future, as will art and culture convey the voice of the millennial generation through technology and traditional artistic mediums. Whether it be issues of diversity, equality, or acceptance, art has the ability to “allow us to get at things people can’t get at on their own” (Lacy, 2008) and confront problems within our society through a medium of mutual understanding.
What do you imagine the future of art and culture to be? Our society is becoming increasingly dependent on technology. The arts have gone digital in many forms- everything from youtube videos to mp3 files to digital drawing to ebooks and blogs. Everything is circulating and constantly being shared and altered. While material arts will always be important- people will still draw by hand and learn to play instruments and offer live performances. However, digital art will be the most pervasive and the have the highest rates of participation- it already does. One youtube video can get millions of views versus physical 200 seat theatre that only a few are able to be in. Maintaining a physical creative space is going to be the biggest challenge facings artists and arts managers.
How can art and culture participation sustain society in this future? While there is no way a physical art piece can garner the audience that a piece being shared online will receive, arts organizations can use the digital realm to their advantage. This can be done both in marketing and in sharing their work. Though artists must be careful not to give their work away, things like paypal buttons and paywalls can protect them and ensure that their work is not being abused. The next, and most important step, is keeping more detailed records of online art and making sure that these narratives are followed and organized in a way that is easily accessible.
How might transmedia experience/materials figure into this future? Transmedia will be most evident in the altering and repurposing of peoples’ art- everything from a meme to parodies to videos using images and songs from other artists. There is currently a lot of discussion on how to regulate this and how to track the provenance of piece. In tracking this provenance, we could see how one piece translated across multiple platforms- what kind of videos used a particular song, how an image was adapted and used, what quotes circulated the most, etc. The issue then lies in how to catalogue all the material already circulation and do the necessary research. And due to the permanence of the internet, many of these stories will continue to circulate in various forms well into the future. This ultimately means that this is a daunting and frankly near impossible task.
I see the future of art as being divided between megacorporations and grassroots growth, similar to the food industry. As discussed by Ivey and Tepper, technology allows for more mash-ups and home creations. We see art at farmers markets alongside locally grown food, and a love for indie bands and game designers. At the same time that everyone cherishes “indie” they also buy the products of mass media, which have perfected transmedia art so that you can now enter a fictional universe of your favorite flavor via art, music, cinema, books, comics, figurines, games, etc. They have the budget for amazing special affects and international marketing. In this way, they are the opposite of indie: they provide a “universal” collection of crafted worlds. The benefit of this art is that it is easy to access and common. You can ask anyone, “What did you think of the song from Hunger Games?” and they’ll know roughly what you are talking about. If I ask about an artist at the Oregon Country Fair, it is less likely that artist would be shared culture, especially if I move. So while I can take my love for Redwall anywhere and use it as a means of situating myself in a new culture, I must develop a new relationship with the art of that place on the indie level. What is great about this time period is that we have so much art participation. While we still have some that reject that they are any sort of artist, most people have some artistic hobby they are interested in, even if it is a form of curation. In some ways, this makes me think we are returning to a time before mass manufacturing when the crafter, even though not an “artist” took pride in her work, and people knew his product to be the best in the local community. I wonder if as this sentiment increases it will become more enmeshed with the culture of “eating local” and result in more products being made locally as a form of art.
How can art and culture participation sustain society in this future?
After reading through some of the materials for Module 4, I try to picture what I imagine the future of art and culture will be based on the past, and it’s hard for me to imagine. One factor alone, technology, has changed our world entirely so much in just the past ten years it seems impossible to imagine how things will be in another ten years. Technology has a great effect on art and culture: how people connect, how aesthetics develop, how we have practically unlimited access to the world around us, how all artists have the access to be entrepreneurial? Access the internet, social media, blogs and online stores like Etsy have changed and will continue to change how art is created, marketed and sold. I believe art will become more and more collaborate because we have access to people, cultures and worlds around us that we didn’t have before. It will be a challenge to sustain participation, at least in a live physical setting. But people and technology will prevail and participation will just take another form. We will have to lean on the use of transmedia to engage more participation. The more ways we express art and culture the more people will want to be involved.
In previous modules we have talked about how artists are having to become more entrepreneurial. Artist are having to focus on how to market, manage and sell their art instead of spending time create the art itself. I think that this concept will begin to change the future of art: what attributes will a “successful” artist have, how will art education look?
I imagine the future of art and culture to be increasingly democratized and the genres of popular art and folk art becoming even more interwoven with “fine” or “high” arts. There are many contributing factors to the democratization of art including: the lower cost and easier access to technology, a rise of DIY and makerspace interest, and participatory culture that wants to be involved in the art making process. Lower cost of technology yields such products as: inexpensive or free web design programs, free editing programs, access to high-quality digital museum archives, online galleries and a general increase in visibility of arts organizations and artist opportunities. The rise in DIY culture is a direct result of folk art and popular art regaining popularity. People no longer have to be experts to make art and as Ivy and Teper suggest, being a “pro-am” is accepted and encouraged as viable art. Makerspaces are increasing in quantity to fill the DIY culture, but also the community’s need to participate. Audiences now, are more of a participatory culture than before, and I think that will increase exponentially in the future.
Art and culture districts are readily being prescribed as the fix for struggling communities. I think this can be successful, but not always. Stern and Seifter note an issue with this remedy is the“misperception of culture and creativity as a product of individual genius rather than collective activity”. I personally was involved with an arts organization that was in a Downtown district that thought the arts were the remedy for the revitalization of the town. The town constantly expected our arts organization to “carry” the town events and come up with these amazing events, while most of the other businesses didn’t offer anything. Unfortunately, arts & culture districts often creates social dislocation. Though I think due to the rise of makerspaces and community centers that are sensitive to ethnic groups and minorites that social dislocation may become less in the future.
The future of art and culture is clearly becoming more participatory and accepting toward new art forms and new artists. With so many resources and opportunities available, suddenly anyone can become a creator or a “maker” and it seems our culture has really taken to that. You can see this in the way Etsy has taken off and also in the rise of YouTube stars. It’s easy to quickly learn to make anything with a quick Google search. Sometimes these options make me feel like a cultural optimist, as described in the Bill Ivey and Steven Tepper piece as believing, “a thousand flowers are blooming, we are drowning in a sea of possibility, and we are surrounded by a new creative ethos”.
On a different note, in light of the attacks that took place within this past week, it’s difficult for me to read these questions without reflecting upon that. We are living in a time we’re we are suddenly being infiltrated by terrorizing video, internet manifestos and online terror propaganda from across the globe. Terror organizations are coming up with their own hashtags. Propaganda can now spread more quickly than ever before and it has actually inspired people to leave their homes to join international terror organizations. (I think of the three 16-year-old British girls who willingly left the UK to Syria http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/british-schoolgirls-will-never-leave-syria-senior-female-isis-commander-claims-as-teenagers-10280509.html ) I wonder what will come of this. Will our internet become increasingly censored? I have heard metaphors that our internet now is like the wild west. And we know the wild west eventually turned into typical towns, cities and suburbia. I can’t help but imagine that the internet will become increasingly censored. This would cause another cultural shift, and limit access to the wide variety of resources we now have available instantly. I’m sure that shift would have a backlash and underground markets and communities would be created to fill various needs formed in the absence of a completely open internet. In essence, I feel that some changes are going to take place with the accessibility of the internet, that other similar structures will come into existence, and that we will be operating in different, more complicated systems. With this, accessibility would be lost and regained and the relationship between arts, culture and participation would again be reimagined. Of course, all of this would be happening as technology continues to increase, so I imagine those alternatives and “underground markets” would be extremely technologically savvy, like taking place over venues not yet in existence. I don’t think the future of arts and culture will be linear or predictable, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we took some major turns in the near future.
I wonder if the future of art and culture will be any different than it is currently. Technology has in a sense made participating in art more accessible, however, the choice to engage or not still lies with the individual. Despite the recent closing of art galleries in Eugene and articles in local papers that contend that the art scene in the city needs to be revitalized, this town is much more arts-centric than an average town in America. Yet even here there is an obvious cultural divide between the nike driven, corporate ethos and the artistic, funky, bohemian spirit that drives many of the local business and arts organizations.
It is our nature as a society and human beings to gravitate to those things from which we feel the most familiar. It is my contention that there will always be a split between those individuals who seek art and those who choose to remain blissfully unaware.
No doubt participatory practices in the arts will be “remixed” to reflect current societal trends, but I fear we will face many of the same core issues in validating the creative spirit as we currently face.
I feel that art and culture has been relevant in the world for a long time and will continue to be relevant in the future. Art and culture continues to be more accessible through the internet. More and more organizations are focusing on making art and culture accessible to everyone. I realize this may be an optimistic view, but I think art and culture participation will continue to grow and thrive. Participation in art has changed over time. I think transmedia allows the majority of the population to participate with art on a daily basis. Participating in art and culture make people feel like they are part of a community. Transmedia helps people connect to one another even if they are located thousands of miles away. The future of art and culture is reliant on technology and accessibility. I think it will continue to be more accessible and anyone who has access to technology will perform some sort of arts participation daily.
Bill Ivey and Steven J. Tepper point out that the future of art and culture are at a crucial point of cultural divide — a divide marked by social and economic inequality – wherein arts and cultural participation are linked intimately with resource availability. With this in mind, in the (near) future, art and culture sustainability is perhaps intimately linked to the availability of affordable technologies. I could see two (to produce an artificial dichotomy where a multitude of possibilities exist) futures for art and culture in the western world; one in which more individuals are able to actively engage in diverse art and culture creation and maintenance through ease of access to technologies and one in which art and culture creation becomes increasingly dominated by corporate interests and the pursuits of the educated “creative class” discussed by Mark J. Stern and Susan C. Seifert.
In the first of these potential futures, art and culture could be sustained through the relative ease of access that people might have to modes of art creation and dissemination afforded by easily manipulated digital creation suites. This ease of access could increase interconnectivity between tech realms in which arts and culture could develop and Internet marketplaces where art and culture could be marketed and sold – think sites like etsy with a heavier emphasis on cultural dissemination that is generated on less of a profit driven business model. In the second future – and my gut tells me this is perhaps the more likely of the two – art and culture would be sustained by corporate economic interest in the maintenance of homogenized, easily digestible art and cultural milieus. In this future, art and culture would be generated by individuals from the “creative class,” supported by the patronage of large businesses with corporate agendas (read: desire to monetize easily accessible waxing and waning cycles of sanitized artistic and cultural trends) and pumped wholesale into the world for consumption by those not quite fortunate enough to have – by circumstance or luck of birth – been granted access to the leisure class wherein the direction of artistic and cultural trends is decided. Of course, art and culture are both dynamic features of the human experience, and this (intensely pessimistic) critical lens is positioned largely in the present capitalistic mindset.
In both of these potential futures, transmedia plays a primary role in how we will access, create, and consume art and culture. Digital technology is the future of art and culture. How that technology is made available and subsequently used will determine the future of art and culture in the world.
While art and culture will certainly continue to be produced in traditional manners, with authors toiling away at bestsellers, artists locked in studios producing masterpieces, and composers writing music for huge operas, I think the future of art and culture is very much based on wider participation and lowered barriers to entry. I agree with Bill Ivey and Steven Tepper’s assertion that cultural engagement is showing “signs of renewed thickening.” The internet and various other modern products allow people to engage in creating art and culture as a pastime, and allowing them to share that their creations with other people. Furthermore, creative professionals are more and more embracing the idea that the public must be engaged in the creation of their art, as discussed by Suzanne Lacy in “Time in Place” or as demonstrated by Maya Lin’s work on the Confluence Project. There is a growing trend towards inclusivity in the creation of art and culture, and I believe that will certainly continue into the future.
This growth then helps people cope with changes in society. Not only have we seen the growth of the idea of creating art as therapy – as demonstrated by a recent National Geographic article on Veterans making masks as a form of therapy to deal with their PTSD and other injuries – but people continue to use art as a way to progress society. There are movements to make more inclusive art, and art, even the mass produced, can be used to push the bounds of society (e.g. Scandal and it’s conversations about racism and sexism, or How to Get Away with Murder’s frank depictions of sexuality) and to redefine historical ideas (e.g. Hamilton’s use of hip hop and almost entirely POC cast when depicting colonial America and the Founding Fathers). By inviting voices that were predominately left out and ignored to participate in the creation of media of all kinds, society is being pushed to grow in new ways.
And transmedia is key to this growth. When mass media is not pushing society, it can be repurposed and remixed by fans (e.g. the groups of Harry Potter fans that draw art of Harry and Hermione as non-white (typically South Asian and Black, respectively) based on the fact that J.K. Rowling never mentions their skin colors, making it no less canon than those characters being white, and the lack of diversity in the Harry Potter series causing fans to make some themselves). These transmediations can take many forms, but they are all inherently participatory, and require the involvement of people who may not typically be involved in an art world in any way other than as an observer. This ability for people to engage in the creation of art and culture through transmedia elements will continue to push and change art and culture in the future.
Looking back to the world history, we get to know that the trend and style for art have always changed as time goes. Though everything is changable in this world, one thing that the classical is shining all the time is never changed. In my opinion, I believe in the near future the classical works such as folk culture will play a leading role in the art. More specifically, it will bring a great success in its style, idea, and content. What’s more, at this turbulent and instable society, art can be a medium to inspirit and enlighten of human being’s. From this perspective, we may say that art is a key of a country. In addition, nowadays more and more artists show their concern about the earth where we live in. They try to create an eco-environmental atmosphere in art to bring people’s consciousness.To some extent, their action has been paid back in different ways. In particular, as the accelerating process of globalization, people have various ways to gain information from other continent through the Internet. We may say we all live in a net-country without any barriers between connections. Over this process, who is the biggest contributor? Of course, transmedia is an essential part in it, for it brings many bridges to connect with one another.
Personally I am so excited to see the future of art. I believe that the structure of the current art industry is unsustainable and will either have to undergo renovations or it will crumble in the future. In my mind, there seems to be two competing schools of art currently today. There is the tradition school of studying fine art in an academic or apprentice setting, making art to sell in galleries or hang in museums, and then becoming successful enough to begin hiring your own apprentices. This model has been around for hundreds of years and has existed since the classic European painters created many of the most recognizable paintings. While this model has produced amazing works of art, it is important to not always rely on tradition. The other art world that I notice is more of a grass roots art world, where a lot of the industry exists on a online plane. The way artists are taught is not as important as it used to be, as this art world thrives more on shared love of art and art objects. Artists are turning to creating their own small businesses in order to make a living while making art and are connecting with other artist-created small businesses. I think this art world includes new art practices like festivals, events, performances and many different types of things that haven’t always been considered fine art, like a drag show or an artist created lapel pin.
This latter art world that I have described is the one that I believe will survive longer than the first. I also believe it will evolve beyond existing in the alternative. I think that there will be even more content creators than there are now and that digital art will be much more accessible than it is now.