LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. The old real estate motto has relevance to career painters as well. Art history is replete with urban locations were artists hung out, many successfully. We also have the more modern "art colonies," typically more rural (deserts, mountains, or seaside).
Some of these "art scenes" emerged naturally. Still, it took intentional efforts by artists to pull up whatever roots they had to move there. Once there was a critical mass, an art scene was built. Once you had such a location, people wanting to buy art knew where to go.
We have broad art scenes like Paris and London, but it was particular neighborhoods that did the heavy lifting. One thinks of Montparnasse and Montmartre in Paris, or Bloomsbury in London. Artists on the make moved there intentionally. Likewise, the iron-facade SoHo district of New York City (for “South of Huston”), hosted artists from the 1950s onward. They hunkered down in its cheap cold-water flats. Today, a very changed SoHo is a synonym for modern art.
City planners and art advocates have taken notice. The result has been, since around 2000 in the United States, the movement to create "art districts" in urban centers. They may also be called the "art and entertainment districts," an offshoot of the long-known theater district.
Under this more formal heading, Rhode Island—with its famous art school in Providence—was the first state to create such a district. To come, others formed, parts of a city or town that receives an “art district” designation, tax breaks, and other financial incentives.
Nationwide, art districts are typically found a bit over from downtown. Their key to success is having four “cultural assets,” according to Mark J. Stern of the University of Pennsylvania, who researches art districts in US cities. The four are: culture-related businesses, practicing artists, non-profit groups, and cultural customers. For the working painter, customers are key. Studies found that 80 percent of those art buyers come from elsewhere. This is good for the painter, but also helps transfer urban wealth to poorer city sections.
Both cities and U.S. government agencies have been supporting these projects. Around 2010, the National Endowment for the Arts began issuing “Our Town” grants to art projects aimed a civic renewal. Depending on budgets, the targeted funding continues. In turn, the National Trust for Historic Preservation sees art districts as part of keeping historic and aesthetic neighborhoods alive, fitting old structures to new uses—such as art studios and galleries.
This is an example of the programmatic art scene, which differs from what arose in SoHo in Manhattan, or the art colonies of enduring fame in Taos, N.M., Laguna Beach, Calif., or Cape Cod, Mass. And while those storied art scenes are always victim to flux, the formal urban projects have fairly well-known obstacles to success.
If the first obstacle is to get money and attract artist, the second is gentrification, now considered the most fatal. Stern advocates for the "natural cultural districts," which "are initiated from the bottom.” They emerge from a unique local chemistry, typified by resident artists, mixed incomes, reasonable housing costs, ethnic diversity, and what Stern calls a dominance of “non-family households.”
Arts and entertainment, however, is what seems to glue these communities together and make them attractive to culture customers. Then, the "natural" part gives way to the next phase.
Once these art hubs are discovered, cities and real estate developers are eager to come in and try to “improve” the situation—either as strictly profit-making proposition, or to alleviate the poverty and social stress of a poorer neighborhood.
For most art districts, Stern says, their diversity and stability is more important to the local economics than “selling of tickets” to big art events. But when one of these vital art districts is suddenly “discovered,” somebody will inevitably start thinking big.
And, once an art district becomes a commercial success, the economic and racial diversity decline. Gentrification has begun. The rents in such a cool artsy neighborhood rise. Today, Manhattan's SoHo, once the haunt of poor artists, is now akin to downtown Beverly Hills: high-end boutiques and high-end rents. As a result, artists began to move to Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and then back a step to an area now called DUMBO, an area of renovated warehouses (under the Brooklyn Bridge).
Prices rise, and artists move on. Stern says that to aid the '"natural district,” governments often offer generous financial “intervention,” which is hard to turn down. But a slippery slope begins. “It’s a very complex urban ecology, and we need to be careful,” Stern says. “Successful cultural districts tend to destroy [ethnic and economic] diversity.”
He sees two solutions. Both have benefits and down-sides. The first is to welcome the infusion of “cataclysmic money.” This can upgrade an art district overnight. It also tends to produce a “winner-take-all” art neighborhood. Only a few artists and establishments get rich.
Stern prefers the second solution, which is the gradual building up of networks of supporting businesses. This approach also loves to receive money from the city, philanthropists, and businesses, but only to “compensate” for economic rough spots.
Today, art school graduates often rent urban spaces near the art college. Career painters with the wherewithal move to known art scenes, where other high-caliber artists and galleries (with clientele) set up. And of course, a good many painters have moved to the suburbs, especially with family and kids. Still, the art district movement marches on.
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