musings
Art Happens—With or Without a Job
by Ruth Zamoyta
October 21, 2011
Frederick, a field mouse in the eponymous children’s book by Leo Lionni, sits by while his friends scurry about, storing nuts and grains for the long winter months that await them. In their hovel, the mice begrudgingly share their food with Frederick, grumbling that he did not do any “work.” But when the last crumb is eaten and the mice grow hungry, Frederick shares with them the “food” he had been collecting in his imagination: poetry. With poetry he feeds them the color, warmth, and beauty that they were missing as much as food. The mice then appreciate the imperishable contribution of their resident artist, Frederick.
Frederick showed his skeptical friends how art plays a powerful—almost magical—part in the sustenance of society. Yet when children declare they want to be artists, parents often worry that they won’t find “work” and urge them to pursue a more practical career.
Last May a headline in the New York Times tried to put this fear to rest: “Survey Suggests Employment Prospects for Arts Graduates Are About the Same as for Others.” The article showed the latest results of an ongoing survey by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), an initiative designed to improve arts education.
SNAAP triumphantly announced that 92% of art-school graduates who want to have a job currently have one. What’s more, 65% of grads have worked as professional artists at some point in their careers.
However, a closer look at the survey results on SNAAP’s Web site reveals that 30% of the 65% are teachers or administrators—teaching or administering art while others make art. After teaching, graphic design is the least unsuccessful discipline, with 16% of grads working in their field. Next come musicians at 15%, and the remaining arts occupations—architect, craft artist, film/video artist, dancer, fine artist, photographer, theater professional, creative writer—plummet into the single digits.
How about the poets, the Fredericks of our world? Only 6% of people who studied creative writing are employed as creative writers.
It is impossible to compare art to other professions, because it is not a job but an inner necessity. Art is a pursuit that must continue with or without a job—it is a compulsion as strong as a substance addiction. Indeed, the report says that 71% of grads who are not working as arts professionals continue to do art on their own.
Frederick and his furry fans would have found this last statistic the most encouraging in the report, and it should have been the one to make New York Times headlines. It reassures artists and art educators that regardless of employment, the work of art goes on—producing the color, warmth, and beauty that feed our hungry souls.
Choosing a Consultant: Integrity
Ruth Zamoyta
October 1, 2011
It’s inevitable. Sooner or later you’ll need expertise—you’ll need to outsource. Whether you are a company looking for a communications consultant, or a homeowner remodeling your kitchen, you meet with several people and discuss the products and services they offer you.
But don’t forget to check their integrity. There are enough agencies and contractors out there dying for work—make them prove they have a strong reputation, are dedicated to progress, and treat their employees right.
Dig around for info or ask them outright:
What is your business model?
How many full-time employees on staff? Have they been with you long?
What’s your credit rating? Have these past few years been tough?
How long have you been in business? Who founded it? Is he/she still around?
What’s it like working with you?
Will you stick with us through this project, to the bitter end?
How have you changed with the times?
What is the latest technology? What’s your take on it?
How was your customer-service team trained?
How long has your product/service been around? How long will it continue?
What’s your ratio of support staff to customers? Do you charge for customer service?
Will you train me in what I need to know?
Will I have a single point of contact?
Sometimes simply asking makes them realize that professional integrity is more important than a bargain.
If they don’t already know that, they’re not for you.
Jean Valentine's Break the Glass
Ruth Zamoyta
May 10, 2011
The function of poetry is conveyance. Everywhere in Jean Valentine's collection, Break the Glass, are currents along which vessels flow. Words are permeable canoes—themselves the map—carrying cargo from cosmos to cosmos.
Break the Glass... The title stirs thoughts of a wedding, a fire, an escape—from trappings undetected until you try to reach outside.
Once the aquarium is shattered, everything is liquid, protean—thresholds effortlessly transgressed, from life to death, lost to unlost, civilized to carnal. We swim, we thirst, we nurse, we swallow.
Faces make cameo appearances in the swirl of influence—there is no separation between agent and beneficiary, and no permanence.
Gradually and inevitably, in this atomistic universe of particles (and breaths) in constant motion, beauty emerges, "in its longing." When the glass breaks, music flows...
Yet from this accumulating, shipping, and unloading "with light intent" arises detachment—what seems always missing is desire.
At last, there is something to be resolved. As though the universal sublimity couldn't go on infinitely expanding in size and depth and complexity, the book ends with the chaotic whirling eddies of primal forces uniting as though by design to resurrect the three-million-year-old skeleton, Lucy.
Denouement in a weird incubus—a desiccated skeleton. As though the voyage weren't enough of an ending... But what does poetry have to do with need?
by Ruth Zamoyta
October 21, 2011
Frederick, a field mouse in the eponymous children’s book by Leo Lionni, sits by while his friends scurry about, storing nuts and grains for the long winter months that await them. In their hovel, the mice begrudgingly share their food with Frederick, grumbling that he did not do any “work.” But when the last crumb is eaten and the mice grow hungry, Frederick shares with them the “food” he had been collecting in his imagination: poetry. With poetry he feeds them the color, warmth, and beauty that they were missing as much as food. The mice then appreciate the imperishable contribution of their resident artist, Frederick.
Frederick showed his skeptical friends how art plays a powerful—almost magical—part in the sustenance of society. Yet when children declare they want to be artists, parents often worry that they won’t find “work” and urge them to pursue a more practical career.
Last May a headline in the New York Times tried to put this fear to rest: “Survey Suggests Employment Prospects for Arts Graduates Are About the Same as for Others.” The article showed the latest results of an ongoing survey by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), an initiative designed to improve arts education.
SNAAP triumphantly announced that 92% of art-school graduates who want to have a job currently have one. What’s more, 65% of grads have worked as professional artists at some point in their careers.
However, a closer look at the survey results on SNAAP’s Web site reveals that 30% of the 65% are teachers or administrators—teaching or administering art while others make art. After teaching, graphic design is the least unsuccessful discipline, with 16% of grads working in their field. Next come musicians at 15%, and the remaining arts occupations—architect, craft artist, film/video artist, dancer, fine artist, photographer, theater professional, creative writer—plummet into the single digits.
How about the poets, the Fredericks of our world? Only 6% of people who studied creative writing are employed as creative writers.
It is impossible to compare art to other professions, because it is not a job but an inner necessity. Art is a pursuit that must continue with or without a job—it is a compulsion as strong as a substance addiction. Indeed, the report says that 71% of grads who are not working as arts professionals continue to do art on their own.
Frederick and his furry fans would have found this last statistic the most encouraging in the report, and it should have been the one to make New York Times headlines. It reassures artists and art educators that regardless of employment, the work of art goes on—producing the color, warmth, and beauty that feed our hungry souls.
Choosing a Consultant: Integrity
Ruth Zamoyta
October 1, 2011
It’s inevitable. Sooner or later you’ll need expertise—you’ll need to outsource. Whether you are a company looking for a communications consultant, or a homeowner remodeling your kitchen, you meet with several people and discuss the products and services they offer you.
But don’t forget to check their integrity. There are enough agencies and contractors out there dying for work—make them prove they have a strong reputation, are dedicated to progress, and treat their employees right.
Dig around for info or ask them outright:
What is your business model?
How many full-time employees on staff? Have they been with you long?
What’s your credit rating? Have these past few years been tough?
How long have you been in business? Who founded it? Is he/she still around?
What’s it like working with you?
Will you stick with us through this project, to the bitter end?
How have you changed with the times?
What is the latest technology? What’s your take on it?
How was your customer-service team trained?
How long has your product/service been around? How long will it continue?
What’s your ratio of support staff to customers? Do you charge for customer service?
Will you train me in what I need to know?
Will I have a single point of contact?
Sometimes simply asking makes them realize that professional integrity is more important than a bargain.
If they don’t already know that, they’re not for you.
Jean Valentine's Break the Glass
Ruth Zamoyta
May 10, 2011
The function of poetry is conveyance. Everywhere in Jean Valentine's collection, Break the Glass, are currents along which vessels flow. Words are permeable canoes—themselves the map—carrying cargo from cosmos to cosmos.
| The world inside of that one mass graves like this one Inside of that world someone painting animal–souls Inside the dark huge sounds | |||
| —"The World inside This One" |
Break the Glass... The title stirs thoughts of a wedding, a fire, an escape—from trappings undetected until you try to reach outside.
| I wanted you to touch me You stood there neither man nor woman, beautiful edge by the water | |||
| —"You ask," |
Once the aquarium is shattered, everything is liquid, protean—thresholds effortlessly transgressed, from life to death, lost to unlost, civilized to carnal. We swim, we thirst, we nurse, we swallow.
| Eurydice who guides Orpheus who guides who first has to return to death the one who sings the one who opens first of all the animals his mouth to her song her thirst his thirst the ones who nurse each other | |||
| —"Eurydice who guides" |
Faces make cameo appearances in the swirl of influence—there is no separation between agent and beneficiary, and no permanence.
| I put my hand on the ground the membrane is gone and nothing does hold your place in the ground is all of it and it is breathing | |||
| —"Red cloth" |
Gradually and inevitably, in this atomistic universe of particles (and breaths) in constant motion, beauty emerges, "in its longing." When the glass breaks, music flows...
| Can you breathe all right? Break the glass shout break the glass force the room break the thread Open your place in the ground the music behind the glass. | |||
| —"If a Person Visits Someone in a Dream, in Some Cultures the Dreamer Thanks Them" |
Yet from this accumulating, shipping, and unloading "with light intent" arises detachment—what seems always missing is desire.
| I have pulled the elements in no order in around me, like a blanket: elephant blanket. It will harden when I take it off, my skin, when I leave you on the ground and walk away. | |||
| —"I am fain a page in the court of space" |
At last, there is something to be resolved. As though the universal sublimity couldn't go on infinitely expanding in size and depth and complexity, the book ends with the chaotic whirling eddies of primal forces uniting as though by design to resurrect the three-million-year-old skeleton, Lucy.
| What I wanted most the mother has come to me Will she stay in my ear? Lucy Is it you? Still all night long my Lucy I entreat you I will not let thee go except thou bless me. | |||
| —"Enter the sweet Why..." |
Denouement in a weird incubus—a desiccated skeleton. As though the voyage weren't enough of an ending... But what does poetry have to do with need?
| Don't listen to the words— they're only little shapes for what you're saying, they're only cups if you're thirsty, you aren't thirsty | |||
| —"'As with rosy steps the morn'" |
Magnum Opus: The Met: Live in HD
Ruth Zamoyta
May 5, 2011
Opera harmonizes the best of many art forms: vocals which are trained to a point so extreme it seems unnatural; orchestral music written by immortals and played by masters; the striking visual beauty of lavish costumes and elaborate sets at which the audience gasps as the curtain rises; and a passionate story that transports audiences to a time when stories — and indeed passions — followed a narrative curve, building to climax, and reaching finality, if not resolution, in the end. These many factors work together to bring an intensity of experience unrivaled in any other performing art.
And I owe my love of opera to Frankiln Delano Roosevelt.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) program instituted by Roosevelt during the Great Depression not only created public-works jobs, but it also brought arts and culture to the working class. At that time, my father’s mother was slaving at the sweatshops, and his father virtually resided in the pub after having been laid off at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Whether charged with the care of his younger siblings, or at-large with the neighborhood gang, my father often sought the free or nickel musical, dramatic, and operatic performances made possible through federal subsidies.
Part bread-and-circuses, part cultural enlightenment, the arts component of the WPA played a large part in audience retention by making opera accessible to the disenfranchised elite. It also developed new audiences by bringing opera to an economic class that had been previously excluded. This was my legacy.
Now, however, as public funding of the arts dwindles, audience development is in the hands of the opera houses. I recently wrote a case study on the Metropolitan Opera's outreach program launched by Peter Gelb in 2006, and its magnum opus, The Met: Live in HD — the wildly popular, often sold-out live Saturday-afternoon broadcasts into HD theaters around the world. Challenged by an aging audience and a poor economy, the Met has positioned itself to capture new audiences with this low-cost, widely accessible platform. The problem is that the same gray-haired opera-buffs keep showing up for the cinemacasts.
Next time I get a few spare minutes, I'll let y'all know what the Met's marketing team can learn from Broadway’s Next to Normal
Ruth Zamoyta
May 5, 2011
Opera harmonizes the best of many art forms: vocals which are trained to a point so extreme it seems unnatural; orchestral music written by immortals and played by masters; the striking visual beauty of lavish costumes and elaborate sets at which the audience gasps as the curtain rises; and a passionate story that transports audiences to a time when stories — and indeed passions — followed a narrative curve, building to climax, and reaching finality, if not resolution, in the end. These many factors work together to bring an intensity of experience unrivaled in any other performing art.
And I owe my love of opera to Frankiln Delano Roosevelt.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) program instituted by Roosevelt during the Great Depression not only created public-works jobs, but it also brought arts and culture to the working class. At that time, my father’s mother was slaving at the sweatshops, and his father virtually resided in the pub after having been laid off at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Whether charged with the care of his younger siblings, or at-large with the neighborhood gang, my father often sought the free or nickel musical, dramatic, and operatic performances made possible through federal subsidies.
Part bread-and-circuses, part cultural enlightenment, the arts component of the WPA played a large part in audience retention by making opera accessible to the disenfranchised elite. It also developed new audiences by bringing opera to an economic class that had been previously excluded. This was my legacy.
Now, however, as public funding of the arts dwindles, audience development is in the hands of the opera houses. I recently wrote a case study on the Metropolitan Opera's outreach program launched by Peter Gelb in 2006, and its magnum opus, The Met: Live in HD — the wildly popular, often sold-out live Saturday-afternoon broadcasts into HD theaters around the world. Challenged by an aging audience and a poor economy, the Met has positioned itself to capture new audiences with this low-cost, widely accessible platform. The problem is that the same gray-haired opera-buffs keep showing up for the cinemacasts.
Next time I get a few spare minutes, I'll let y'all know what the Met's marketing team can learn from Broadway’s Next to Normal
The Big Bang: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Erupts in Cyberspace
Ruth Zamoyta
March 8, 2011
Bound by a city ordinance that prevents it from physically expanding, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has erupted within the infinite expanse of the World Wide Web, blasting particles of information and activity in every direction.
Through the creation of a multi-faceted online presence, the Met has reached art lovers with different needs, attitudes, and modes of engagement. Its Web site links seekers to the sought — exhibitions, events, giving opportunities, shopping opportunities, ticket sales, logistics — but most importantly it links people to the art and to each other.
The most remarkable element of the Met’s digital presence is the virtual catalogue of its 340,000-work collection. Before the creation of this online database, scholars and amateurs had to manually search through the on-site catalogue and request an exclusive viewing of items not on exhibit. Now anyone anywhere can find artworks online, see images of them from several angles, and read information about the artist, medium, and provenance, as well as comprehensive descriptions written by art professionals.
For online visitors who want a more thematic experience, the new interactive program Connections offers unique online tours designed by curators, artists, and academics. However, Connections is a one-way flow. Dialogue is only possible outside the Site, in the realm of social media, where true connections become ever-expanding constellations.
In November, 2010 the Met announced plans to redesign its Fifth-Avenue plaza to make it more conducive to meeting and mingling. This encouragement of conversation outside its stone walls extends to cyberspace, where the Met has colonized the frontier of social media through platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, ArtBabble, Delicious, and its Medieval Garden Blog.
The Met penetrates iPads, iPods, and iPhones through podcasts, newsletters, RSS feeds, mp3s, and recently, the new Met Guitars app, launched in tandem with the Guitar Heroes exhibition. The Met has also sparked collaboration through Foursquare, where mobile phone users play virtual tag within the museum, and through Flickr, where visitors can upload their museum photos and comment.
In his New York Times article, “From Picassos to Sarcophagi, Guided by Phone Apps” (October 1, 2010), Edward Rothstein complains:
Walk into a crowded museum, and what do you see? People with cameras or cellphones snapping pictures of people looking at objects. The artwork, document or fossil is a tourist site; the photograph is our souvenir. And the looking — for which museums were created &mdash becomes a memory before it has even begun.
Rothstein overlooks the new way of looking...and seeing. In modern minds the snapshot and quick glance create openings to sublimity. Visitors upload their photos to Flickr, view others, grow curious, and return for a longer glance, transforming themselves from art tourists to art inhabitants.
The Met has created its own world online, and ventured out, into the noisy chaos of social media &mdash to give people a place to get away, to look art in the face, turn inwards, and...muse.
Ruth Zamoyta
March 8, 2011
Bound by a city ordinance that prevents it from physically expanding, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has erupted within the infinite expanse of the World Wide Web, blasting particles of information and activity in every direction.
Through the creation of a multi-faceted online presence, the Met has reached art lovers with different needs, attitudes, and modes of engagement. Its Web site links seekers to the sought — exhibitions, events, giving opportunities, shopping opportunities, ticket sales, logistics — but most importantly it links people to the art and to each other.
The most remarkable element of the Met’s digital presence is the virtual catalogue of its 340,000-work collection. Before the creation of this online database, scholars and amateurs had to manually search through the on-site catalogue and request an exclusive viewing of items not on exhibit. Now anyone anywhere can find artworks online, see images of them from several angles, and read information about the artist, medium, and provenance, as well as comprehensive descriptions written by art professionals.
For online visitors who want a more thematic experience, the new interactive program Connections offers unique online tours designed by curators, artists, and academics. However, Connections is a one-way flow. Dialogue is only possible outside the Site, in the realm of social media, where true connections become ever-expanding constellations.
In November, 2010 the Met announced plans to redesign its Fifth-Avenue plaza to make it more conducive to meeting and mingling. This encouragement of conversation outside its stone walls extends to cyberspace, where the Met has colonized the frontier of social media through platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, ArtBabble, Delicious, and its Medieval Garden Blog.
The Met penetrates iPads, iPods, and iPhones through podcasts, newsletters, RSS feeds, mp3s, and recently, the new Met Guitars app, launched in tandem with the Guitar Heroes exhibition. The Met has also sparked collaboration through Foursquare, where mobile phone users play virtual tag within the museum, and through Flickr, where visitors can upload their museum photos and comment.
In his New York Times article, “From Picassos to Sarcophagi, Guided by Phone Apps” (October 1, 2010), Edward Rothstein complains:
Walk into a crowded museum, and what do you see? People with cameras or cellphones snapping pictures of people looking at objects. The artwork, document or fossil is a tourist site; the photograph is our souvenir. And the looking — for which museums were created &mdash becomes a memory before it has even begun.
Rothstein overlooks the new way of looking...and seeing. In modern minds the snapshot and quick glance create openings to sublimity. Visitors upload their photos to Flickr, view others, grow curious, and return for a longer glance, transforming themselves from art tourists to art inhabitants.
The Met has created its own world online, and ventured out, into the noisy chaos of social media &mdash to give people a place to get away, to look art in the face, turn inwards, and...muse.