News/Research

Bay Area Artists Report Published

20 Jun, 2017

Bay Area Artists Report Published

The Compensation Foundation, a public platform documenting how "contingent workers" (freelancers, creative professionals, and the like) are compensated, recently published its Bay Area Artists Report!.

With BCNM's initial funding, The Compensation Foundation launched the anonymous survey for visual artists in the Bay Area to report compensation prices within their respective fields. By leveraging transparency in the arts, the Bay Area Artists Report! can help inform artists, from students to professionals, about the climate and cultural values of their area(s) of expertise through collected data on 310 Bay Area venues.

What distinguishes the report is its accompanying visuals, one of which reveals the "frequency of any financial compensation for work, time or expenses by the venue" such as the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC), De Young Museum, and the Arts Research Center (ARC) here at Cal.

The Bay Area Artists Report! also found that, for just 17% of respondents, more than half of their income came from their creative practice. As art practice tuition costs rise and funding for visual artists increasingly comes into question, the importance of analyses like the Bay Area Artists Report! proves more and more imperative for artists' support.

Check out the full report at the Compensation Foundation.