Daily Archives: April 22, 2014


Valuing Labor in the Arts: Caroline Woolard

The work I’m doing now (by facilitating the start of associations http://bfamfaphd.com and http://nyctbd.com/resources) is focused on creating longterm community livelihoods where shared decision-making and shared profit are possible. Personally, I was able to focus on OurGoods.org and TradeSchool.coop and SolidarityNYC.org for the past five years because I graduated without debt from Cooper Union, because I refused to go into debt for graduate school, and because I created a job for myself by co-managing a studio space that I built out with friends to keep rent low.

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Valuing Labor in the Arts: Kate Rhoades

I came to this event hoping to be part of a Marxist revolution and though that definitely was not what happened, I was not disappointed. I found out about this practicum on W.A.G.E.’s website, so naturally I signed up for the workshop on Defining Value, Labor, and the Arts, hosted by W.A.G.E.’s Lise Soskolne.

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Valuing Labor in the Arts: A Practicum

When is it okay to work for free? Is it acceptable as long as you’re working with—or for—another artist? What is an artistic service? These are just a few of the hundreds of questions circulating for artists working in the 21st-century economy, a scene in which the very old question of art’s financial contingency arguably has a different kind of urgency and opacity. With “Valuing Labor in the Arts,” the Arts Research Center (ARC) gathers artists, curators, organizers, and researchers to work together on such questions.

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