The Business of Art

I have put myself in the trenches these past two weeks by absorbing a wealth of business training courses that have been available within New York City. It is my intention to try to relay some of that information back to you through the filter of artist needs. I wanted to momentarily look past the arts organizations like NYFA , CUE , or LMCC ,VLA or Creative Capital that supply us with a bounty of information for our careers as artists. For now, I wish to focus on the wealth of general business education that is available to all of us in New York City, and thanks to books and websites, the information has the ability to travel anywhere.

My first recommendation is for the NYPL's Science and Business Library. John Crant is presenting a workshop on resume preparation tonight. I have been able to catch two of his lectures in the past two weeks, and both were filled with valuable information that can be translated into our needs as working artists. Artists use their resumes for many purposes. They are posted on our websites, used in grant proposals, sent to galleries as well as presenting us to a variety of employers. The artist resume is a sprawling beast of 3-4 pages. Crant is able to give some extremely helpful information on how to position yourself through your resume while staying on just one page. I will be purchasing his book as a little present to myself this holiday season. Keep an eye out for other workshops that he will be offering in the upcoming weeks.

On a closing note, I just want to encourage other artists to attend as many career development courses as you can. I have never gone to one that I did not find worthwhile. Although much of the information is directed toward corporate job search. Keep in mind that our grant panels and certainly our potential corporate sponsors will appreciate our ability to effectively communicate with them through the formulas that they understand.