Contact McKnight Click here for the survey results. The art world is still a place that sees things in terms of winners and losers.
Artists can reach the heights of celebrity or more typically remain forever anonymous.
While romantic misconceptions about the artist s lot abound, the truth is that at the turn of the millennium art remains an inglorious profession for most and a tough life for anyone. Making art is as difficult as ever, the world of finance and art as uncomfortably entangled as ever, and artists as destitute, exhausted, and determined as ever. The McKnight Foundation staff wondered why after a decade of constant economic gains by almost every social group the well-being of individual artists did not seem to be improving. Chancing upon a survey that addresses the practicalities of an artist s life, they saw an opportunity to test their thesis. Usefulness and good intentions aside, it s depressing to think that questions devised for a 1946 survey remain applicable half a century later.