The Art Gallery of York University has just released a study called Waging Culture: The Socio-economic status of Canadian Visual Artists. Apparently this is the first national survey of Canadian visual artists since 1993. The report paints (oooh, the puns start coming out now!) a “dismal” picture: findings indicate the average artist lost $556 dollars in 2007 on their art practice.
Here’s the really interesting stuff:
“Compared to the national total labour force, artists are more likely to be female, anglophone, in a relationship, and born Canadian, and less likely to be members of a visible minority. They are overwhelmingly more likely to be highly educated, with an average of more than six years post-secondary education.”
Okay. Interesting. Still mulling that over. But this is the bit that really surprised me:
The wage gap between male and female artists is significantly lower than in the labour force as a whole, a mere 10% for artists versus 36% for the total labour force. The difference in sales, however, is a full 48%.
So, let me get this straight. Compared to the average Canadian worker, artists tend to look like Margaret Atwood (if Maggie were a visual artist). And compared to the average Canadian workforce, the wage gap among artists isn’t as wide. But male artists tend to make double the sales female artists do? I realize I have an advanced degree and all, but I’m having a hard time reconciling all this data. And there’s more crazy stuff to put into the mix:
• Immigrant artists have higher total incomes than Canadian-born artists, if only nominally so.
• Caucasian artists have slightly higher total income than visible minority artists.
Who wants to jump in and try to get a sense of what this means? I don’t even know if I should be happy or sad about all this.
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