no more starving artists

I rag on Andrew Sullivan a lot—his punitive moralistic streak drives me crazy—but I’ve been reading him for a long time and, credit where credit is due: he’s a stylish and informative blogger. He always brings in great stuff from far and wide.

Like, for instance, this welcome news from The Futurist:

In partnership with Carnegie Hall and the Weill Music Institute, Juilliard has launched a new fellowship program called “The Academy,” intended to help talented graduates balance the cultivation of their craft with teaching and community outreach.

“The so-called reclusive artist of fifty or sixty years ago, the Horowitzes who showed up, played their concert and then left, although extraordinary artists, are gone. The world has changed a great deal, especially in America,” says Joseph W. Polisi, president of the Juilliard School. We need musicians, actors and dancers who can be good and effective representatives for their art or community and take advantage of various funding sources. That’s what the goal of this is, to provide an environment for the fellows of The Academy to really hear what their colleagues have to say, to provide the tools for them to be articulate spokespersons for the arts in schools and with school boards, etc. and to really give them a sense of their own entrepreneurial abilities.”

It’s a good thing they’re “down with capitalism,” as Sullivan says, since

[y]oung artists fresh from graduate school probably won’t have the support systems many of their predecessors enjoyed. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand in the arts is expected to grow as fast as for all other occupations through 2014, but the competition for both salaried and freelance jobs will intensify as talented aspiring artists with master of fine arts degrees will vastly outnumber lucrative openings for painters, dancers, and musicians.