Pay and display: new campaign to pay artists for exhibitions 4 Jun 2014

A new campaign, Paying Artists, has launched to encourage publicly funded galleries to pay artists a fee for displaying their work. The campaigners argue that

• In the UK, 71% of artists get no fee for contributions to public exhibitions.
• Artists are, on average, earning only £10k per year from their artistic practice, and have seen a decrease of £6k in real income since 1997.
• In many other countries, artists do receive payment: in Poland a fee directly linked to the average working wage, in Norway a payment depending on the number of works and length of exhibition. In Canada there is a legal obligation to pay artists.
• 63% of UK artists have turned down exhibition opportunities because they cannot afford to work for nothing, and the situation risks damaging the work and careers of promising young talent who feed the profitable creative sector.

The Paying Artists campaign has already attracted the tweeted support of Peter Bazalgette who said “Arts Council England wholeheartedly supports the #PayingArtists campaign”. Guardian, Paying Artists