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Art PR: Then & Now
Over the last 20 years, PR has grown into one of the most powerful forces driving the
U.S. art market. Art PR is now in a state of flux, responding to dramatic changes
in the market. What form will it take next?
To answer that question, it helps to understand how art PR exploded in the first place.
The Arts & Business Council, founded in 1965 in
New York City, set the groundwork for corporate support of the arts. One of the
first art PR firms reportedly proposed its creation.
In the 1960s, Thomas Hoving–director of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and a marketing genius–developed the concept of the
blockbuster exhibition, giving the art world not just a fantastic source of profit but
also a PR dream. They were a perfect vehicle for…
Corporate sponsorship of the arts. In the '70s,
corporate PR experts started underwriting art exhibitions on the advice of their PR
consultants. Initially it was an image enhancement strategy to counter the public's
negative perception of certain corporate activities (think oil spills). They paid
for lots of art advertising, and expanded the field of art PR.
Celebrity marketing. The '80s marked the advent
of celebrity art-world marketing. Many prominent art stars were highly strategic in
creating their own celebrity platforms. So were their dealers. Dealers with
high-profile ties to celebrity artists have been among the most profitable art-world
players of the last 20 years.
Glamour. Exclusive parties in the '80s and '90s
fed the celebrity machine with social status and glamour–seductive bait for HNWI's. After all, "Privilege is the ultimate hook," says
Lawrence Klepner, UBS financial executive and founder of
"The Art of Leadership" seminars.
Yuppies. The '80s transformed the art world into a
status market for the rich…a role it played in the Medici days and in every economic
boom since. The increased attention the press paid that social milieu expanded the
field of reporting on art market trends. A recent addition to that field is the art
economist.
So…what next?
Every art-world player will have his or her own PR
platform. Collectors, dealers, professionals and scholars will brand their
unique insights, experiences and expertise using blogs, YouTube, Twitter and traditional
media. They will either hire their own PR firm or be their own publicists and
publishers.
Artists will assume more responsibility for creating
and marketing their own promotional platforms, adding value to their work as they do so.
(They might want to check out Renaissance Rivals, Rona Goffen's masterpiece about how
Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Titian scrambled to improve their respective positions in
the art market.)
Traditional marketing tools such as catalogues and
mailed invitations will continue to be replaced by low-cost, high-tech e-tools. But as
consumers are overwhelmed by digital and online information, printed material will become a
rarified art form. (Phillips' customized-by-artists auction catalogues, particularly
Robert Gober's, exemplify this trend. They are becoming collector's items.)
Reduced advertising dollars will limit the number of
pages in art journals and newspaper culture sections. That reduction will create market
space for new indie magazines like Input, an emerging art journal published by Input Journal
Foundation – the brainchild of art advisor and curator Renée Vara.
Alarmed by the shrinking importance of culture in our
communities, government and public schools, large numbers of artists and art-world professionals
will become cultural activists.
Droves will deluge the Activist Toolkit at Americans for the Arts to demand that federal,
state and local lawmakers increase funding to our museums. After all, they are our primary
educational resource for visual art now.
Increasing access to art, especially to underprivileged children and the millions attending
public schools without art classes, is an admirable art PR goal that all of us can be a part
of. And now we have Michelle Obama's advocacy of the arts to inspire us.
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Cultural Communications | Promoting Culture, Events & Lifestyle
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