Michael Maranda

Michael Maranda

Waging Culture: Interrogating the Canadian visual artist labour force, 2017

Over the past ten years, Michael Maranda of the Art Gallery of York University has been conducting the Waging Culture survey of the socio-economic status of professional visual artists in Canada. The data collected from this survey has brought forward a picture of a sector where the majority of the primary producers are essentially working for free, supplying the raw material with which the entire contemporary art sector functions. For those familiar with the sector, that day-jobs pay the rent for artists is not that surprising, but a solid, data-driven illustration of the extent of the need for such side-hustles is important to truly understand the intertwined mechanics of the sector.

This book, drawing primarily on the 2017 survey, includes a speculative look at some of the drivers of the artist labour force. In particular, we contrast a sales-driven winner-take-all model that exacerbates income inequality with a much more equitable grant-driven work-preference model. Accompanying this analysis, we also describe some of the perverse correlations of educational achievement to financial success in the field, with “profitable” artistic practices being negatively correlated to educational achievements.

Maranda, Michael. Interrogating the Canadian visual artist labour force. Art Gallery of York University, 2020.

To purchase/download the publication, please visit The Goldfarb Gallery website.

Michael Maranda is assistant curator at the Art Gallery of York University. For the past thirty years he has been engaged with the visual arts sector in Canada, as artist, organiser, administrator, curator, editor, advocate, publisher, critic, and, more recently, as quantitative researcher. His Waging Culture survey has set the mark for advocacy-based quantitative research in the sector, recognised as the go-to source for socio-economic information on Canadian visual artists. He runs the publishing activities of the AGYU, and is a prolific commenter on social media. His work has shown internationally, primarily in artists book-related venues.

Our Partners

E M B A S S Y C U L T U R A L H O U S E . C A

The Embassy Cultural House (ECH) is located on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton peoples, at the forks of Deshkan Ziibi (Antler River), an area subject to the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum and other treaties, colonized as London, Ontario. The ECH strives to create meaningful relationships between the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island and our contributors. The ECH honours the stewardship of the many Indigenous peoples who have resided on these lands since time immemorial.