Art will get us through this pandemic. Support the Miamians who create it
People are spending their time in quarantine in some surprising ways. We aren’t all baking bread and planting victory gardens. In fact, according to Google Trends and NerdBear.com, a study found that three of the top four most searched activities are arts-related: TV and movies, reading, and arts and crafts.
Undoubtedly, in dark times, people turn to the arts for distraction, for joy and to work through what is going on in the world. In that vein, Miami’s leading arts groups immediately pivoted their programming. In the past few days alone, I had to choose between watching a poetry reading online with O, Miami Poetry Festival, hearing the New World Symphony fellows play together or listening to
Jerry Saltz, one of my favorite art critics, on the Perez Art Museum Miami’s Facebook page.
In Miami, the arts are essential to our community; so are our artists. During the past 20 years, we have grown into a world-class cultural community with a long list of bragging rights, from being home to one of America’s great ballet companies and teaching symphonies to two new contemporary art museums along with an emerging gallery scene representing artists from around the world.
The impact is not just emotional but economically measurable. Our tourism sector is driven in large part by artistic events and our cultural reputation. Indeed, the Miami-Dade arts community generates $1.43 billion annually and provides 40,000 full-time jobs, according to county data.
And yet as a famous Urban Institute study put it: 96 percent of Americans value art in their lives, yet only 27 percent value artists.
This is particularly troubling now, as the arts sector, predicated on social gathering, tries to survive in an era of physical distancing. The online programming I just mentioned was all free, not revenue-generating for the organizations and artists putting them on.
The field has been hit hard, as the Herald reported. Artists who spent up to two years preparing to sell their work at fairs and galleries around the world saw thousands of dollars in income vanish overnight. Many of Miami’s artists are part of the gig economy — the contract art teachers, art handlers and photographers — that make the sector work. These are the jobs that are the first to disappear and the last to come back. Even before COVID-19, these artists were living month to month. Now, they struggle to buy food and make rent.
Art and artists will help get us through this coronavirus pandemic, but they need our support. At Oolite Arts, a direct-support organization for Miami’s visual artists and filmmakers, we created a relief fund to offer up to $500 to artists who have lost income. We were able to do it by repurposing funding from canceled programming. We are grateful that both the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Foundation and the Jorge M. Perez Family Foundation, in addition to individual donors, have all contributed to the fund. We will be able to help at least 250 artists, but the need far outstrips the $120,000 we now have in the fund.
If you are able, consider how you might help. Give to your favorite arts organization. Buy a piece of work from an artist or a gallery. Or contribute to the Oolite Arts Relief Fund for COVID-19, where the money will also go directly into the hands of the Miami sculptors, painters and filmmakers we all know and love.
We need artists now more than ever. We are relying heavily on the arts to get us through this difficult time. Let’s return the favor by supporting the artists of our community.
Dennis Scholl is the president and CEO of Oolite Arts, Miami’s leading resource for visual artists. Contribute to the relief fund and learn more about how to support artists at oolitearts.org/relief fund.