Blaz touts $25M for ‘Art Corps’

The city is putting starving artists to work in a new initiative to bring murals, performances and more to the five boroughs.

The $25 million “City Artist Corps” will hire more than 1,500 artists, Mayor de Blasio announced Thursday.

The effort comes as he’s pushing to make next season “the summer of New York City,” with 24/7 subway service coming back and most restrictions on daily life tossed out the window.

The undertaking also comes after the pandemic hit arts, entertainment and recreation harder than any other sector of the local economy — there was a more than a 60% drop in employment across the industry last year, from around 87,000 total jobs in February 2020 to around 34,100 jobs in April 2020, according to a recent report from state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office.

“We want to give artists opportunity and we want the city to feel the power of our cultural community again,” de Blasio said at a Thursday press conference.