A Matter of Degree
Negotiating Art and Commerce in MFA Education
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4853069 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gary Alan Fine (0000-0002-2431-1562, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 12 |
| Pages | 1463-1486 |
| Publication date | 2017-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0002764217734272 |
| OpenAlex | W2762538737 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 17 |
| References cited | 23 |
Occupational socialization, when successful, permits an orderly transition from novice to professional, but sometimes the process is uncertain. Successful socialization is evident when workers are trained within educational settings where a path to future positions is clear. But how do emerging visual artists consider their post-degree lives in the absence of predictability or expected stages of advancement? In unpredictable careers, socialization becomes problematic. This hazy career path is further strained when people have diverse views about the moral character of a profession. Based on a 2-year ethnographic study of three MFA programs in the Chicago area, I examine how visual arts students imagine their futures. Students face an obdurate economic order that forces them to consider their identities as producers of ideas and images. Beyond this, to create a stable career and survive financially, they strive to establish a network, relying on school ties with students and faculty, building social capital, including links with galleries and museums. By depicting occupational imaginaries at the intersection of market valuation and aesthetic judgment, I analyze how students negotiate the demands of hostile worlds in their artistic identity and through their social relations
Business · Negotiation · Political science · Public relations · Social capital · Social science · Socialization · Sociology · Valuation (finance) · Artistic and Creative Research · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology
The role of institutional relationships in shaping the career development of emerging artists
Creative Aspiration and the Betrayal of Promise? The Experience of New Creative Workers
A Decade of Empirical Research into the Careers of Visual Artists
Artists as Cultural Intermediaries
The Successful Visual Artist
Making it big in live music
Licensed to Rock (or so they say). How Popular Music Programmes at Higher Music Education Institutions Create Professional Musicians
Socially distanced artistic careers
Concluding Remarks
Lost in Transition
Arts graduates in a changing economy
Tensions in aesthetic socialization
The winner loses
The Value of an Arts Degree
In the Shadow of the First Big Break
Choosing Bad Jobs
Socializing Rejection and Failure in Artistic Occupational Communities
Canvases and careers
Valuing the Unique
The field of cultural production
Neo-Bohemia
The Economics of Creativity
Creative Industries
“Life is short, art is long”
The MFA in Creative Writing
From Bohemia to Britart – art students over 50 years
All that jazz
The Economic World Obverse
Making the Intern Economy
Artistic Labor Markets and Careers
Robust Identities or Nonentities? Typecasting in the Feature-Film Labor Market
| Unique citing works | 17 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,89 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 17 |