Jumping spiders photographed by Tomatito Rodriguez.

 
Euophrys frontalis (male). 

The writer and film curator Omar Kholeif tells us The Arts Need Diversity Schemes: 

It is no secret that the new British government is making sweeping changes to arts and culture policies. From budget cuts to the entire restructuring of national and regional arts funding, the unstable future of our collective culture is increasingly debated.

Our collective culture? Really? My own visits to galleries of modern offerings have been remarkably short on feelings of affinity and collective ownership. More typically, the experience has been one of alienating tedium due to the self-absorption of a curatorial caste. 

In the midst of that, we must also consider where minority groups fit into the equation.

But of course. There just isn’t enough racial politics in “our” art.

Will policymakers choose to maintain positive action programmes? […] As a young arts professional, I have only recently felt my career taking off, having utilised the often-controversial diversity scheme as a springboard.

Some readers may be surprised to learn that their taxes have been funding racial favouritism.  

After graduating with a first-class degree, I spent what seemed like a lifetime twiddling my thumbs in unsatisfying entry-level roles and, like many humanities graduates in my cohort, waiting at the job centre.

Which may shed some light on the value of an arts degree and the wisdom of pursuing that particular line of business.

Without the financial means to fund further my education, or the resources to devote time to unpaid work experience, I ended up taking on opportunities unrelated to my vocation.

See above.

Last year, just as matters had started to improve, I was accepted onto a curating fellowship. It was originally founded in response to a survey in 2005 that revealed only 6% of London’s museum and gallery workforce hail from a minority background – a disproportionate ratio, considering that black and minority ethnic residents make up nearly a third of the capital’s population.

As this is a Guardian comment piece, the density of assumption is of course quite high. Note the implicit belief that every conceivable ethnic category of humankind should be “represented” proportionally in all areas of endeavour – or at least those that suit the author’s current line – irrespective of individual choices and priorities. Note too the implicit belief that if reality doesn’t correspond with this expectation, then something nefarious must be taking place, regardless of whether evidence of such has actually been discovered.

No evidence of foul play appears in the piece and a lot seems to hang on the claim of a “disproportionate ratio” of minority employees. But London offers a range of niche employment for which many people relocate from other parts of the country, where ethnic demographics may be very different and much closer to the offending 6%. If some types of employment in the capital reflect national rather than local demographics this isn’t inherently scandalous or evidence of injustice. In and of itself, the ratio of minority employees in London galleries isn’t the most compelling justification for “corrective” racial profiling. 

 
Assorted opera houses photographed by David Leventi. Via Coudal.

 
South Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2010. From a series of photos by Richard Mosse using infrared film.

Mossbrae Falls, Dunsmuir, California. Photographed by Stephen Oachs.

 One of these.

At dusk, after a winter storm, 2004.

Photographed by Stefan Tarzan. 

Some rather fetching spiders photographed by Thomas Shahan.

Above: The anterior median eyes of an adult female Paraphidippus aurantius, seen here enjoying lunch.

Heaven’s Gate, oil on canvas, by Paco Pomet. Via MetaFilter.

I’ve previously noted an air of default entitlement among the UK’s arts practitioners and commentariat, but for those in need of further illustration here’s the Guardian’s Laura Barnett, alerting us to another crushing injustice.

Right now, the economic climate for artists in this country looks particularly bleak… Unlike some European and Scandinavian countries, the British government makes no specific social provision for artists,

Oh, say it isn’t so.

unless through the publicly funded regional arts councils.

Ah. So the government does in fact make special provision for artists. To the tune of almost half a billion a year. And as we know, arts councils can be counted on to spend your money wisely for the betterment of mankind.

In Denmark, for instance, 275 artists are granted an annual stipend of between 15,000 and 149,000 Danish krone (£1,750 to £17,000) every year for the rest of their lives.

Readers will no doubt recall the Danish artist Bettina Camilla Vestergaard, whose benefactors include the Danish Arts Council, the Arts Grants Committee Sweden, the Danish Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Council of Aarhus. Ms Vestergaard used her government stipend to spend six months in Los Angeles pondering “identity and gender” and working on an “intervention in public space”:

My first three months primarily consisted of passing time in residential Hollywood, sitting alone in my car, shopping and getting fuel.

The results of Ms Vestergaard’s lengthy, publicly subsidised musings can be appreciated more fully here. 

But in this country, for artists without a lucky early break, rich parents or benefactors, a day job is often the only way to survive. […] What a day job inevitably means, of course, is spending the majority of your waking hours not doing the thing you love: making art.

It’s an outrage, I tell you. Thankfully, some businesses are sensitive to the arts community and its special needs.

For the last four years, [actor, Lainy] Scott has been working at RSVP, a call centre in east London that employs only artists, taking calls for Which? magazine and WeightWatchers. Shifts are available in the day, evening, or at weekends, allowing artists to plan their work around shows, rehearsals or auditions.

Some comfort, then. However,

“There are people who get very bogged down by having to do non-acting stuff,” Scott says.

Update: An artistic Guardianista adds,

When I left college in the early 80s after finishing my Fine Art degree, I went and lived in Holland for 6 months as some artist friends of ours had been allowed to live in an old disused warehouse by Leiden council. They had electricity paid and were allowed to claim the equivalent of the dole to just be artists. We put on experimental theatre, lived and worked in the same place… This was an investment in the economy… Why have artists take up jobs that people rely on in a time of recession. Why not allow them to claim benefit but not have to job search?

“Just to be artists.” Oh, I like that. And don’t dismiss all that experimental theatre, which is after all an investment in the economy. Taxpayers can’t get enough experimental theatre.