Career in the Arts - by Gary A Berg (Paperback)

About the Book

This book contemplates what young artists and performers should know when considering an education and career in the arts, and how practical financial needs and self-expression are effectively balanced by artists.

Book Synopsis

This book contemplates what young artists and performers should know when considering an education and career in the arts, and how practical financial needs and self-expression are effectively balanced by artists.

Review Quotes

Berg's apt, well-researched, well-written book is both poetic and pragmatic.... Berg draws from national employment data and extensive content analysis of hundreds of interviews with artists and historians as well as secondary sources. The combination of quantitative data and qualitative perspectives creates a unique structure for a book providing job and career information. Similar to other career books, this one includes tables of different job titles, mean wages, and projected openings pulled from commonly used job sources such as the US Census Bureau and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time, Berg offers historical and sociological perspectives that contextualize the more nuanced directions a creative professional career path may take. Invaluable for all who are in the creative arts or interested in pursuing the vast and varied career options in the arts. Highly recommended. All readers.

Gary Berg provides a thoughtful, extremely well-researched analysis of the systemic challenges and potential opportunities for creative professionals as they pursue their careers. This "bird's eye view" of the field will be extremely helpful to individual artists in their quest as well as to arts executives, policymakers and educators seeking to strengthen the cultural ecosystem and support artists in their efforts to bring joy, beauty and a sense of our shared humanity to our communities.

This book provides a topical and timey overview of the fraught circumstances of today's professionalization - some would say industrialization - of contemporary artistic creativity and invention of all kinds. It's appearance coincides with a moment of profound changes in creative lives (and not only professions!) of all kinds, and is driven by data, not opinion, regarding creative worlds that need facts today as much as they do artists and their audiences. I recommend it whole-heartedly.

About the Author

Gary A. Berg, PhD, MFA, is the author or editor of ten previous books including The Rise of Women in Higher Education: How, Why, and What's Next and Low-Income Students and the Perpetuation of Inequality, as well as numerous articles and short stories. Berg has an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA, and an MA in Film Studies from San Francisco State University.