Josh Baer

City hall

• A guide to New York’s affordable housing units. Nice. But remember, landing one of these units is like winning the lottery. It’s a fake program designed to make the city look like it’s doing something about the rising costs associated with living in the city when in fact it is doing nothing. [Curbed]

• Josh Baer questions the valuation of Artsy in his newsletter. An excerpt: “Artsy announced a new round of $50 million in funding – bringing investment to over $100 million – with a valuation that financial experts we talked to speculate may be as high as $2 billion. Artsy declined to answer our question about valuation but reported doubling revenue. They are staffed at 180 now.  Since Sotheby’s is at a record stock price and still only a market cap of just under $3 billion – well you get our questions.” This looks like the beginning of a much more interesting article than all the other fluff pieces this week. Most of what we learned from them was in the artsy press release.  [Baer Faxt]

• A good overview on the city’s cultural plan by David Freedlander. The plan advocates for all the lefty stuff you’d think it would —”translations services for arts organizations, new funding to support cultural workers with disabilities, and a professional development program aiming to help people of color ascend the ranks of leadership at the city’s museums and art spaces.” Also, it would “help arts organizations lower their carbon footprint and increase direct support to artists, particularly those working with and in historically disenfranchised communities.”

Great, though the article lands on a rather ugly statement by Cultural Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl. “We believe there are cracks,” Finkelpearl said referring to the issue of gentrification. “And if enough people are talking about how the city is too expensive to be an artist in, then there will be a breaking point.”

“But it is not happening,” he added. “Artists are still moving here.”

This is according to a study by The Center for an Urban Future, which defines artists broadly. Architects, graphic designers and advertisers—all creatives that typically make much more than visual artists can still afford to live here. But visual artists, a group that makes up on 24 percent of their calculations, make much less on average and aren’t doing well. Where are those numbers? [ARTnews]