Technology is profoundly altering the context and economics of artists’ work.  New technological tools are expanding the boundaries of artistic practice and the presence of art in daily life, as well as the ways people interact with and consume artistic products and creative content. These new mechanisms are fundamentally altering the cost structure and methods of creating, distributing, and consuming art, especially in fields with digitally reproducible products such as music, writing, photography, and film. Online giving and crowdsourcing platforms are also changing the way some artists finance their work.

The artists’ world is competitive, adequate reliable employment is elusive, and philanthropic interventions— gifts, grants, and awards—are modest and irregular. Chronically low wages in much of the nonprofit sector is a challenge, and many cultural institutions expect artists to work for free or for nominal fees. There are no standards for employment and artists often experience wage theft and other contract violations.  Many artists work in the "gig economy" and lack benefits and other safety nets, sharing conditions with other low income workers.

Conditions for artists reflect conditions in the society at large, and the race-, gender-, and ability-based disparities that are pervasive in our society are equally prevalent in both the nonprofit and commercial arts sectors. As Carlton Turner of Alternate ROOTS puts it, “We continue to struggle with issues of inclusion, diversity, and equity in the arts and culture sector because our society continues to struggle with them.”

Training for artists is not keeping pace with artists needs. Appetite for professional training in the arts remains strong—approximately 120,000 people graduate with art degrees every year. The skills required to succeed as an artist today are not limited to mastering an art form or presentation technique. Increasingly, artists also need knowledge and skills in multiple areas of production, business, and social media, and must master the complexities and ambiguities of both making art and making a career, which often requires engaging outside of the arts sector.

Fellowships, grants, and awards are an important part of the artists’ economy, especially for those artists seeking recognition and presentation opportunities in the nonprofit arts sector. Many interviewees and participants in the Regional Roundtables suggested that the system of foundation and public agency grants and awards for artists needs re-thinking. Grant guidelines and timeframes are not keeping pace with the ways that artists are making work, application procedures are unnecessarily cumbersome and often exclusionary, and decisionmaking is too slow. Many also commented that too few programs offer support for new art forms, for hybrid or interdisciplinary work, for community-based artists, and for artists working in non-arts sectors.