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From: blp Category: Art Date: 18 October 2006 Time: 08:36 AM Review: You can also try creating your own, e.g. open a gallery, start some kind of arts service, become a curator (there's nothing to it!) Whether you go it alone or look for a 'real' job, prepare yourself for the fact that the pay is generally quite bad. It can occasionally be good if you have a lot of experience and are very grasping, but not at any public institutions in the UK, even for the well qualified. Basically, it's a high risk game - you have to try hard for jobs you mostly won't get and only a very few of which will lead you to anything resembling comfortable means. The major part of the work will be completely uninteresting. Mostly, working in private galleries amounts to invigilating - sitting at a desk nodding at visitors who come in maybe once every two hours - and the rest of the time talking to rich collectors and helping artists do the boring bits of their jobs, like getting their slides together and sending them to x,y,z, or installing work. You could also try writing for art magazines, but this will without doubt be a hand-to-mouth existence for years until you either get an editorial position (and even that may not amount to a living) or a job on a newspaper (bear in mind that there are only about six of such posts in this country) or write a book that people actually want to buy (almost unheard of). Sorry to paint such a grim picture, but that's basically how it is. The only real reason artists ever get jobs in the art world is to further their own networking agendas, but that's not a bad reason for doing it. Quite a few artists get breaks in this way. As in other areas of employment, it's just so much about who you know.