[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Josh-Kline-Portrait_2024.jpeg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2011, Andrea Fraser wrote that \u201cwhat has been good for the art world has been disastrous for the rest of the world.\u201d Fifteen years on, Fraser\u2019s words still ring true. But finding the words for why is not always so easy, and maybe that is the reason a recently published essay on the subject, by artist Josh Kline, has taken the New York art world by storm, becoming the subject of social media posts issued by artists, critics, curators, and even dealers.<\/p>\n
\n\tTitled \u201cNew York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art\u201d and published by October<\/em>, Kline\u2019s essay is a despairing portrait of the city\u2019s art scene. It functions both as an elegy for a lost New York art world of the 2010s\u2014the one that raised Kline as an artist who became known for work about technology\u2019s ability to exacerbate inequalities\u2014and as a blistering critique of all the privilege required to find success here. The piece has gone viral, which is not something that happens often with October<\/em> essays anymore.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe first step towards a cure is admitting you have a problem,\u201d Kline, an artist who had a mid-career survey at the Whitney Museum in 2023, writes. \u201cContemporary art in twenty-first-century America is sick with problems.\u201d He goes on to diagnose quite a few of them, tackling subjects such as the rising cost of rent, the systemic power imbalances woven into the art market and museums, and the role of artist-run spaces. As Kline notes, these issues are particularly pronounced in New York, where he is based.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cNew York City itself now constitutes a core problem in American art,\u201d Kline writes. \u201cThe answers for younger artists are likely not in New York and not in the American art industry, for which the art of the present and the art of the future are not as important as the art of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n ARTnews<\/em> corresponded with Kline by email to hear more about how he wrote \u201cNew York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art.\u201d<\/p>\n What made you want to write this piece in the first place? And what made you decide to publish it in October<\/em>, a journal that remains more associated with academia than the general public?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIf we don\u2019t understand the world we\u2019re living in and where it comes from, we can\u2019t build a better one. This goes for both geopolitics and the industry we work in. I know I\u2019m not the only one in our field who feels like the contemporary art of 2026 (at least in the US) isn\u2019t what they signed up for\u2014a never-ending conveyor belt of market-oriented painting exhibitions rolling through Manhattan galleries as the world burns.<\/p>\n \n\tGiven what\u2019s going on right now, I\u2019m not sure how interested the general public would be in a lengthy essay about the plight of American artists in 2026. I wrote the essay for artists and for other people involved in the art world. This includes all the academics who study contemporary art. Because of their politics and history, October<\/em> seemed like a good home for this piece\u2014and they were willing to put it online for free, outside their paywall.<\/p>\n In the essay, you write that you find working as a mid-career artist in New York to be \u201ccompletely unsustainable\u201d today. When, and how, did you come to that realization?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tOver the last six years, living and working in New York. I\u2019ve been on the road a lot in 2025 and 2026. When I do come home and go out for dinner with friends, or even just buy groceries, I feel like I\u2019m setting money on fire. The numbers no longer add up. On the other side of the pandemic and the inflation that it left behind, New York is 30 percent more expensive than it was before. The art market has also been in a deep multiyear recession since late 2023 or early 2024. Sales of photography, moving-image work, sculpture, and most conceptual work have shriveled up, except at the very highest levels. This means that living here, working here, renting studio space here, and employing people here costs a lot more than it used to and at the same time, way less income is coming in to support it all. You just have to look at all the galleries that have closed. Out of public view, many of the sculptors and video artists I know\u2014many of whom are still showing in major museums\u2014have downsized or closed their studios. I have a friend who\u2019s represented by one of the mega-galleries who now works at his dining room table.<\/p>\n You wrote on Instagram that the essay was more than two years in the making. What kind of research went into it? What was your process for writing it?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019ve worked in the art industry in New York for almost 25 years\u2014first as a curator and arts administrator and then as an emerging and now mid-career artist. I know a lot of people in our field. In terms of research, I\u2019ve mostly just been talking with them\u2014having conversations with art dealers, curators, collectors, art advisers, educators, critics, and hundreds of exhibiting artists about all the issues that are addressed in the essay. Each person had a little piece (or a couple big pieces) of the larger picture.<\/p>\n I\u2019d like to dwell a bit on the prose of this essay, which is clean and crisp. It\u2019s often funny, too: I\u2019m thinking here of the part where you note that Christopher Wool\u2019s recent show in a Financial District skyscraper was \u201cLARPing as a kind of Epcot Center version of downtown New York.\u201d This is not the kind of writing that typically appears in October<\/em>, whose articles are often pocked with jargon. Why did you write it in this way?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tClear, accessible, and effective communication is a political choice. It\u2019s also a political tool. We were taught the function of jargon in the cultural anthropology classes I took in college. While it can be a way to have very specific and nuanced conversations about a subject within a field, jargon can also be used to hide knowledge, exclude the uninitiated, and maintain or build power. If you want to engage working people and the general public politically and make convincing arguments about transforming society, why make those arguments in a form that excludes all of those people? How will you convince anyone of anything if people put down your writing before they finish reading it? You can make urgent ideas legible for readers outside your industry without dumbing them down.<\/p>\n You write that it is necessary for card-carrying members of the New York art world to \u201cmove beyond institutional critique to industry critique.\u201d What would this look like? Why do you think some of your colleagues are reticent to do just that?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWhen you work in a field that\u2019s as precarious as ours, you have to be careful about taking risks that might harm your prospects for future opportunities or jeopardize your livelihood. This is real for so many of the people who make art, exhibit art, and sell art.<\/p>\n \n\tMy essay is a proposal for what industry critique could look like in writing. It looks at multiple interacting crises at the same time, at a wider landscape. The funding of museums and the sale of artworks to private collectors is part of this, but at the same time, we can zoom further out and look at the costs of living and of doing business in places like New York and how that shapes the field and the choices made by the people in power. Then we can apply pressure in places we haven\u2019t been looking or physically go to different places, i.e. leaving New York.<\/p>\n One of the more striking points in your essay is in the section on artist-run spaces, where you note that ones like the Kitchen, White Columns, and Artists Space are now \u201ccloser in structure and spirit to museums, run by professional arts administrators and curators.\u201d To me, this seems related to a larger point you repeatedly make: that the New York art world has become totally corporatized, to a point where even some of its most vital and cutting-edge institutions have lost their ability to truly support artists. Am I right in reading your essay that way? What do you make of that corporatization?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI think you might be misunderstanding me. I only use the word corporate once in the essay\u2014to describe the security in the lobby of the office building where Wool staged his solo show. I wouldn\u2019t describe any of these alternative spaces as corporate. Some of the only adventurous exhibitions in New York since the pandemic have been at Performance Space [New York], Artists Space, Amant, CARA [Center for Art, Research and Alliances], SculptureCenter, Arts and Letters, etc. They\u2019re routinely giving solo shows to the young experimental artists that New York\u2019s galleries can no longer represent. Given the number of artists in New York and in the larger US who deserve exhibition opportunities and who need long-term support, though, it\u2019s not enough.<\/p>\n \n\tAt White Columns back in 2010, Matthew Higgs championed the community of artists I was a part of when no one else was ready to do so. My point isn\u2019t to drag the nonprofits. It\u2019s about the importance of true artist-run spaces and about restoring agency to artists. It\u2019s about what\u2019s missing. There\u2019s an important distinction between these institutional alternative spaces and real artist-run spaces. Some of these organizations are run or administered by practicing artists, but they\u2019re still institutions and not at all what we mean when we think of artist-run spaces. When I worked as a curator at EAI (Electronic Arts Intermix), my position wasn\u2019t \u201cartist.\u201d I was an arts administrator when I was on the clock. In true artist-run spaces, the artists running them don\u2019t check their identity as artists at the door. They don\u2019t have to be professional. <\/p>\n \n\tWhen 179 Canal\u2014the artist-run space I was involved with\u2014existed, we would hang out there all day and all night. We didn\u2019t have to worry about whether we were forcing paid employees to stay late. There were no employees. We would gallery-sit each other\u2019s shows. For two years, that space was our life and family. In the essay, I talk about how Margaret Lee was practicing radical inclusion at 179 Canal, saying yes to everyone who asked to do projects in her space. At the same time, she wasn\u2019t worrying about bureaucratic \u201cfairness\u201d in the same way that institutions do. She didn\u2019t make any of us submit humiliating, time-consuming, written applications. She wasn\u2019t trying to create some kind of well-rounded, balanced program. She was going for it. She put all her energy behind one community of artists\u2014the one she was a part of. Following the first group show at 179 Canal, Margaret continued exhibiting artists who were in that show for the next two years. She then founded a commercial gallery [47 Canal] that still represents a lot of us more than 15 years later. <\/p>\n \n\tCommunities of artists\u2014which under the right circumstances can birth new art movements\u2014form in artist-run spaces. It isn\u2019t that the not-for-profit alternative spaces don\u2019t support brilliant, individual artists\u2014it\u2019s that most of them don\u2019t or can\u2019t support artist communities anymore. And that the artists who are fortunate enough to show in them aren\u2019t making decisions about who else gets exhibitions in them. There aren\u2019t enough spaces in the American art world\u2019s center where artists are in charge. This is at the heart of what\u2019s gone wrong in contemporary art in America.<\/p>\n Another striking point is in the section on generational wealth, in which you write, \u201cAny conversation about New York City real estate and how it shapes the art of our time must confront class and race.\u201d That kind of conversation is not exactly encouraged by powerful members of the art world elite, and it is certainly not a conversation the Trump administration wants us to have. What would that conversation look like, and how can we have that conversation in spite of so many oppressive forces?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tOne starting point would be addressing the low entry-level salaries and wages paid across the art industry in New York City. These salaries filter out and exclude working- and middle-class candidates for jobs. And along with them, their concerns and the exhibitions they\u2019d make. This is part of why we see so few shows about class in America. If these entry level jobs were better paid, candidates who don\u2019t have financial help from their parents could get on the ladder and enter our field. It would be a long-term project.<\/p>\n \n\tThe problems in our field are all linked to the larger crises in our country. Many of the structural problems we face in art can only be solved through political action. If our local, state, and national governments were properly funded and capable of spending money responsibly, we could fund our museums the way some European countries still do\u2014along with funding healthcare, education, and a social safety net. America is the richest country on Earth, but 12 people here have gotten ahold of most of those riches. They have as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the population, 150 million people.<\/p>\n \n\tChanging our society requires genuinely persuasive arguments. Artists can make these arguments. While no one is going to give an artist an exhibition slot to make a show about taxes, art shows aren\u2019t the only public platforms artists have access to in 2026. Look at the artist Joshua Citarella\u2019s popular YouTube show and podcast. It\u2019s a political project disguised as a talk show, whose goal is to educate and convert young people to progressive politics.<\/p>\n In the conclusion, you write that \u201cNew York no longer deserves the ambitions and ideas of the country\u2019s young artists,\u201d and you urge artists to \u201cmove on.\u201d Reading this, I thought of your 2019\u201320 film Adaptation<\/em>, in which a group of people navigate a waterlogged Manhattan and start life anew. That film expresses optimism. Do you want us to feel hopeful about \u201cmoving on\u201d from New York?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThe \u201cus\u201d in the essay is artists. The galleries and museums and nonprofits are trapped in New York by the realities of the industry and how they\u2019re funded. None of them are going anywhere. It\u2019s the artists who can break free and build something else, somewhere else. This happens in Europe all the time. Crews of artists leave Berlin and move to Marseille or Lisbon or Brussels or Athens, or wherever rents are cheap. And they\u2019re excited to be in these other places where artists can have large studios, start project spaces, and show each other\u2019s work.<\/p>\n \n\tI completed Adaptation<\/em> during the pandemic. I didn\u2019t leave New York for 16 months between March 2020 and June 2021. During that time, I fell in love with New York City all over again. In spite of all the darkness, that time after the vaccines came in 2021 and 2022 was incredible in New York for so many of us. We were working\u2014but not too hard\u2014and spending all our free time hanging out with friends in parks and wandering around the city. Our social lives were miracles of affordability. All those park hangs cost nothing. And then the city snapped back and became an even more aggressive grind than in 2019. I want that feeling from August 2021 all the time. I know a lot of other artists do too. In the essay, I talk about visiting Jogja in Indonesia last year and also about Ruangrupa\u2019s Documenta 15 in 2022. Both experiences reminded me of the times in my life when I was lucky enough to be in music or art scenes that were run by artists and how good that feels. Imagine a city where artists don\u2019t have to go around begging for opportunities. It\u2019s like mainlining potential and agency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/artists\/josh-kline-new-york-art-world-viral-essay-interview-1234780103\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Josh-Kline-Portrait_2024.jpeg?w=1024″] In 2011, Andrea Fraser wrote that \u201cwhat has been good for the art world has been disastrous for the rest of the world.\u201d Fifteen years on, Fraser\u2019s words still ring true. But finding the words for why is not always so easy, and maybe that is the reason a recently published essay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1868908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1868908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1868908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1868908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1868908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}