STUDIES OF ARTISTS:

An Annotated Directory

Foreword

Paul DiMaggio, Research Coordinator

Princeton Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies

A central mission of the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies is to lower the barriers to entry to the field of research on arts and cultural policy by gathering and disseminating information about available resources. Another central mission is to stimulate work on methodological issues that bear on the effectiveness of such research. The Center’s first working paper described and evaluated data resources for research on arts organizations (Data on Arts Organizations by Deborah Kaple, Hugh Louch, Lori Morris, Sigmund Rivkin-Fish and Paul DiMaggio). The second working paper was an annotated guide to publicly available data sets on people’s attitudes toward and participation in the arts (Resources For Studying Public Participation In The Arts: An Inventory and Review of Available Survey Data by Becky Pettit).

It seems appropriate, then, that one of the Center’s first working papers of the new millenium addresses the third major field of arts policy research (in addition to research on arts organizations and individual arts participation) --- research on artists. The purpose of this annotated directory, created by Center Research Affiliate Donnell Butler, is first to make it easy for students and other researchers to get into the literature on artists and to learn quickly what it has shown and, second, to explore the range of ways in which scholars have defined "artists" and, having defined them, have gone about locating them. As Mr. Butler demonstrates in his Introduction to the directory, the approaches have been numerous, and the approach one takes has significant implications for the population one studies and, in turn, for the results one reports.

I suspect that most readers, even those with much experience in the field, will be surprised at the number of studies that Mr. Butler unearthed in the course of his research. Even so, rather than seek closure in a single directory, we aspire to creating a living resource that will grow in size and inclusiveness over time. This working paper appears on the Center’s web site (http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol), where it can be easily augmented with new entries, or with more detailed information on entries already included (especially those for which primary documents were not available as this directory was being prepared).^* I hope that authors aware of additional materials will send them to the Center so that they may be added (with full credit to the correspondent who provides them) to the on-line version of this resource.

Many people were helpful in preparing this directory. Special thanks are due Professor Joan Jeffri, Director of Columbia University’s Research Center for Arts and Culture, which has been in the vanguard of research on artists for well over a decade; and Mr. Tom Bradshaw, Director of the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Arts, which has likewise since its inception worked to improve the quality of data and the scale of research activity in this field.

* Indeed, it has been expanded since this introduction was written and the first edition circulated