ArtTable’s Impact Initiatives
Since 1980, ArtTable has been working to advance the professional leadership of women and nonbinary professionals in the visual arts. Through various programs, we educate and inform members and the public about significant developments and issues in the visual arts, support dialogue, and promote the evolving leadership role of women and nonbinary arts leaders.
Fellowship Program
Since 2000, the ArtTable National Fellowship has addressed the marked lack of diversity in arts employment. This impactful program provides quality real work experiences and mentorship to women and nonbinary emerging professionals from backgrounds generally underrepresented in the visual arts field. During the paid, five-to-eight-week summer program, the fellows will work closely with established leaders in the field to gain exposure to various professional activities at leading museums and art organizations. Fellows also receive one-on-one mentoring from leading professionals who are ArtTable members and are specialized in their areas of interest.
Through the generous support of individuals, foundations, corporations, and government agencies, ArtTable has supported 167 women and nonbinary fellows, partnered with 90 leading art organizations nationwide, and has dispersed over $600,000 since the Fellowship’s inception.
Career Development RoundTable
Career Development Roundtable, one of our longest-standing and most impactful career mentoring programs influences the career paths of more than 2,000 students and emerging professionals. The program, currently hosted virtually, is designed to give emerging leaders in arts administration, art business, museum studies, art history, curatorial studies, and arts internships an experience to meet with professional women in the visual arts to discuss career opportunities.
DEIA Efforts
ArtTable is pursuing the following goals in 2024-2027 that collectively reflect ArtTable’s commitment to strategic growth, gender equity, and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility more broadly. We will continue to implement DDEIA into everything we do and continue to use our DEIA Plan from 2021 to enhance this new Strategic Plan.
Pay Equity
ArtTable conducted a survey to collect new data about the changing contours of the artistic labor market in order to understand trends better and advocate for arts professionals, artists, and arts workers of all types. As such, we are analyzing the results of a 2023 survey instrument to capture information about arts professionals’ working conditions, career histories, and understandings of their work—now and in the past. Thank you to all who participated!
Data about arts professionals is woefully inaccessible and incomplete; we seek to remedy some of these problems and contribute valuable knowledge to our community. Through this data collection, ArtTable was able to present its findings through virtual workshops. The first of which took place in November of 2023 and focused on the Cost of Working in the Arts, and the second in February of 2024 focused on the Intersectionality of Race and Gender in the Artistic Labor Market. ArtTable will hold its third such workshop on May 1, 2024, “Parenting in the Artistic Labor Market: Results from ArtTable’s Pay Equity Survey.” The workshops provide a mechanism to distribute results through conversation and collaboration advancing solutions and working toward gender parity. All sessions are free, open to the public, and supported through donations to ArtTable’s Impact Initiatives Fund. All feedback will be incorporated into the final report issued in September 2024. ArtTable members can access the results through the member portal. Individuals can access the results by donating to the Impact Initiatives Fund and contacting Jessica L. Porter, Lila Harnett Executive Director of ArtTable.