Iowa Arts News is a monthly publication of the Iowa Arts Council. If you would like to subscribe, please send us a blank e-mail.
IAC Developing BuyIowaArt.com to Serve Iowa Artists & Artist Agents
Iowa artists and artist agents will have a new tool to market and promote their work when BuyIowaArt.com goes on-line in June.
The Iowa Arts Council is launching a new Web site, www.BuyIowaArt.com, to bring a wide variety of art from myriad Iowa artists into one place where people around the world can browse, shop and search for Iowa-grown works ranging from paintings, posters and photographs to music, books and poetry.
“This is an idea that was enthusiastically embraced and endorsed at statewide cultural caucuses conducted by the Department of Cultural Affairs last fall as part of Governor Vilsack’s Imagine Iowa: 2010 program,” Iowa Arts Council Interim Administrator Mary Sundet Jones said. “We’re very pleased to have the opportunity to provide this service at the request of Iowa artists.”
The initial development and implementation phase will bring nearly 50 Iowa artists onto the website. Artists initially featured on the site have been recommended by BuyIowaArt.com advisors for the quality of their work. BuyIowaArt.com will expand to include a larger number of Iowa artists and artist agents through an application process. Guidelines are currently being revised and will be posted when the site launches in June. How artists are selected, the criteria and deadlines will be featured in the guidelines. Once artists are approved, artists will be able to add and replace work featured on the site at any time.
The Iowa Arts Council will receive a fee from each purchase for providing the service, and use it for further development and maintenance of the website.
The development of the website service comes at a time when the first large-scale surveys of the Internet’s impact on artists and musicians reveal they are embracing the Web as a tool to improve how they make, market and sell their creative works.
More than three-quarters of all artists (77%) and 83% of paid artists use the Internet, compared to 63% of the entire population, according to a Pew Internet and American Life Project Survey.
In addition, the survey said 32 million Americans consider themselves artists and about 10 million of them get some kind of compensation for their creations and performances.
Artists interested in learning more about Buyiowaart.com should contact Sarah
Ekstrand at 515.281.4657 or Sarah.Ekstrand@iowa.gov.
