NY Times - Last Stop on the L Train: Detroit

[iheartthed]

That is why God created art dealers. The dealers are the ones with the main relationships with the customers, and typically the ones doing the promotion. The artist only has to show up occasionally.

However, you are somewhat right. You have to sell yourself to a dealer, and that is easier if you are hanging out where the dealers are, which is a major reason why artists do go to New York. But most artists don't sell that much wherever they are, so they may be better off being where it is easier to work on their art. A lot depends on their priorities. And it isn't that hard to get to New York. You can go to New York a lot for the difference in rents on a 6000 foot space.

Well, you can get to New York a lot easier from Newark than you can from Detroit, and Newark is also a lot less expensive than New York.

Granted, I'm not an artist and there is probably a lot of qualitative reasoning that goes into where the artists end up. But I'm just a skeptic that there is, or will ever be, a substantial movement of New York based artists to Detroit.