Portrait of New York State Artists

CRNY launched the “Portrait of New York State Artists” survey between February and May 2022 to build a comprehensive picture of the needs, circumstances, and experiences of artists across New York State. The survey aimed to provide a more accurate representation of the number of artists in New York—shining a light on the economic challenges they face, their overall well-being, and the impact of the pandemic on artists’ livelihoods. 

The survey received responses from over 13,000 artists across New York State. In addition to first-of-its-kind geographic and demographic data, the survey found: 

The survey provides hard data to accompany the stories that artists shared with our team, inspiring our advocacy platform and serving as the backbone for our policy work. CRNY also used the data from this survey as a baseline to assess whether Guaranteed Income for Artists or Artist Employment Program funding helped meet the needs of individual artists in any substantive or transformational ways. 

In May 2024, CRNY partnered with the National Archive of Data on Arts and Culture (NADAC), a data repository funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, to make the survey and anonymized dataset freely available for download and online analysis in perpetuity. To further ensure equitable access to the data, we offered funding to groups who sought to use the data to advance an advocacy initiative or strategic communications campaign. 

Learn more about the wide range of research using the Portrait of New York State Artists dataset by visiting the NADAC data repository, our Advocacy Grants page, or CRNY artist-organizer Kevin Gotkin’s analysis of Deaf and disabled artists’ data.