MyLife presents: "The 10 Best Cities to be an Artist"

MyLife.com recently did a ranking of the 10 best cities in which to be an artist! They shared the link with me, so I'm sharing it with you!

I snagged the bits that were relevant to Seattle, but feel free to read the rest of the article to see who we were up against. (Used with permission from MyLife.com.) 

From MyLife.com:

If you are an artist who is looking to make a name for themselves, or at least make a little money, knowing how – and where – best to accomplish that can be perplexing. But [MyLife has] compiled a list of the 10 best cities in which to thrive on your chosen profession.

Here’s How [MyLife] Ranked Them
[MyLife] started with a list of the 50 most populous cities in the U.S. and ranked them from one to 50 in each of the following categories:

• Cost of Living – The lower the better. If you’re an artist, there’s a pretty good chance you’re not going to have two grand a month to drop on rent. This should help keep you from being a “starving” artist.
• People 20-34 years of age – Not that older people aren’t artists, but if you’re looking to move to a new city to start a new career, you are likely in this age bracket. So the more close to your age the better.
• People working in the arts industry – Much like knowing how many people are your age, you’d also probably like to know how many people are working in the same field as you. The more there are, the better possibility of meeting someone with the same ambitions as you.
• Number of museums and galleries in the city – Culture matters. If the city cares about art, there will be more of these to visit; thus there would be a solid chance you could have a good career there.
• Households with income greater than $200,000 – Let’s face it; potential buyers aren’t budgeting to buy art the same way they would a car or a house. If your art is going to be bought, you need more people with deep pockets.

After establishing a ranking for each of those categories, we assigned a score to each city for those categories as well. Once those were added up, we divided the sum into an average; the lower that average was the better.

Guess where Seattle ranked... #2 !

Entrance to the Seattle Art Museum. Photo courtesy bybeestone.com

The city known for tossing fish and angry Seahawks had good reason to come in at number two on our list. Despite ranking 40^th in cost of living, it more than made up for that by ranking fifth and fourth in percent of its population that are between the ages of 20-34, and in number of galleries and museums, respectively.


Read the full article HERE! 

Support your local art scene! Cheers!

~ BCDuncan