Artist pension trust

An organization offering a plan allowing artists to invest their own works toward a pension plan ? eventual retirement income. APT's site says the organization, "is designed to meet specific needs of artists, a group whose career trajectories and employment patterns make existing pension programs inaccessible. APT helps ensure an artist's long-term fanancial secuity, allowing artists to focus on their work and take risks that are critical to their creative development." Here's basically how it works: beginning early in his or her career, a participant in APT contributes one work per year over a twenty year period to the tax-protected fund on the theory that some of the works will increase significantly in market value. All of the artists involved will share the profits, even if their initial promise never translates into increased market value. "It's a way of taking advantage of the capitalistic nature of the market and mix in a healthy dose of socialism to create a hybrid form," said David A. Ross, the former director of the Whitney Museum of Art and then the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, who is the APT's president (quoted in the NY Times, July 20, 2004). APT hopes to establish trusts in ten cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, and Tokyo, with 250 artists participating in each. Visit their site, and contact them for more information.Also see art careers and artists' organizations.