Artists Who Advertise

Several San Miguel artists have been following the promotional route of local businesses by placing advertisements in local publications such as Atencion, our bilingual newspaper, and The San Miguel Walking and Shopping Guide. Many of these same artists as well as others use web sites geared to tourists that list their studios/galleries in a directory and feature them for a hefty fee. It is a world-wide trend. Artists everywhere are using whatever outlet they can afford to promote their work to the general public in the hope that the exposure will bring them clients and ultimately lead to more sales. In today’s competitive climate, the conventional wisdom is that artists must brand themselves. Okay, fine, if they have a style that’s brand-able, but if the work looks pretty similar to most of the other work out there it doesn’t really make much sense to try to “brand” it. Branding should mean establishing the uniqueness of a product or service. And therein lies another issue for me: Style is style, and if you have your own then you don’t need to brand it because it’s obviously yours. Why treat art like any other mundane product on the marketplace? Fine art is above all this marketing gimmickry, or at least it should be. Am I being too high minded? I don’t think so. And what makes even less sense to me, and strikes me as a cheap tactic, is for artists to use a photo of themselves rather than their work, which is what some San Miguel artists are doing.  

An Art Museum for San Miguel

San Miguel needs a serious art museum in order to enhance its standing in the international art world. How can the global art community look at this city with any respect without one? Until we have a credible art museum we will remain merely a gathering place for bohemian artists. Exciting enough, I admit, and I don’t see any problem with continuing just as we are. However, if the intensified emphasis on tourism by the current mayor’s administration is a reliable indication of the direction in which this city wishes to go, then we will always have gaping hole in our cultural life. The recently opened Europa House on Calle San Francisco, while wonderful in itself, is no substutute for a museum. No urban center that is serious about becoming a cultural destination can afford to be lacking in a city-supported museum of the visual arts.