We are correcting the count.
The figures in circulation are extrapolated from tax filings, degree completions and census occupation codes. None of those instruments was built to find artists, and each misses in a different direction.
Who falls out
Anyone who works a second job to fund the studio falls out of the count. Anyone self-taught falls out. Anyone working outside the countries that collect the data was never in it. The result is a field of real economic and cultural consequence in which the most basic denominator is a guess.
What we build
Chronicle of Living Artists builds and publishes the record of artists who are alive and working: who they are, where, in what conditions, at what scale. Region by region, in the present tense.
Latin America is one of our focuses: a region where the distance between art-historical weight and market value is wide and the record thin.
What the count is for
The count is not an end in itself. Every argument made about artists, about public funding, cultural policy, arts education and market value, rests on an estimate of how many there are and how they live. When the estimate is wrong, the argument inherits the error.
If you are an artist
Add yourself to the census. No artist is ever charged to be counted, and inclusion is never contingent on sales, representation, schooling or reputation.
If you want the count to exist
The census is published free and stays free. Founding support pays for the work of making it.