VOL. 13 
2024–2025 

EDITORIAL 

Editors’ Introduction 

Olaf Kuhlke 

Minneapolis College of Art 

and Design 

E. Andrew Taylor 

American University 

 

 

 

 

As we open Volume 13 of Artivate—a rolling-basis volume that will add articles, essays, 

and reviews through August 2025—we are acutely aware of a shifting conversation 

around individual risk and collective value in the arts. In one of the opening articles of this 

volume, Amy Whitaker explores this shift through the lens of generative artificial intelli-

gence, writing: 

Creativity that benefits all of society requires individual risk, and we need ways of map-

ping this and thinking about it structurally as both a problem of governance and of eco-

nomic structuring. 

In another article that will be published in the new year, a group of scholars—Rachel 

Skaggs, Molly Jo Burke, Kuo Guo, Erin J. Hoppe, and Elizabeth C. Cooksey—explore the 

impact and aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives and livelihoods of individual 

artists. Here, again, a dramatic and unexpected change in the ecosystem not only chal-

lenged conventions of individual practice but also revealed weaknesses in collective sys-

tems of compensation and support: 

. . . the loss of access to social and professional networks, audiences, studio space, perfor-

mance space, and events cut arts and creative workers off from people, spaces, and situa-

tions that previously structured their work and access to opportunities for future work. 

Artists and arts entrepreneurs carry individual risks, even as they provide creative, 

aesthetic, social, civic, and public value. In private or commercial settings, that risk is often 



ARTIVATE 13 

2 

mitigated by the promise of ownership and financial return. But in public and plural (vol-

untary, nonprofit, etc.) contexts, the covenants of risk and reward are complex and ever-

changing.  

Finally, in his editorial that opens Volume 13, co-editor Olaf Kuhlke calls arts entre-

preneurship practitioners, scholars, and supporters to address the human costs at the in-

tersection of art and business through a commitment to “trauma-informed” entrepreneur-

ship. 

We believe that Artivate interrogates a unique and essential domain within these 

larger systems. And we are eager to invite, review, and share the most compelling schol-

arship within that domain. We will continue to do so through open calls for articles on any 

aspect of the discipline (see our Aims & Scope statement and our submission guidelines 

for full details) and through more focused calls for special topics (such as our current call 

for papers on creative economy and cultural entrepreneurship in South Asia). 

The changing landscapes of artistic venture and creative practice demand rigorous 

and open inquiry. As co-editors, we will continue to shape Artivate as an open and dynamic 

platform for that inquiry. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Photo by Hussein Haidar Salman, www.pexels.com/photo/low-

angle-shot-of-the-museum-of-pop-culture-building-in-seattle-
11535472/ 

 

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