Let’s Pay the Oregon Arts Commission Staff with Website Credit

It’s time to call out some bad behavior by the Oregon Arts Commission / Oregon Cultural Trust. Last night, an email was forwarded to me. Here’s the original message in its entirety:

From: D’Arcy, Christine T
Date: Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 5:43 PM
Subject: [OregonArts] Oregon Arts Commission + Cultural Trust Want YOU for a volunteer photo corps! Show us some work!
To: “oregonarts@listsmart.osl.state.or.us”

Call for Volunteer Photographers –

The Oregon Cultural Trust and the Oregon Arts Commission are looking for photographers to take professional quality photos of cultural events across our vast state. As a member of the Oregon Culture Volunteer Photo Corps, your photos, taken between now and June 30, 2010 will appear on the Oregon Culture flickr page, – and your photos have the potential to appear in Cultural Trust and Arts Commission publications and websites with full photo credit.

If you’d like to be considered, upload 4 photo samples (300 dpi or higher) to: http://www.flickr.com [username: culturaltrust@ymail.com, password: oregon2010]. Follow the sample photo for submission instructions.

Make sure you include your name in the subject line and a 100 word description of your community as part of the photo description.

Priority deadline for review: Friday, September 10, 2010.

Information: cultural.trust@state.or.us or Oregon.artscomm@state.or.us Show us your work!

Chris D’Arcy
Christine D’Arcy
Executive Director
Oregon Arts Commission – Oregon Cultural Trust
775 Summer Street NE
Salem, Oregon 97301-1280
(503) 986-0087 direct
christine.t.darcy@state.or.us

I’d think that an important component of a government arts commission would be to better the experience for artists in the state. It’s a shame they expect photographers to work for free. Photo credit is not payment. It’s one thing to have to educate the public about the value of an artist’s work, but I’d have higher expectations when the request comes from an arts commission.

Or if having one’s name on a website is credit, I’m sure the Oregon Arts Commission Staff would have no problem receiving their salary in website credit… right?

If you care about how artists are treated in Oregon, use one of those contact methods in the email message above and let Ms. D’Arcy know how you feel.

The fine print: I do not live in Oregon but I do work there and I know a lot of my readers are in Oregon.

Tagged as: business, oregon arts commission, oregon cultural trust, payment