The Worst Art Job Listing Ever Created

February 26, 2023 10:52 PM

What exactly is this job you ask? Well..... Art World Family. That’s the phrase that inspired me to click on the listing for an Executive Assistant position on NYFA’s classified listings, curious about what this mysterious organization Art World Family was. I never heard of it before. Was it some sort of nonprofit for families in the art world, a notoriously low-paying (for most jobs), healthcare-less, and not exactly family-friendly industry? A childcare service? A program offering art education to families?

No. It was meant literally.

posted by Toddles (56 comments total)

Gack.
Reading this and literally waiting for the water on the surface of an acrylic painting to dry so I can dry sand it after the wet sand.
They seem like truly repellent people.
This world is so alien and I think I'm okay with that though I would like to make more revenue, obviously, with my art.
This is a pretty funny Instagram account about the hyper capitalist art world from someone deep inside it that goes with well with the original post.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 11:24 PM on February 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

I know someone who knows someone who works for a Famous Artist and as their holiday "gift" Artist hands out signed sketches. It's so gross on so many levels... It's literally just this artist's trash!! But it has actual auctionable value in the thousands of dollars because Famous Artist wrote his own name on it!! But you don't necessarily want to put it on the open market where your boss can see you're selling your Christmas gift, so you have to either wait till you leave the job and hope this crap holds its value or try to find a private buyer, probably leaving cash on the table to do so!! The art world is gross.

TBH though, this job listing kinda just sounds like a personal/family assistant job to a wealthy and busy person. I doubt they actually expect one person to be able to do all this stuff, they just figured they'd throw the laundry list into the listing and hope to get a decent percentage. Is the issue just that this job board is an inappropriate place to advertise for such a person? Because, like, if you look in places where rich families advertise for household employees this doesn't seem like it would be especially remarkable, except maybe in its level of detail. Depending on the hipness of the Art World Family in question, there are probably (young, naive, starstruck) people out there who would consider this job exciting and glamorous in a masochistic "Devil Wears Prada" sort of way, and take it hoping to get memoir fodder and art-world contacts out of it.

I get that it's a very punchable job description. But I think I've heard of worse art jobs, to be quite honest, and I am not in fact in the arts at all. There are a lot of really awful art jobs out there and a lot of them pay much less.
posted by potrzebie at 11:45 PM on February 26, 2023 [13 favorites]

It also unfolds like a blooming onion—many layers, all of them stink, and leave a bad taste in your mouth. It also reads like a genius piece of satire about the complete disassociation of the rich from everyone else’s everyday life and viewing the rest of us peons as servants to make their lives simpler.

Excelsior!

(A million years ago I plumbed an artist's studio - moved some radiators around, put in a sink and etc. The artist in question is an extraordinary painter. Like, extraordinary - I could scratch the surface of why he is remarkable in about a thousand words or you could just take my word for it - this guy is an extra-ordinary painter and his work is in the museums blahblahblahyaddayaddayadda. I was twenty-ish and living hand-to-mouth, without a net. I worked for a couple days and at the end give him my invoice (which was modest, frankly) he pays me with a check and says, "You know, back in the day, when Picasso wrote checks, people didn't cash them, because his signature was so valuable."
This guy is no Picasso - I love his paintings, but I've seen Picasso's work. I was polite but holy shit, what an asshole. A couple years later, when he got clothes-lined on the Williamsburg Bridge and his umpty-thousand dollar bike was stolen, I felt no sympathy. Assholes gonna asshole. A couple years later I did work for another, equally impressive painter who was a titan of late-80's NYC cultural life - and that guy was a freakin' Saint. And a hard worker. A real inspiration.)
posted by From Bklyn at 12:30 AM on February 27, 2023 [15 favorites]

Are these people probably horrible human beings? Yes. Is this any different than any other PA position for rich assholes? No, although I was under the impression that they paid better. So yes, mock them. But don't doubt that they previously had an assistant who did all this and that they will again. They have the money, they really just need to up the salary. This is a majordomo type job, not an assistant.
posted by Hactar at 1:26 AM on February 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

...although I was under the impression that they paid better.


Although it probably varies, they generally do pay better. Back in the late nineties I did a temp gig in the corporate kitchen of a very prominent finance guy. His name was the name of the very well known company, books and movies were written about him, etc. Evetually I was offered the job of overseeing his four different properties and the staff that came with them. The salary even back then was $100k.

It's funny, as I wrote "four different properties" I thought to myself was that all he had? Seems quaint by todays standards.

Anyway, I didn't take the job.
posted by newpotato at 1:49 AM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

But it has actual auctionable value in the thousands of dollars because Famous Artist wrote his own name on it!! But you don't necessarily want to put it on the open market where your boss can see you're selling your Christmas gift...

I wouldn’t be so sure about that last part. Giving them sketches worth thousands on the auction market is a nice way to give employees a quite generous bonus without it counting as salary and, thus, being subject to tax and withholding. It’s kind of like cash under the table.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:02 AM on February 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's only like cash under the table if you can actually use it. Doesn't sound like these sketches are necessarily liquid assets. The line in the ad that stopped me was the one about “The ideal candidate must be dedicated to a simple goal: make life easier for the couple in every way possible.” It much reminds me of all the job ads I've seen for editorial types that insist that the candidate be capable of 100% accuracy. As if that special human being has ever been born. For sure, ask for what you want and, for sure, expect to be mocked if you do it publicly.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:26 AM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

It would be a lot easier to read if it wasn't for all the fucking GIFs. Writer is trying too hard to make something a bit excessive seem absurd and unreasonable.

Seriously, can we criminalise using GIFs?
posted by Grangousier at 2:33 AM on February 27, 2023 [17 favorites]

… he pays me with a check and says, "You know, back in the day, when Picasso wrote checks, people didn't cash them, because his signature was so valuable."

I think it was in Gilot's Life with Picasso that I read an account of the same story told not about Picasso, but by Picasso about his friend Marc Chagall, emphasizing that Chagall paid for everything by check down to very small items, and that the checks featured a very large and prominent signature, specifically because Chagall realized that made it more likely the checks would not be cashed.

The story had a fairly blatant antiSemitic overtone in my more modern ears, and if that happens to be the original, I’m not surprised the details changed to obscure it.
posted by jamjam at 2:36 AM on February 27, 2023 [11 favorites]

Someone once described Picasso as the closest thing that had ever existed to a human money tree.
On the other side of the spectrum the artist Willem de Kooning had a problem with drawings disappearing from his work space when he had the massive studio he designed built over the course of three years at his place in Springs, Long Island.
People only seeing monetary value of art, including artists all through out history, has always been very odd to me. I get it, but I still find it odd, and a wee bit sad.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 3:03 AM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

There is a PDF of the original job post, for those who don’t want to scold past a million gifs.
posted by rockindata at 3:34 AM on February 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

TBH though, this job listing kinda just sounds like a personal/family assistant job to a wealthy and busy person.

Yeah, two-thirds of that stuff was stuff that I've been doing for all my bosses for about 30 years now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:46 AM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

It looks like that job, which I'd be terrible at but is the natural habitat of some people. Although you'd need to have done some of it before I can see that doing it for a few years would allow you to make connections for the next thing you do, and that could be a good idea. If that's the sort of world you want to move in. Is even the lower bound of the offered salary that bad for that? I mean, the assumption here seems to be that one would resent the job as much as one would resent working in a call centre, but it's not a call centre. If the assumption is that these people are terrible, well obviously they're terrible, look they have so much money... well, they probably wouldn't want you for the job anyway. Normal people don't want to employ people who despise them. That's more a middle-management thing.

If you're really good at the job, and they want you to do it for more than a few years, perhaps they'd up the salary to induce you to stay. If they didn't, you could take the connections and move on to something fancy. Because that's how that world works. On the whole people I've known who've employed someone for this kind of job have understood that and actually been happy to see their assistant move on to bigger and better things, but I can see that maybe I've only encountered unusually nice people in that position.
posted by Grangousier at 3:48 AM on February 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

… he pays me with a check and says, "You know, back in the day, when Picasso wrote checks, people didn't cash them, because his signature was so valuable."

I did some admin work for a woman who thought she was a great artist. She also paid me by check and said the same darn thing!! I knew right then and there the check was going to bounce, and it did. She never made good on it. She had no shame and said I should be grateful she let me "hang around". LOL
posted by james33 at 4:08 AM on February 27, 2023 [14 favorites]

I read the pdf version early in the article before realizing they would be including the text in the body of the post along with a dumpster file of gifs, and holy crap that’s insane for the salary - and pretty insane in general. The first two sections sounded like standard underpaid-overworked personal assistant stuff, which some people (young people especially) are willing to do in exchange for access to that level of fame and lifestyle. It seems daunting but doable. Adding in occasional unpaid childcare as an “oh you might have to” is awful, but also probably par for the course. This is a hard job and they’re not paying enough for it, and a lot of the asks will make other asks impossible (run tasks all over town but always be available at home for deliveries, and at the Studio to greet guests), so they’re setting the assistant up for failure and/or a nervous breakdown.

But once it adds in planning and running Studio events and creating their social media? That’s a separate salaried job. Completely off their heads insane to add that in.
posted by Mchelly at 5:43 AM on February 27, 2023 [9 favorites]

The comments to the article name and shame the artist family in question. They sound incredibly toxic and people are still reeling from having worked for them.
posted by ceejaytee at 5:48 AM on February 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

I think it was in Gilot's Life with Picasso that I read an account of the same story told not about Picasso, but by Picasso about his friend Marc Chagall

The same story is told about a number of famous people, including George Bernard Shaw. "When paying small bills he would often write several cheques—so that, for example, if the bill was for £15, he would write three cheques for £5 each, knowing that his signature was worth more than £5 and that they would never be cashed." (Colin Wilson, Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment, 1969)
posted by verstegan at 5:51 AM on February 27, 2023

Yeah, for once the comments are worth reading.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 6:04 AM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

"You know, back in the day, when Picasso wrote checks, people didn't cash them, because his signature was so valuable."

Well, what I heard was, that the girls would turn the color of an avocado when he'd drive down the street in his Eldorado.

But you know what else? Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole. Not in New York. Not like you.
posted by phooky at 6:05 AM on February 27, 2023 [24 favorites]

This is a bog-standard family chief of staff job, written in a very overheated way. $65k is low for that kind of job but $95k is not, especially if the family are legitimately arts celebrities where a lot of the responsibilities could easily be filled by rich-dad unpaid interns. If the couple was a Goldman Sachs partner and a pediatrician, if would probably pay $120k.
posted by MattD at 6:07 AM on February 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

The comments to the article name and shame the artist family in question.

Awwww. That makes me kinda sad. I crossed paths with the artist in question often in the late 80's and early 90's. There were a couple things even then that people side-eyed (the Jousts - iykyk). I thought the likely culprit going to be X, or maybe Y, or as likely Z, or Q, or R, or S, or L, or.. I don't think I have to go through the entire alphabet but there's a near-bottomless pool of potential candidates.

The same story is told about a number of famous people, that makes perfect sense that XXXX XXXXXX would twist that story. Freakin' jerk. (and yet, such beautiful paintings!)
posted by From Bklyn at 6:15 AM on February 27, 2023

This job seems fine to me! I hate arranging plane tickets and remembering when things have to be renewed and if I had that much money, I would gladly pay somebody to do it for me, not because I thought that person was a "peon" but because they were a person whose competence I was respecting and rewarding with money. And I guess I'm also kind of glad there are still artists among the people who make this kind of income.
posted by escabeche at 6:52 AM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is a bog-standard family chief of staff job

It's a what now? That is a real actual thing that real actual people have in their real actual lives?

Where's the fucking guillotine?
posted by prismatic7 at 7:19 AM on February 27, 2023 [14 favorites]

I knew right then and there the check was going to bounce...
Was this back when banks still sent you back the actual checks? It might have been worth something to have the artist's signature, along with the 'Bounced' stamp on it.
posted by MtDewd at 7:19 AM on February 27, 2023 [8 favorites]

To start, it seems to me a personal assistant as described is a household employee and must be paid hourly non-exempt.
posted by muddgirl at 7:21 AM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

With the name of the artist exposed, it seems there is a previously to be had.
posted by MtDewd at 7:28 AM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Where's the fucking guillotine?

Oh, still just being bandied about on the internet as a wishful talking point while everything just gets worse, same as it's been since the late 90s.
posted by aramaic at 7:38 AM on February 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

Whoa. I actually went to school with The Artist in Question and I don’t remember him as being especially obnoxious. He wasn’t an artist at the time, though. I wonder when it happened—probably around the same time as the sofa made out of telephone books?
posted by scratch at 7:42 AM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is a bog-standard family chief of staff job, written in a very overheated way.

I don't think so, because of the huge overlap with the operating functions of the studio, which presumably at this point is a complex entity (and, to a lesser extent, the childcare; also, imagine someone who doesn't speak fluent Mandarin looking after your little darlings!). This is two jobs.
posted by praemunire at 7:43 AM on February 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

I know I shouldn't mock strangers on the internet, but sometimes they make it so easy.

From their wedding profile in the Times: "On their first date, in June 2008 at the SoHo restaurant Balthazar, they ordered the three-tier seafood tower [currently $195] to start and steaks to follow. But the food ended up playing second fiddle to the chemistry. Both were too nervous to eat, but the conversation flowed. The spell broke, or at least cracked, when the check arrived and Mr. Sachs announced that he had forgotten his wallet. Irritated, Ms. Hoover paid the check; then Mr. Sachs rubbed salt in the wound by asking the waiter to wrap both steaks for him to take home."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:44 AM on February 27, 2023 [9 favorites]

I think this seems like a shocking new position because for many years these duties were carried out invisibly via the free labor of the spouses and partners of the famous person.
posted by corey flood at 7:48 AM on February 27, 2023 [27 favorites]

Maybe, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Anyway, the job sounds like numerous jobs rolled into one. Multiple immense jobs, one little paycheck.
posted by scratch at 7:52 AM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think it's not shocking in the least, just that the internet has made it visible. This is pure petty tyrant rich entitled people stuff. It's been going on for centuries
posted by Jacen at 7:54 AM on February 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

What makes this article interesting to me are the numerous comments, presumably from different people in the NY art scene, confirming that the job posting is indeed "just the tip of the iceberg" (to quote one of the commenters).
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:00 AM on February 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

Yeah, it's just a job. The kind of job that scales harder (and should charge more) if it involves working with difficult people.

Where's the fucking guillotine?

Approx 9:12 in his Ted Talk (which is kinda interesting).
posted by ovvl at 8:03 AM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Giving them sketches worth thousands on the auction market is a nice way to give employees a quite generous bonus without it counting as salary and, thus, being subject to tax and withholding

Oh, just FYI: art sales never get the long-term capital gains tax treatment.
posted by praemunire at 8:05 AM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's also worth noting that most of this is work that does have to be done and would otherwise devolve on the wife (because you know the husband ain't doing it). The objectionableness lies in treating it as one person's (underpaid) job...but then, in real life, it usually is!
posted by praemunire at 8:09 AM on February 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

The only thing making it exceptional was to spell it out in such excruciating detail. Certainly many, many such jobs are as described in the posting but duties of this scope are just assumed.
posted by lookoutbelow at 8:46 AM on February 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

Yeah, this isn't actually surprising to me at all.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:31 AM on February 27, 2023

This is a bog-standard family chief of staff job

It's a what now? That is a real actual thing that real actual people have in their real actual lives?

Where's the fucking guillotine?

I have paid an accountant do my taxes for a couple of decades. I have someone I pay when I need help running errands, because sometimes I run out of hours in the week. And there's the really awesome bartender/cook couple I use when I host a party and really want to be able to focus on the guests. When I was a single dad with a small child, there was a local college student I paid to pick my kid up from school when I got caught at work. I recently started paying for someone to take care of my lawn, because an old back injury makes that tough. Now I'm considering a housekeeper to come in and help clean up occasionally for the same reason.

Now, would adding the housekeeper qualify me for the death penalty in your world, or does the fact that I pay people to help me out at all mean I already need to be murdered? Just curious where the threshold of "pays for help" becomes "deserves to die".
posted by kjs3 at 10:14 AM on February 27, 2023 [9 favorites]

The threshold is probably just at the point where someone starts unironically using terms like "Dog Systems" in a job description.
posted by remembrancer at 10:58 AM on February 27, 2023 [21 favorites]

If paying for help is gonna get us guillotined, I'm in line for the chop, but on the other hand I don't want to pay someone just $65K in NYC for organizing my personal/family/professional life.

The job(s) need to be done but you'd think an artist of all people would understand that exposure, in this case to the rich and powerful of the art world, doesn't put food on the table.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 11:10 AM on February 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

We should be this enraged about literally every job. Jobs fucking suck. The specific tasks involved are less relevant to me and the implied emotional labor (in the original formulation of that term that is specific to job duties) is unfortunately the norm across industries now. The flags to me are: Should be hourly not salaried, no PTO or benefits (WTF Is 'built in vacation'), should absolutely never be 'on call' outside of paid and scheduled 40 hours or less a week.
posted by latkes at 11:13 AM on February 27, 2023 [9 favorites]

Kjs3, by my count that’s six people to do six very different jobs. Would you expect the lawn care person to also competently do your taxes while you pay that person, say, 150% of the lawn care wage?
posted by scratch at 11:30 AM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Scratch...read the comments again. You missed the point by quite a long way.
posted by kjs3 at 11:35 AM on February 27, 2023

If chattel slavery were somehow made legal again, this "Art World Family" would be first in the line of buyers with their Platinum Amex card in hand.
posted by tommasz at 11:43 AM on February 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

Yeah, no, nobody is all het up because people can afford to offload work to other people. The fact that our society is set up in such a way that people don't see a problem with paying way too little and asking way too much is what's upsetting. Also, as someone who's worked for my share of smaller businesses you should absolutely RUN away from anyone who's hiring for a position that mixes their personal life with their business life. Not every bad boss I've had mixes the two, but every boss I've had that did was a terrible boss.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:44 AM on February 27, 2023 [10 favorites]

kjs3, my intent is to agree with you. Hiring people to help is perfectly reasonable, if it’s done the way you’re doing it. It’s that the artiste’s ad wants one person to do a multitude of jobs.
posted by scratch at 12:17 PM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

What's off to me is that my assumption is that these jobs are exactly the kind of thing rich people would use some kind of agency for. Why advertise to the world at large, wouldn't you want someone to do background checks, etc.? Maybe this couple are not savvy or are thinking this would be cheaper. And yeah I count about 4 separate jobs here.
posted by emjaybee at 12:51 PM on February 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

I had this type of job while I was at uni. However, I was paid well, and I learnt a lot. Probably more than I learnt at school. At almost 60, I am still close friends with my former boss, and we have collaborated on several projects.

When they specify the elements of the job like this, it seems unreasonable. And sometimes during what I today see as my apprenticeship I did feel it was unreasonable. I guess today it is unacceptable, and we live now, not in the 17th century. But back then it gave me a valuable insight into what making is, and brought me ahead of my fellow students.
posted by mumimor at 3:11 PM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

i work in the arts. this is nowhere NEAR the worst ever listing. not even close.
but that doesn't mean it's not awful.
yes, not enough salary. yes, at least 4 jobs roles here - each that would pay that much, alone.
there are benefits offered (at the top of the listing). that still doesn't make it a reasonable offer.
so name and shame away! just don't think this is anything unusual.
posted by lapolla at 3:56 PM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

(the article is literally a "gif review". hence the gifs)
posted by armacy at 4:25 PM on February 27, 2023

The concept of a "Gif Review" needs to be the subject of a different article called "I Found It: The Worst Review Style Ever Created".
posted by mmoncur at 7:24 PM on February 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

We'll live in this world as long as we live I guess, but what's offensive to me is that one person's little inconveniences are worth another person's whole waking life. If you have to do one of these jobs, then, yeah, it would be better if you got to split the work with a team, and you individually got paid more, of course. But from an overall perspective, that's worse -- that the little pleasures or annoying details of one person's life are worth the waking lives of a whole team of people. All of their creative energies get subordinated to making things more manageable for one person or family, why? Well, it's money. What does that mean? It's complicated.
posted by grobstein at 8:32 PM on February 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

The concept of a "Gif Review" needs to be the subject of a different article called "I Found It: The Worst Review Style Ever Created".

Worst would be this on slides.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:31 AM on February 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

The Cultish, Sometimes Scary Studio of Artist Tom Sachs
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:33 AM on March 13, 2023 [3 favorites]