IG Bildende Kunst represents the interests of visual artists in arts policy, social, economic, legal, and other professional matters. Being visual artists ourselves, we are aware of the professional challenges artists face, and we develop responses and make efforts to assert interests accordingly. We contribute our expertise to social and arts policy decision-making processes, and in turn we pass on the knowledge gathered to our fellow artists. In this way, we promote empowerment and further professionalisation. Our objective is to create good living and working conditions for visual artists.
Priorities of our work include advocating social rights and social security for artists who are often in precarious working conditions, adequate payment for artistic work, and enabling people to combine parenthood with the working conditions in the arts sector.
IG Bildende Kunst curates exhibitions with programmes reflecting the work of the interest group, and publishes the magazine Bildpunkt on a quarterly basis.
We are an association with a current membership of approximately 1000. Every two years the voting members elect the members of the board, a team of active artists who represent IG Bildende Kunst externally.
History
In 1956, visual artists founded the Berufsverband Bildender Künstler Österreichs (BVÖ), the professional association of Austria’s visual artists, as a self-organised interest group in order to actively participate in political decision-making processes that have an impact on visual artists and to work towards improving the structural framework for artistic work. This political organisation resulted from protests against the 1954 General Social Security Act (ASVG), which introduced social security contributions that were financially unmanageable for many artists. In 2000 the professional association changed its name to Interessensgemeinschaft Bildende Kunst and moved to its current premises on Gumpendorferstraße in Vienna.
Further reading: Ist das Kunst? Und kostet das was? 60 Jahre Interessensvertretung der bildenden Künstler_innen. Lisa Bolyos, augustin 421, 10/2016. (Is this art? And does it cost anything? 60 years of representing the interests of visual artists.) (German only)