"Artists, like other arts professionals, are often highly entrepreneurial. I would go even further and say that we are the very model for labour in the new economy, a fact that's not an odd irony or quirk of fate, but deeply rooted in our 'habitus' - as Pierre Bourdieu calls the habits, dispositions and preferences generated within a given field. We're highly educated, highly motivated 'self-starters' who believe that learning is a continuous process. We're always ready for change and adapt it quickly. We prefer freedom and flexibility to security. We don't want to punch a clock and tend to resist quantifying the value of our labour time. We don't know the meaning of 'overtime'. We're conceived that we work for ourselves and our own satisfaction even when we work for others. We tend to value non-material over material rewards, which we are willing to defer, even to posterity. While we may identify with social causes, we tend to come from backgrounds which discourage us from seeing ourselves as 'labour'. Finally, we're fiercely individualistic, which makes us difficult to organise and easy to exploit."*
*Andrea Fraser, "A museum is not a business. It is run in a businesslike fashion," in Art and Its Institutions: Current Conflicts, Critique and Collaborations, ed. Nina Montmann (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2006), p. 94.
