CSA: Community Supported Art?

I’ve finally started to work my way through my pile of Food & Wine magazines from the last several months. While I was pregnant, F&W just made me angry because (1) I couldn’t drink the cocktails and Cabernets on its pages and (2) it made me crave elaborate meals that I didn’t have the energy to create. Now that I’m spending a lot of time glued to a chair while breastfeeding, I’ve been catching up.

A short article about CSA shares in the September issue of Food & Wine caught my eye. The article discussed an art subscription program based out of Minneapolis. The program is modeled after the Community Supported Agriculture shares that have gained popularity in many communities. Shareholders of the “Art CSA” program run by Springboard for the Arts receive not a box of vegetables for the summer season, but a box of nine original works of art from local artists. Summer shares for the Minneapolis-based program ran at $300 a piece and sold out in a single day.

I love this idea. While some people might argue that it’s a little too much like an art production line, I like the fact that the program makes the arts accessible. Granted, $300 is not pennies, but a person could easily spend more than that for a single, mass-produced print from the likes of Crate & Barrel or Pottery Barn. I think the art CSA share would be the perfect solution for a person whose walls remain white for months, if not years, because she can’t commit to something to hang there. I am not that person, though. I suffer from the opposite problem. I find too much art that I love, and have not enough places to hang it!