从7月19日起，纽约几个主要的游客聚集的公园将大幅度限制艺术类摊贩，这样包括很多中国艺术家或小贩在内的人将重新找地方工作。最近抗议不断，包括那个叫 A.R.T.I.S.T 的组织把市长布隆伯格告上法庭。十年前他在联邦法庭还告赢了当时的市长朱里安尼。
   所以下次你到这些地方，景致可能就不一样了。上次刚表扬纽约，想不到来了这一招。

   今天把我写的稿件链接发给这些艺术摊贩权利组织的头 Robert Lederman, president of artist advocacy group A.R.T.I.S.T.，想不到他不仅赞赏，而且说他昨天就看到了，而且其他的艺术家也看到了，并且都说喜欢。

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Chinese artist at Central Park East probably won't be able to stay too long under a new regulations of Michael Bloomberg's administration.

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Ms Xu has been in the same spot of Central Park South for eight years, doing artistic script.
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Mr. Shi from Northeast China originally said he has to find a new place probably in another city.
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Union Square Miriam West has her stand there for seven years.
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Union Square artist calls for power

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Central Park East artist
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Basking in the sun in Central Park

NYC art vendors feel the squeeze

 

For decades, art vendors have drawn oceans of tourists to major attractions in the Big Apple. But that scene is likely to change dramatically a month from now.

According to an announcement from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, the number of art vendors in the Union Square, Battery Park, the High Line Park and parts of Central Park, areas that are popular tourist destinations, will be drastically cut.

The new rule, effective July 19, means that hundreds of art vendors, including many ethnic Chinese, will have to fight for limited spots or earn a living elsewhere.

Although the city administration revised its original plan last week by lifting the number to 140 from the original 81, art vendors are still not satisfied and are getting ready to fight the new rules. About 300 art vendors currently sell their work in these parks.

On Friday, two artists filed a free-speech lawsuit against New York in response to the new limit.

The lawsuit, filed in the South District Federal Court, asks the court to declare the proposed rules unconstitutional. It argues that green market and commercial vendors create more congestion than the roughly 300 vendors who now work in those parks.

City officials have earlier said these art vendors have made sidewalks too crowded and even dangerous.

Robert Lederman, president of artist advocacy group A.R.T.I.S.T. and one of the two plaintiffs filing the suit, told China Daily on Monday that he will win the case, as he did a number of times in the past 16 years.

In 1998, Lederman sued then-mayor Rudy Giuliani in a similar case. The court ruling in 2001 won protections for artists selling their work in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lederman said he hopes the judge will order an injunction of the regulations before the July 19 deadline, but added that if the judge does not act, he will organize more protests, as he did on April 23.

On that date, several hundred art vendors voiced their disapproval at a hearing on the proposal in the Chelsea Recreation Center in Manhattan. In the case 10 years ago, “we protested for 65 days continuously outside the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and it resulted in hundreds of arrests,” said Lederman, whose organization represents 3,000 New York art vendors.

Lederman accused the city authorities of trying to sell the parks to corporations and ignore the First Amendment.

He said if the city administration succeeds, it may adopt similar policies in other areas such as Times Square, where ethnic Chinese artists are the major scene: drawing sketches, making instant mini sculptures and selling paintings and photography work.

A woman surnamed Xu, who preferred not to give her full name, has been doing stylized script in the Central Park South for eight years. She told China Daily on Monday that the new regulations would make her jobless immediately.

“They should not do this in such a dire economic situation and I have no other skill,” said Xu, who participated in the April protest.

“They probably should limit the number of people selling reproductions, but not those of us real artists, who are protected by the First Amendment,” she said.

Xu said she and other art vendors are not creating any chaos or congestions along Central Park. “They would allow hot dog and T-shirt vendors only because these people pay the park corporations, while we as artists only pay tax to the government,” Xu said.

An artist named Shi, who also declined to give his full name, said he probably has to find work in another city after July 19. Shi makes instant mini sculptures for tourists at Central Park East. His wife touts his work to curious onlookers.

Miriam West, who has been selling her art work in the Union Square for seven years, said the new rule, which only allows 18 art vendors in the square, is treating artists like animals. There are about 90 art vendors in the area at the moment.

“With a first come, first serve rule, it means that we have to come here every morning and fight among each other,” said West, who hung two protest posters at her stand, one painting Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a fugitive for being a killer of New York artists’ rights.

The April 23 protest was also quite creative, and different from any other protests in the city. While chanting “artist power,” artists painted and labeled Bloomberg the barbarian, a muscle-bound mayor with sword and helmet, the destroyer of free speech and a billionaire with dollar signs for eyes.

(By Chen Weihua)