“Artists may never starve again!” shrieks Wired magazine in its patented tone of glassy-eyed hyperventilation in this article from its current print issue about the Artist Pension Trust.

The APT is a sort of retirement mutual fund for emerging artists, in which they give pieces to the fund up front and the fund sells them off over the course of a few decades to provide retirement income to the group. Some of the pieces turn out to be of little long-term value, but only a few of the artists have to hit the big time to ensure that everyone gets a decent slice at the end. It’s a great idea and apparently turning into a profitable one. The Trust screens the artists it lets into the club to make sure they’re all at about the same career plateau—earning $5,000-$10,000 per work, selling well enough but not exploding in popularity, and so on.

It seems to us that anything that ensures that artists can concentrate on doing their work undistracted is a good thing, even though the APT also seems to be one more step in the commodification of art, creativity, sensuality, rainbows, sunshine, and everything else in the known universe. In any case, it’s food for thought at tax time.

Wired 13.04: Paint by Numbers