The CODAworx database provides a wealth of information for the curious reader, including commission fees paid to artists and other creatives involved in projects of all sizes. In this Industry Report, commission fees across ten design categories are profiled for works completed in 2019.
A total of 413 completed projects created and installed in 2019 were published on the CODAworx website. These projects were spread across the design categories: Commercial; Healthcare; Hospitality; Institutional; Landscape; Liturgical; Public Spaces; Residential; Transportation; and Education. All combined, these projects have total commission fees of $72.3 million.
Commission Fees by Category
Three project categories received the lion’s share of commission fees in 2019. They are Hospitality ($18.4 million); Commercial ($17.7 million); and Public Spaces ($15.3 million). Projects with the lowest commission fees in the study period are Liturgical ($9,780); Landscape ($1.9 million) and Residential ($2.3 million). Commission fees across all categories for 2019 are shown in Table #1.
Review of average commission fees by category provides additional insight. As described in the previous section, the highest categories for commission fees are Hospitality, Commercial and Public Spaces. However, the three highest categories for average commission fees are Hospitality ($1.2 million); Transportation ($218,000); and Institutional ($207,000). Average commission fees by category are also detailed in Table #1.
Table #1: Commission Fees by Category
Project Profiles – High Commission Fees
Significant projects occurring within the categories with the highest total commission fees – Hospitality, Commercial, and Public Spaces – are profiled below.
Hospitality includes restaurants, hotels, spas, and resorts. Developers, hoteliers and investors in these for-profit endeavors seek to create dramatic visual and other sensory first impressions. Thus, commission fees tend to be significant. The 2019 Hudson Yards Grill project utilized an artwork budget of $7 million to reflect New York City’s vibrant energy and diverse culture, showcasing bright colors and an expansive selection of modern art. This project offered the highest commission fee in this category.
Commercial projects include office buildings, office spaces, corporate campuses, including atriums, meeting spaces, boardrooms, and other shared spaces. A commission fee of $2.8 million was established for the 2019 Doris Miller Memorial at the Waco (Texas) Arts Fest, the highest fee among commercial projects. The project honors a Black American WWII Navy hero for going above and beyond the call of duty during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, earning him the Navy Cross.
Public Spaces are those designed for transportation, civic and cultural events, conventions and exhibitions, parks, retail, sports and recreation. The 2019 project with the highest commission fee was Standing Wave, a media-driven LED sculpture that plays on the mathematical concept describing how a wave, meeting its reflection, produces a new wave that does not appear to move. Located in National Harbor, Maryland, the project commission fee was $1.7 million.
Project Profiles – Average Commission Fees
The Hudson Yards Grill project is an outlier within the Hospitality category as the $7 million budget far exceeds others occurring in 2019. Two projects are more typical. They are Ven a la Luz, an 8-meter tall wooden and steel sculpture permanently installed at the Ahau Tulum (Mexico) resort. The commission fee was $150,000. A project with a similar commission fee ($160,000) is Canopy|Minneapolis Mill District by Hilton. This atrium art installation evokes the image of flour falling from a sifter in homage to local historic industries.
A typical project in the Transportation category (airports, subways, train and bus stations, roads, mass transit, parking garages) is Aurora “Bright Dawn” for the Seattle (Washington) Office of Arts and Culture. With a commission fee of $197,000, the project transforms an aging pedestrian bridge into a community landmark with translucent colorful fins.
In the Institutional category (spaces designed for government, government functions, K-12 education, and higher education), the project Matrix Paris, with a budget of $170,000, represents the average commission fee for this category. It is a light installation utilizing programmable red and blue LEDs, wires, custom-electronics and custom-software created for the Exhibition at Fondation EDF, Paris.
Call to Action – Publish Your Projects
CODAworx is a leading authority on commissioned art and we maintain a comprehensive database of information regarding RFPs, commissioning entities, budgets, and awards. Tapping into this database enables CODAweekly to also feature regular Industry Reports by design segment (commercial, hospitality, healthcare, etc.) that will highlight top artists, trends in commission fees, and more.
We encourage you to add information to the CODAworx database by publishing a project to our Project Library. Anyone involved in the collaborative process can publish a project on CODAworx. This includes the artist and creative teams, design professionals and other commissioners, and industry resources including fabricators, engineers, installers, lighting designers, videographers, and more.
The more information we know about our industry, the smarter we can work and create! Contribute to the knowledge base. Potential clients, commissioners, collaborators and your peers will get to know you and your work. They can contact you directly through the CODAworx messaging system.