Life As An Arts Professional In NYC w/Mac Cumpian

·1 hr 25 min·5 clips

Mac says poverty left her with no choice but to figure things out.

1. Not Sorry Art Podcast talks with Mac Cumpian about life as an arts professional in New York City. 2. Sari Schreich hosts the conversation, and Mac Cumpian is the guest who works as a museum educator, studio manager, adjunct professor, and TikTok creator. 3. The episode asks how someone from Southeast Texas and Lamar University builds a career in New York’s art world. 4. Mac says she uses “arts professional” as an umbrella term because she is currently freelancing across four gigs. 5. She names museum education, studio management, adjunct teaching, social media management, and TikTok as the work that fills her week. 6. Mac explains that her TikTok page, “Mac Facts,” stands for museum, arts, and culture. 7. Sari connects with Mac through TikTok and says the account gives an inside look at the New York City art scene. 8. Mac says the art world includes small-town museums, farmer’s markets, and big-city institutions, not only New York. 9. She points to Beaumont, Texas, and community connections as part of how she started building experience. 10. Mac says she did not see art as a profession for herself until college, when she considered art teaching and museum work. 11. She describes searching LinkedIn for people with jobs she wanted and tracing their career paths. 12. Mac says that process helped her see that artistic careers are not always linear. 13. She and Sari discuss growing up below the poverty line and what that means inside elite art spaces. 14. Mac says the biggest difference is often not talent but whether someone has family money, rent support, or emotional backup. 15. She describes feeling both frustrated and proud when she notices her own grit in comparison with classmates who had more financial support. 16. Mac says NYU Museum Studies made the class gap visible when classmates named Berkeley, UCLA, Notre Dame, and Pratt while she named junior college and Lamar University. 17. She says her work is easier to sustain because she is obsessed with it and has no other realistic option. 18. Mac also says jobs that looked random, including a jewelry store, substitute teaching, and dance work, later became useful in museum and teaching contexts. 19. The tone is conversational and reflective, with Sari steering the discussion toward class, access, and practical career tactics. 20. Listeners interested in art careers, museum work, and class mobility will get the most from it; people wanting a purely technical art lesson may skip it.

As heard by us

A candid look at how arts careers get packaged and made legible.

Mac Cumpian's conversation with Sari Schreich follows the awkward translation work that shadows an arts career: museum jobs, grad school, and the habit of turning ordinary experience into something that sounds more polished.

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Why you'd press play

When your arts path is mostly jobs, spin, and survival.

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