While much talk about the market deals with commercial galleries, former SVA student Eric Guzman, a 2003 graduate who now directs the sculpture department there and teaches Intro to Digital Sculpture, notes that nonprofit spaces were often ignored in discussions about opportunities for artists. He recalls that teachers talked a lot about Chelsea, but he believes they should have been focusing more on Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where it would have been easier for a recent graduate to get a show at the time than in Chelsea.

Guzman—who makes machinelike sculptures that often employ high-powered lights—tells a story that when SVA faculty member and noted art critic Jerry Saltz took students on class trips to galleries, he warned them not to say anything openly negative in front of dealers. Instead, Saltz told them to use a series of secret hand signals to indicate whether they liked the work or not. It seems the risk of upsetting a potential connection was simply not worth it.

“Some people go to grad school for personal reasons or creative reasons, and some go to increase their chances to sell their work, but don’t want to declare this,” says Guzman of his MFA experience. “Some people understood the market, and one or two that were really savvy may have changed their work for the market. But is that good?”