Here at ArtCal we seek out under recognized and under represented galleries and venues for contemporary art, specifically promoting the best emerging talent from those fields. Launched November 18th, 2004, what began as a listing service has seen significant growth over the last three and a half years. In 2005 we added images to the site's features, as well as RSS and iCal feeds. At the time, no other art listing website offered such tools, so I imagine the technology made heavy Internet users extraordinarily happy; as an active blogger it certainly made my life a lot easier. ArtCal continued in its Internet pioneering only a few months later hiring me as their listings editor - clearly a high point in their services! Since that time, we launched our newsletter on March 30th, 2006, our beautiful redesign on August 28th 2007, and most recently, ArtCal Zine, the flagship event and reviews publication which debuted on October 4th, 2007.

As ArtCal embarked on 2008 we asked our readers to tell us a little bit more about themselves, and are now ready announce our findings. Through the course of this survey we learned a number of interesting facts, not the least of which is that you all go to a lot of openings! Of those polled, only 5.2% said they didn't go to any receptions at all, where as 50% said they attended at least 1-3 each month, and 31% attend 5-10. 13.3% of you seem to have lives solely centering around openings and arrive at more than 10 throughout the course of 30 days.

ArtCal subscribers tell us that while they use a large number of publications to keep abreast of art openings, over 80% rely on email announcements to inform them of openings. Let this be a warning to all you who have blogs and assume you've told your friends merely by posting an event notice. It turns out email is still the most effective means of reaching an audience, and certainly a good reason to subscribe to our weekly newsletter if you haven't already. Nearly 43.3 percent of our audience have post graduate degrees, closely followed by those 32% with college degrees. We also suspect most of you are sexy, though SurveyMonkey.com has no scientific means of measuring this, except to tell us that 62.5% of our readers are between the ages of 25 and 44. Generally speaking that age bracket is hot, so congratulations everyone who hits that mark. Also congratulations are in order to the 42.8% of you who live in Manhattan. As a member of the 26.6% of Brooklyn dwellers, I look enviously upon you. Interestingly 11.6% of our readership lives outside the United States, which I think indicates an extremely invested demographic in the arts.

Speaking of which, it should not go unmentioned that an extremely high percentage of our readership are also collectors. Of those surveyed, over 49% said they planned to fill their homes with art. Given that 94% of our readers attend one or more openings per month, that we receive over 103,500 page views over that same time period, and that our audience is largely made up of upper middle class well educated readers, we are undoubtedly a desirable, and influential bunch. We are also growing. ArtCal newsletter subscribers hit 2000 in January, a number that continues to climb. Based on your feedback we will be adding a number of new features over the course of the next few months. Our aim as always, is to build upon and improve a service we're already really proud to offer all of you.