Employment, Profitability and Value Added of Visual Arts (Case Study: Tehran Art Galleries) 

This article seeks to answer the following four questions: How much is the value added of visual arts in Iran? How many are the number of direct employment in the visual arts? How much is the cost of creating a job opportunity in this section? Is this section profitable economically? If the answer is yes, how many percent is the average annual profit rate? In this study, data analysis was done by descriptive-analytic method. To collect the required data, in addition to studying available resources, financial information of 10 active galleries in Tehran has been collected and analyzed through in-depth interviews. According to the findings, the number of employees and the contribution of the value added of visual arts in the country's economy is negligible, but the rate of profitability in this area is positive and more than 22%, and the cost of creating an employment opportunity in this section is estimated at less than 15 million tomans. Given the positive rate of profit and being the low cost of creating job opportunities in visual arts, it seams encouraging the private sector to invest in this area, in addition to creating cultural value, leads to increased employment at a lower cost, and this is the relative advantage of visual arts in creating low-cost job opportunities