The Visual Arts & Crafts industry is organized into distinct segments that group related disciplines, professions, businesses, and market activities within the larger field. Each segment represents a different way artworks, crafted objects, visual products, installations, and creative goods are conceived, created, produced, presented, distributed, and sold, while also showing how artistic, technical, fabrication, curatorial, and market facing roles connect across the industry. These segments include Fine Arts, Photography & Lens Based Arts, Craft & Material Based Arts, Decorative & Functional Art, Public & Environmental Art, and Galleries & Art Market Activity.

Each segment is also connected to relevant North American Industry Classification System, or NAICS, codes. NAICS is the standard system used by federal statistical agencies to classify businesses and economic activity by industry. Because Visual Arts & Crafts includes overlapping disciplines and professionals who may work through independent practice, small businesses, galleries, studios, fabrication environments, public art projects, retail channels, and contract work, no single NAICS code captures the full scope of the industry. The codes identified here provide the closest available classifications for understanding where these activities appear within existing economic data.

Breaking the industry into segments, disciplines, and corresponding NAICS classifications creates a clearer framework for understanding how Visual Arts & Crafts functions as an economic sector. It also makes it possible to identify shared and segment specific needs, examine workforce and business conditions, understand barriers related to space, production, pricing, and market access, and better assess the economic and cultural role of each area in greater detail.