By Jim McCarthy Dec 10, 2009 0 comments

No Hiding the Decline Here

Today in the LA Times’ blog Culture Monster, some NEA stats were revealed about the drops in attendance in several traditional forms of art performances, including classical music, ballet and jazz, and also art gallery and museum attendance.

Here’s the key tidbit:

“Nearly 35% of U.S. adults – or about 78 million people – attended an art museum or an arts performance in 2008, said the report. That’s down from about 40% in 1982, 1992 and 2002. In particular, audiences for classical and jazz concerts have declined by double digits since 1982, the most of all the art forms.”

That’s not great, but naturally, I have a few things to say:

First, this is mostly a problem for the organizations and institutions, not for the marketplace or the event-going public.  As the traditional organizations have failed to innovate or adjust, people have taken their attentions elsewhere.  For example, there’s been an infinity percent increase in the number of people attending European-style animal-free circuses since 1982 because Cirque Du Soleil hadn’t invented it yet.

Second, why draw a bright line around these genres?  Not too far below the surface of this survey is a kind of benevolent arrogance on the part of the NEA in not measuring things like rock and pop music performances.  Why?  One suspects it’s because these things are more popular (and therefore have more commercial value).  This in turn creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: if we can’t measure things that are popular because then by definition they are not ‘the arts,’ then yes, ‘the arts’ will always be declining in popularity.

Third, part of the reason for this is that in the last several years in particular, most live organizations have chosen high-ticket prices over high patron volume.  It’s a simple trade-off: lower prices for the same thing sells more units.  If you want to capture more value per patron, you can raise the price, but inevitably you will sell fewer tickets.  Make no mistake, either strategy can be right or wrong, but the live entertainment (and arts) industry has gone strongly in the high price direction in the last decade or so because there was good demand for these shows.  Naturally, over the last year or so, that’s adjusted to a great degree.

I’ll talk soon about the role of arts education in all this, but let me preview my thoughts by saying correlation and causality are not the same.  Umbrellas and rain appear at the same time, but umbrellas don’t cause rain.  You get the idea.

So while this is a very real problem, it’s not, in my view, a question of fundamental interest in getting out to performances.  It’s a question of these most high art organizations and their attitude toward audience.

I’ll continue on this tomorrow.

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