Dinghies, not Battleships

When the NEA report on arts audiences was released mid-June 2008, the corporate media was pretty quiet about it. Corporate media has no vested interest in the arts. There is little profit to be made by reporting on the arts, in general, because arts organizations do not advertise and this is critically important to newspapers and broadcast television these days.

But the news from the NEA was important. And the news was bad. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, "American audiences for the arts are getting older and their numbers are declining." Dramatic stuff. And those were only the headlines.

This same report has been released five times since 1982 - roughly once every five years. The data collection has been culled from cultural institutions, for the most part the people who receive funding from the NEA. This report, however, collected some data about audiences' use of the internet and "other forms of arts participation."

The report must be carefully read to understand the context of the headlines. There is no substitute for reading the whole report, but here are a few teaser summaries that bear quotation here, if only to encourage you to download the pdf document.

Between 1982 and 2008, attendance at performing arts such as classical music, jazz, opera, ballet, musical theater, and dramatic plays has seen double-digit rates of decline.

Audiences for jazz and classical music are substantially older than before. In 1982, jazz concerts drew the youngest adult audience (median age 29). In the 2008 survey, the median age of jazz concert-goers was 46 – a 17-year increase. Since 1982, young adult (18-24) attendance rates for jazz and classical music have declined the most, compared with other art forms.

When cultural institutions show serious declines in attendance, everyone should be concerned since a portion of our tax dollars are supporting these expensive enterprises. When they are failing, our system of subsidy is somehow failing.

One of the major rationales for government support of the arts is that it will stimulate private donations and audience access. Although this report does not address charitable donations, it does paint a grim picture about audience engagement.

I focus my attention on the classical music portions of the report because I think these audiences are the people who listen to my music. The conclusions shared in this report are much more dire than the typical audience-is-getting-older hand-wringing exercise. This report unearths data, and it should not be discounted or ignored, that 45-54 year olds are not continuing to classical music. The heart of the demographic that has traditionally supported classical music institutions are not showing up.

And you'll remember what Sol Hurok, the famous impresario and artist manager, would say: "if they don't want to come, nothing will stop them."

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I have a question for the NEA: is this report about audiences or about cultural institutions? I suspect, based on how data is collected, that cultural institutions are the primary focus. I suggest that this approach is upside-down.

Cultural institutions are not culture. If the institutions are not reflecting the content and the excitement of our culture their audience will decline. We should not conclude that our culture is in decline because the symphony orchestra's audiences are shrinking. We should assume that the symphony orchestra is not keeping up with what is going on in the culture.

I know this is dangerous territory but I believe the NEA's radar is picking up only battleships and the little dinghies bobbing on the water have no presence at all. Those dinghies are all those "other forms of art participation" that are harder to document.

New, small enterprises are only possible when large, established enterprises are slow to adapt to changes in the culture. This is not a particularly important insight. This is what economists might call the marketplace at work. Coffee houses, church music series, house and parlor concerts, nightclubs, salons, and the powerful presence of the internet are where new enterprises are taking place. They do not receive NEA subsidies because they are able to support themselves with sweat equity and ticket admission.

Audiences are voting with their feet. If the NEA report wants to measure audiences, they should stop watching the institutions and start paying attention to what people are doing with their time and money. That will take a better radar, I think.