On Thursday (9/26) on the WQXR website, Brian Wise reports, “As the U.S. population diversifies, and the fine arts compete for audiences with video games, movies and other entertainment, arts organizations are increasingly tasked with seeking out new communities. The National Endowment for the Arts on Thursday gave arts groups a blueprint of sorts, publishing a Survey of Public Participation in the Arts for 2012. … Surveying 37,000 adults, the NEA shows that attendance declined for traditional, main-line cultural forms—theater, museums and classical concerts—between 2008, the last survey period, and 2012. At the same time, audiences became more racially and ethnically diverse.… Across the board, arts attendance was down somewhat in 2012, with 33 percent of adults reporting that they participated in a ‘benchmark’ arts event. In 2008—just before the global recession hit into Americans’ spending habits—the same measurement was 34.6 percent.… Classical music audiences declined from 9.3 percent of adults in 2008 to 8.8 percent in 2012. [In the report, the NEA describes this change as “statistically insignificant.”] They also grew older: Adults ages 35 to 54 reduced their attendance while those 65 and up participated at the highest levels.”
On October 3, WQXR will host a panel discussion and webcast in which League President and CEO Jesse Rosen and other arts leaders will discuss the report.
Posted September 26, 2013
