In the November 4 edition of Green Room, published by the nonprofit Dance USA, Steven Libman reports, “While the Great Recession is technically over as measured by economists, millions of Americans are still out of work … and some sectors of the economy still have not recovered. What about the arts? … According to David Snead, vice president of marketing and communications for the esteemed New York Philharmonic, ‘My short answer is the recession is over for us pretty much the same way it is over for most other sectors. Things are better than one to three years ago, but not back to pre-recession.’ The ‘not back to pre-recession’ comment can signal that the landscape has changed forever for the arts community in much the same way that a natural landscape, i.e. a beach, is permanently changed after a major hurricane.… Mark Nerenhausen, director of the Janklow Arts Leadership Program at Syracuse University, feels that a permanent change may have occurred. ‘We in the arts are desperately trying to take things back to the way they were,’ he stated.… Perhaps we need to leave those previous goals behind and focus on the future by establishing new benchmarks for measuring success, because we never really will get back to where we were. We need to create a new robust future for the arts community.” The article proposes a number of steps to take and questions to ask in this new landscape.
Posted November 5, 2013
