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News & ArtsThursday, December 10, 2009
Arts / Theater Art Attendance in the Toilet
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 4:48 PM
According to a new report from the NEA:
A new report released by the National Endowment for the Arts said that the number of American adults attending arts and cultural events has sunk to its lowest level since 1982, which was when the NEA began conducting the poll.The study, which was organized in partnership with the Census Bureau, noted that the downward trend was at least partially due to the deteriorating economic conditions of the last two years, including the rise in the price of gasoline and an overall drop in consumer spending.
But it also emphasized larger shifts in the American public's relationship to the arts. The report, which uses data collected in 2008, said that the share of adults who attended at least one arts event was 34.6%, down from 39.4% in 2002, which was the last time the survey was conducted.
Moreover, those who did attend arts events did so less frequently. The report found that the average number of attendances per individual was 5.2 in 2008, down from 6.1 in 2002.
Always be closing: everywhere.
2
I guess all those years of cutting funding to the arts have paid off big dividends in ignorance. Hooray!
3
Part of the problem has to be how crappy "art" has become. I recently did an art crawl in NYC and Brooklyn and it can be shocking what crap people are doing and asking everyone to respect and admire it.
Spend a bit of time in Seattle galleries and the, ugg, museum and you will be hard pressed to find real innovation or quality. So much childish crap, and the art industry expectation that everyone should cheer and spend it close to retarded.
Spend a bit of time in Seattle galleries and the, ugg, museum and you will be hard pressed to find real innovation or quality. So much childish crap, and the art industry expectation that everyone should cheer and spend it close to retarded.
4
@1 yeah, there are a lot of problems with the survey. For example, it considers attending opera, classical, latin and jazz music to be "arts participation" but ignores hiphop, rock, and other popular genres. Basically, the agency doesn't fully view contemporary forms and genres that grew out of youth-based social-critique as fully legitimate forms of art on par with the more traditional models.
Rocco's biggest task as NEA is going to be changing that mindset.
Rocco's biggest task as NEA is going to be changing that mindset.
5
And does this even take into account people who walk out halfway through the show? How much has Brendan personally shaved off the national total person-hours of art attendance this way?
6
But guess what -- in 1982 there was no WEB !
Now everyone is a designer, author, graphic artist...at work!
7
I just took a break from banging out term papers to go see the school production of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. It rocked, by the way.
9
Isn't art going out the door along with other outmoded concepts like "free time" and "social life" and "spending money."
10
Mr. Kiley, always remember two things: America is a giant High School where the Arts are an elective, not a requirement, and so are unnecessary for 'graduation'--and secondly, art invariably reveals much, much more about the viewer than the artist...
12
Good things to remember, Mr. Ballard. Though your second proposition is only sometimes true. Typically, there's an inverse relationship between the quality of the work and whose innards it illuminates.
13
I think the problem is the NEA records "culturally significant events', which is upper class code for "high priced arts events the rabble are barely permitted to attend".
Yeah, those are down, fancy theaters are closing, but there are lots of low-priced events that everyone else goes to.
Just not a lot of ballet or opera or stuff like that.
Yeah, those are down, fancy theaters are closing, but there are lots of low-priced events that everyone else goes to.
Just not a lot of ballet or opera or stuff like that.
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