Declining Arts Participation: A Topic for Broad-Based National Dialogue

For example, in the area called "classical music"--and remember, those responding to the survey identify the terms and categories, not the NEA--in 1982, the year of the first such study by the NEA, 13 percent of the U.S. population reported attending at least one classical music event. In 1992, that number was almost the same, 12.5 percent. In 2002 it was down to 11.6 percent. And in 2008, it stood at 9.3 percent. Opera had been holding its own, with numbers ranging from 3.0 percent to 3.3 percent in the earlier years, but was at 2.1 percent in 2008. Jazz, non-musical plays, and ballet all showed similar drops. Musical plays showed the smallest drop.

Delving further into the survey, one finds that the cliché about classical music audiences getting older is true--and may be escalating. According to the NEA study, the median age of classical music attendees was 40 in 1982, and is now 49! And there were significant drops not only in the 18-24 age group (a 37 percent decline), but even in the 45-54 age group (a 33 percent decline).

Adding to this is the economic pressure being faced across the country by orchestras and other performing arts organizations--I know the orchestra world better, so that is the one to which I can refer--and the picture is not encouraging. As attendance declines, so will contributed support, particularly as donors begin to feel that there is a growing estrangement between classical music and the American culture as a whole.

One retired orchestra administrator recently posited that there should be a big national meeting about the future of orchestras, and that anyone who ever managed an orchestra should be barred from attending, because we can't keep doing the same old things. While I agree that we must seriously consider change, that is clearly too drastic a way to do it. People who have managed orchestras do, in fact, know a lot. However, it may well be time to bring people who have managed orchestras together with a wide range of experts from other areas of life in America. That might include those in universities who study the consumption of culture in our country, and in universities that are educating the next generation of citizens. And it might include representatives from other art forms, as well as from areas of popular culture at whom some of us may instinctively (and wrongly) turn up our noses--areas such as broadcasting, electronic media, films, and the sports world. What's needed is an ongoing dialogue among all voices, exploring all ideas with an open mind, with provocative and even weird thinking to prod that dialogue.

If we believe that experiencing art has the possibility of being life-changing, we had better start working to assure the continuation of a healthy, vital, varied artistic life in America. I love the John Updike quote that the NEA puts at the head of its survey:

    Whatever art offered men and women of the previous eras,
    What it offers our own, it seems to me, is space -
    A certain breathing room for the spirit.


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A recent article in the Boston Globe might be of interest to readers of this blog. You can read it here: http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2009/10/18/

-Henry Fogel