{"id":1784,"date":"2015-01-02T16:21:43","date_gmt":"2015-01-03T00:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/?p=1784"},"modified":"2015-01-02T16:21:43","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T00:21:43","slug":"enjoying-the-benefits-of-old-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2015\/01\/enjoying-the-benefits-of-old-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Enjoying the benefits of old money"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"nice<\/a>I don’t disagree with the assessment by Alec MacGillis<\/a> at Slate<\/em> that that rust-belt cities offer fine high culture opportunities at low prices: riches from the turn of the last century provided capital (physical, human, institutional) that created great organizations, that can, at least for the time being, survive on endowment funds and relatively low amounts of ‘earned income’. But my reaction is somewhat similar to the one I had<\/a> reading Christopher Knight<\/a>‘s recent piece arguing that museums ought to be ‘free’ – i.e. that the heavy costs of housing, maintaining, restoring, researching, acquiring and presenting art ought to be borne not by the people who actually come to the museum and view the art, but by someone else.<\/p>\n

Elite art is overwhelmingly consumed by, well, the elites, in terms of higher education and income, and yet somehow the expense of maintaining these organizations is seen as something to be borne by taxpayers at large, or from donors past and present. I generally resist the calls often found in social media and blogs about the need for ‘new business models’ in the arts, but if the sentiment I am seeing is the current<\/em> business model, then yes, eventually something new will be required. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra can’t go on forever selling $3 beers and $15 tickets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t disagree with the assessment by Alec MacGillis at Slate that that rust-belt cities offer fine high culture opportunities at low prices: riches from the turn of the last century provided capital (physical, human, institutional) that created great organizations, that can, at least for the time being, survive on endowment funds and relatively low […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-issues","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/baltimore.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dIW5-sM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":513,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2013\/03\/how-two-part-pricing-works\/","url_meta":{"origin":1784,"position":0},"title":"How two-part pricing works","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In the previous post we set out the basic idea behind price discrimination: your potential audience has different maximum prices they are willing to pay for what you have on offer (their \"reservation prices\") and you want to find a way to get individuals to pay something close to their\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2013\/03\/how-two-part-pricing-works\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"and pricey beer...","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/no-cover-292x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1365,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/06\/dynamic-pricing-at-the-zoo\/","url_meta":{"origin":1784,"position":1},"title":"Dynamic pricing at the zoo","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"June 20, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Indianapolis Zoo has adopted dynamic pricing. The policy is combined with increased differentiation in prices between low-demand weekdays and high-demand weekends, and a general increase in prices arising from the increased demand that will flow from the new orangutang exhibit. The Indiana Business Journal reports: The zoo expects the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"come see me on a cloudy Tuesday","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Orangutang.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Orangutang.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Orangutang.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":854,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2013\/06\/the-enduring-mystery-of-scalpers\/","url_meta":{"origin":1784,"position":2},"title":"The enduring mystery of scalpers","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"June 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I posted re scalpers a few weeks ago. The forthcoming New York Times magazine has a story on ticket resale. It is, well, unsatisfying. The problem at hand is this: if so much money is to be made through ticket resale, why have the artists or concert promoters not done\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"face in the crowd","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/tom-petty-300x298.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":674,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2013\/04\/the-bottom-of-the-hourglass\/","url_meta":{"origin":1784,"position":3},"title":"The bottom of the hourglass","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"April 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"At Reuters, Peter Rudegeair writes: What\u2019s a retailer to do with a widening\u00a0gap\u00a0between rich and poor customers?\u00a0Starbucks\u00a0is the latest chain to target America\u2019s \u201chourglass economy.\u201d By cutting 10% off its grocery-store coffee bags while keeping in place the price hikes it put in place in its caf\u00e9s\u00a0last year, Starbucks is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"modern economy","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/296px-wooden_hourglass_3-148x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1170,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/03\/taxing-music-downloads\/","url_meta":{"origin":1784,"position":4},"title":"Taxing Music Downloads","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Europeans have been able to avoid high home-country tax rates on downloads of songs and books by purchasing through Luxembourg. 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Slate's Alison Griswold writes: In a paper published last summer on strategic consumer behavior, a pair of researchers found that advance, online purchases of discounted airline tickets were disproportionately\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"so civilized","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/airplane.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/airplane.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/airplane.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1788,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions\/1788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}