You might not expect the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts to suggest that there could be too many nonprofit arts organizations, and that those organizations might be overstaffed. But Rocco Landesman is rather fond of saying unexpected things.
In his latest blog post, Landesman points to the five percent decline in arts participation measured by the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). Then he notes the 23% increase in not-for-profit arts organizations, and a rate of growth for not-for-profit performing arts organizations that’s 60% greater than the total U.S. population. Says he:
…anyone who hears these two numbers has to ask about balancing the equation, which means either increasing demand or, yes, maybe decreasing supply.
While it’s a frightening question for arts leaders already in an economic pit, it’s a useful question for a policy leader to ask, since the NEA has a few levers to pull in response — fewer grants, larger grants, focused research, national convenings, bully pulpit, and so on. But if we’re working to balance an equation, it’s probably a good idea to be sure we’ve got the right one. To get there, we need a few more variables.
First, demand in the arts is a complex thing. An individual participating in an event is certainly a part of demand (and it’s the part the SPPA seeks to measure). But a donor contributing to an organization is also evidence of demand. So is a volunteer board member giving time and attention to make that organization work. So is the collection of artists, technicians, and creative professionals that make the work. In fact, because of the expressive and collaborative nature of artistic enterprise, supply and demand have a way of merging together. Artists, board members, volunteers, and staff are consumers of the expressive opportunity, just as much as ticket buyers are.
Further, ”demand” for nonprofit arts endeavors also has to reach beyond the population currently ready and able to experience the work. If a large part of an arts organization’s mission is stewardship and preservation of heritage, that population also has to include those not yet ready or able to experience the work, those not yet born, perhaps those who are generations from being born. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, for example, was a notorious market failure if the only ”demand” variable was its contemporary audience. Generations of audiences were required to find the true balance of that equation.
Landesman offers a few responses to the possible imbalance of supply and demand. And of course, the one that I noticed the most was the one in my wheelhouse — the management infrastructure of arts and culture. Says he:
Do we need three administrators for every artist? Resident theaters in this country began as collectives of artists. They have become collectives of arts administrators. Do we need to consider becoming more lightly institutionalized in order to get more creativity to more audiences more often? It might also allow us to pay artists more.
Here, again, a really useful debate about balance and allocation of resources. And here, again, we’d want to be sure we’re all balancing the same cluster of variables. To a large extent, the ability of artists to be paid has grown alongside the individuals and institutions that create the opportunity for income. Whether these individuals are artists themselves is secondary to the question of what motivates and directs their energy. Are the individuals/institutions focused on creating opportunity for compelling work, productive space, eager audiences, and fair compensation to the creative team? Or are they focused on self preservation and protection of turf? There could never be too many of the former. But there may well be too many of the latter.
There’s certainly valuable and essential conversation around the supply and demand of cultural offering in the United States. And it’s refreshing and exciting to have that conversation nudged from the very top of the NEA. Here’s hoping the provocation leads to a more public conversation about which variables, exactly, we’re working to balance.
Hi Andrew,
Big follower of you blog here! I wrote back to Mr. Landesman, and I want to engage with you too….
“The arts sector is overbuilt” begs the question: what is the arts sector? I think there are two sectors. There is real-time artistic research: artists, institutions, and projects that are at the forefront of our cultural understanding. Then are what I call the “science museums,” artists and organizations devoted to disseminating the discoveries of the recent past to a wide audience. No one would confuse Philly’s Franklin Institute with cutting-edge cancer research at Wistar Institute. But it happens all the time in the arts.
Artistic “science museums” should be accountable to audience numbers. Artistic researchers should be accountable to other impacts and measures (peer-reviewed science journals might be a helpful model.)
Four issues come up with this:
1) In the arts sector, science museums require a LOT more capital investment and operating support.
2) Most artistic science museums don’t want to admit that is what they are. Organizations want to believe they are cutting-edge.
3) Many artists and organizations work in both “research” and “science museum” modes, so it requires a deft and nuanced ability to plan and assess differently.
4) Almost everyone at the table in the national discussions I am part of comes from a science museum. And most of them don’t know it.
I think the research infrastructure, the actual support for artists to make and communicate about present-time discoveries (our science journals and peer reviews and conferences), is radically underbuilt.
And that may be part of why we see declining audiences.
I don’t believe the research infrastructure is underbuilt at all. It just manifests itself in different modes of expression and media, not all of which fit into the science museums. But playwrights create properties for film, television and books, as well as for the theatre. Composers don’t just write for the concert hall, but also compose film scores, jingles and other occasional music, etc.
The entire administrative level in the arts and education needs to be pared back and paid less in the current hard times….
Hello Andrew —
Yes indeed Chairman Landsman has kicked a hornet’s nest by suggesting our arts sector is ”overbuilt.” But whose job is it to cultivate demand? Can the arts ever be sustained by marketplace ”survival of the fittest” mechanisms?
Similar conversations are occurring in other countries, such as Britain, struggling with deficit reduction plans and looking at art institutions and libraries as ”overbuilt” anachronisms no longer worthy of public support.
I call to our attention a speech given by Phillip Pullman, author of the highly regarded trilogy ”His Dark Materials,” on this topic given to protest the Oxfordshire county council’s plan to stop financing 20 or its 43 libraries. Mr. Pullman defended not just the value of reading but of the open democratic space enshrined in public libraries and noted that libraries remind us that ”there are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about…things that stand for civic decency and public respect for imagination and knowledge and the value of simple delight.” Yes indeed Mr. Pullman, there are things that stand above profit but how can they be sustained if the marketplace disagrees with that valuation?
Andrew, how can we touch the population you describe as ”not yet ready or able to experience the work?” I believe arts learning is a vital path to drawing more Americans into engagement with the culture around them and other cultures they can encounter and better understand through the universal language of the arts (the other is nurturing the pro-am movement, one of the more hopeful signs in the current artistic production/consumption landscape.) Let’s talk more about how to improve and ”fatten” the infrastructure for arts learning and amateur engagement before discussing how to ”thin out” the arts sector.
Maybe what’s required is different infrastructure and instead of arguing whether we are or are not cutting edge, look more carefully at who is the future audience. It’s no secret that the majority of theatre and classical music (including opera) attract people of a certain age. Are we changing the offerings to appeal to the younger/future audience? As it happens there was a short news item about what a couple of theatre companies in Vancouver B.C. are doing. You can find the story here:
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2011/02/02/bc-arts-new-audiences.html
One of the points missed by many is that the large growth of non-profit arts organizations lies in areas not previously served. There are new community theatres in places that never had a community theatre before, preservation groups that are trying to save a historic theatre before it meets the wrecking ball, and support organizations for the fine arts programs in schools where the PTA/PTO doesn’t sufficiently address that segment of the school’s operations.
Arts Advocacy groups can be a real boon to local economies and schools in that they can educate the general public about the benefits of seeing, hearing, and participating in arts programs.
We don’t need to ‘thin the herd’, we need to use the herd to build public understanding and funding. For more information about how to effect change, see: http://www.theatreface.com/profiles/blogs/advocacy-for-the-arts-do-it
How many arts orgs do we need? That’s not a question government can answer.
A reason for the vitality of the economy — including the arts economy — is the entrepreneurialism driven by the free market.
The right question for government isn’t “how many arts orgs should there be?” but, “how much should government contribute to any one arts business?” The need for greater efficiency in these challenging economic times is not a reason to expand government’s role in the economy – non-profit or otherwise.
Hello Andrew,
While I am a proponent of and encourage artist-led and managed organizations, I would like to share a bit of what I see everyday in our offices at Pacific Symphony.
It’s easy enough to understand that when another concert is added to a season, a musician will work additional hours and be paid more (this is especially the case when working under union rules. In smaller organizations where this may not the case.) For some reason, this clear-cut idea of more work = more money is not so easy to understand when it comes to staff time.
For example, Pacific Symphony doing its best to challenge itself with innovative programming- creating new and alternative programs to engage our audience. However, rarely is there a new staff person to take on the additional tasks required. And there is no denying that every new program or idea simply takes additional man-hours. Program design, developing constituent buy-in, marketing, and program implementation are huge additional activities. Our staff simply absorbs these additional activities – rarely is someone hired to implement take on the additional work.
As robust as our organization is, every person on staff is a director, manager, and coordinator. Every person wears at least 3 or 4 hats. We do our best to be efficient with our time and our money, but it is a fact that what you see onstage is the tip of the iceberg. There must be other organizations that I am not aware of that have more staff than they need, but in this economy, I just don’t believe it.
I do believe, as I mentioned earlier, in finding ways to utilize our talents and assets across the organization so that there may be opportunities for qualified musicians to support staff activities or even (dare I say it) qualified staff to support our arts endeavors, possibly through audience and community engagement activities. As long as it’s an us-vs-them conversation, the small pie that we keep trying to divide into smaller and smaller pieces between staff and artists will only keep getting smaller. It’s a death spiral waiting to happen – and already happening in some parts of the country.