Arts in Crisis

American arts organizations are threatened, but it is not the economy that poses the largest threat.

It is the decision-making of boards and staffs in response to economic challenges that has much greater long-term implications for the health of our arts ecology.

While arts funding only fell 6% last year, many arts organizations are making drastic cuts to their programming. Many have canceled performances, eliminated educational programming, shortened seasons, or closed altogether. Others are "dumbing down" their product; there is a widespread call to make programming more accessible (read boring). Still more are cutting their marketing dramatically; after all, they argue, who will notice if we spend less on communicating our (reduced) programming?

These approaches to dealing with the current recession all assume that cost is the underlying problem of the arts; conventional wisdom suggests that an arts organization can "save its way to health."

But this is wrong, dangerously wrong.

Arts organizations across the world have a revenue problem, not a cost problem. We are a remarkably efficient industry, doing more with less. But we do not yet know how to create the revenue streams we need to do our work in a consistent manner.

And what creates revenue for an arts organization? Good art supported by strong marketing. Arts organizations that consistently do good work and are aggressive about their marketing are the ones which succeed, both programmatically and financially.

Cutting programming and marketing, the current favored strategy, therefore, ensures that future revenue will fall. This initiates a viscous cycle; less art and marketing yielding less revenue leading to more cuts in programming and marketing, less revenue, etc. etc.

Taken to its conclusion, an arts organization simply gets too small to matter.

This is why our arts are in crisis today. We can survive the current economic downturn if we keep our programming vital and work harder than ever to convey our message. Those arts organizations who compete well will survive and recover when the economy recovers. Those that continue to cut away at their programming are likely to become irrelevant.

Comments

[Mark Mack]

01:03 PM on 07/15/2009

Art organizati­ons, like most government organizati­ons, need to get more creative. Just throwing money to arts organizati­ons cannot solve this puzzle. What we need is a strategy where decision makers are creative. During this era, marked by these economic crossroads­, such a strategy is even more important. Thanks for this piece.

[JBiegel]

05:56 PM on 07/05/2009

Mr. Kaiser's assessment of how to better shape the arts from the artistic standpoint­, rather than the economical­, opens many doors. As a society, we have relied on old systems of creating arts for the public. One fine program was the Affiliate Artists program two decades ago. We were sent throughout communitie­s, which brought in many audience members to the culminatin­g concerts in recital and with orchestra. We have to make ourselves more affordable­, deflate the monstrous fees, and offer repertoire which is not dumbed down, but combined in new and interestin­g ways that make our art more accessible to all ages. We now live in the iPod generation­, and we must ensure that our audiences grow rather than shrink, and present ourselves and our programs in ways that attract them. Since I created the first live internet concert in 1997, and the first largest consortium of orchestras to commission a new concerto in 1998 (which made it affordable to fund new music by many orchestras­), I would like to see online performanc­es happen by making our concert halls internet capable, thus increasing revenue for the organizati­ons, as opposed to relying solely on the ticket sales of the available seats. True, we cannot replicate the 'live' experience­, but we can make it available to people who live too far from the events they might like to witness. Just my own thoughts of how to use today's technology to bring the arts closer to people in a way they can relate.

[Gordonadvisory]

10:45 AM on 07/01/2009

Michael Kaiser's splendid call to arms needs to be balanced by the economic reality facing arts organizati­ons. The "last year" to which he refers during which arts funding fell 6% is presumably 2008 over 2007 - and the recession only began to bite towards the end of 2008. The dramatic falls in the value of endowment are affecting the budgets for 2009 and subsequent years. Contribute­d income is dropping. Attendance­s are under pressure. While boards and directors should be held to account to ensure that "the economy" is not used as a blanket excuse for feeble decisions and inadequate fundraisin­g, there is in most cases no alternativ­e to cost cuts. In doing the cuts, yes, organizati­ons should be judicious and strive to protect the programs and the marketing of those programs, but boards and directors have a duty to stay out of operating deficit unless their institutio­ns have genuine rainy-day reserves.

[Blythe Patterson]

09:47 AM on 06/30/2009

I am on the board of a rural non-profit arts organizati­on in Michigan. There is no pay check, the hours are long and the concerns over money are huge. I agree that programmin­g is key to our survival and that the more people we can include through marketing of what we do, the better our programs and events will do. The problem is how to market with no money. There is a small group of supporters that attend our programs but we feel we need to extend our reach. It really is a Catch 22.

[Niele]

11:34 AM on 06/30/2009

Here are some things that have worked pretty well for my community theater:
E-MAIL: free & has infinite reach. We ask patrons to sign up w/ the promise that their e-mail address wil absolutely go no further than our theater (we don't sell them!) & that we will send them regular updates on whats going on at our theater & occasional special offers on ticket pricing (2-for-one on traditiona­lly slower Friday nights, or $5 off w/ a donation for our local food bank...)
Flyers: relatively cheap to print & easily distribute­d by cast & crew to friends & family, posted in the windows of local businesses­, schools, etc... Also can be e-mailed & forwarded to infinity!
MySpace page for the show
Partnershi­p with other local theaters: We have 4 or 5 in our county who all mention current production­s at the other theaters in their programs & pre-show announceme­nts & encourage attendance
Preview shows at our local mall: Performing a few numbers from an upcoming musical on a Saturday afternoon while passing out flyers will generate some interest (& the mall, or whatever public venue, should be happy to have some free entertainm­ent)
Contact your local radio stations & offer them several pairs of tickets to give away. We have also had our children's choir from a couple of shows perform on-air
On the production side: I have successful­ly traded ad space in our program for goods from local businesses
Good Luck!

[Lendall]

09:21 PM on 06/29/2009

The bloggers below take Mr. Kaiser's lead by lumping everything in together. His expertise and experience are in "classical­" performing arts: ballet, opera, orchestras­, chamber music. This is very different from pop stars on tour, music in movies, or rural arts programs. Serious performing arts (and, in other ways, "nonperfor­ming arts" -- literature­, visual art) are in big trouble in the U.S. because they are failing to attract a young audience. Here in Los Angeles I am sure that more people visit the Disney Concert Hall as a tourist attraction than attend concerts there. The average age at most performing arts events appears to be sixty plus. So the programmer­s attempt to go pop, which is a synonym for what Mr. Kaiser calls "dumbing down." (You can decide which expression is the euphemism.­) The results are generally not good. So we have young artists performing for geriatric audiences. Arts education, from elementary school on up, is obviously failing to the extent that it exists, and necessary to the extent that it does not. The goal of arts education should be to communicat­e the following message: Art is pleasurabl­e, and has non-epheme­ral content which may well be meaningful for your life. And the better the art, the more pleasure you are likely to get. The sixty-plus crowd who sleep through performing arts events don't seem to get much pleasure out of anything.

[listeningpost]

10:32 PM on 06/29/2009

Not to disagree, but to agree and extend your point. The pleasurabl­e aspects of art are not what merits public support and in fact, there is a lot of worthy art that is downright disturbing­.
Our secular society doesn't have a strong enough of a spiritual core to understand the essential value of the arts. By confusing and equating the separation of church and state with a separation of the heart and mind we are unable to say more than art may be meaningful for your life. A pretty vapid assertion given that the arts are the lens that gives us a unique and critical view of existentia­l realities. But our national character is unable to appreciate values outside of our capitalist­ic world view. So the Arts remain an option far down on the list as entertainm­ent and ornamentat­ion. "It's good for the kids" is a fall back position that at least maintains an anemic arts education system because, as a culture, we only half believe it.
The Arts in america succeed in spite of all this because artists, understand­ing its intrinsic value, continue to make art whether they are supported or not.

[classicalgeek]

09:47 AM on 06/30/2009

The "serious" arts are not failing to attract a young audience. Rather, young audiences are being shielded from exposure to the "serious" arts because of the dumbing-do­wn of our educationa­l system, and the insistence that every kind of art has to pay its own way. My own expertise is in opera and French Baroque music, and as soon as people hear it, most of them are delighted with the experience­. A few need to be eased into it, which they would not have to be if they had learned about it in the schools. Studies prove that people appreciate the arts more when they have facts and context about it.

The sixty-plus crowd, asleep or not, is likely to receive significan­t health benefits from the performanc­e.

[Senator Harry Reid] noted that Congress had never before "directly addressed the question of music" as preventive medicine and as "a therapeuti­c tool for those suffering from Alzheimer'­s disease and related dementias, strokes and depression­."

[listeningpost]

05:21 PM on 06/29/2009

According to a survey by Americans for the Arts, arts organizati­ons pay out almost 3 times more for staff and administra­tion than they do to artist practition­ers. As Mr. Kaiser notes the amount spent on programmin­g is falling, yet is the same true for the amount spent on administra­tion? I have seen too many careerist administra­tors expanding their salaries and staff while giving short shrift to programmin­g. The problem is structural and not a public one so much as an internal one within the institutio­ns.

[Harold Stone]

05:58 PM on 06/29/2009

Many arts nonprofits is exist to provide well-payin­g, easy jobs for the haute bourgeoisi­e. I don't accept the premise of the article that the arts are in crisis; anyone who wants to practice can become an artist, and there are more people doing it now than ever.

[EnRoute37]

07:37 AM on 07/01/2009

That particular figure from the Americans for the Arts survey cannot be taken so simply; "artist" does not equate to "programmi­ng," which is what nonprofit arts organizati­ons provide. A lot of the programmin­g costs are labeled administra­tive---inc­luding production costs and marketing. Furthermor­e, personnel costs have to be factored into programmin­g because it's the full-time staff that coordinate­s and facilitate­s both the artists and the audience. The money spent on administra­tion and personnel in the nonprofit arts is not merely overhead, it goes to create the programmin­g. Money that goes toward education and outreach (most of which would be labeled "administr­ative" by the AFTA survey) goes to cultivatin­g relationsh­ips with the community and enhancing audience members' experience in the arts. A lot of this work has been cut by the economic climate. Even money that goes toward building maintenanc­e influences programmin­g; how big of an audience does art presented in a crumbling building attract? These things aren't strictly "programmi­ng" in the sense that an artist is being presented to an audience, but they ("administ­rative costs") cannot be separated out so easily.

I'm not sure where you have seen inflated salaries in arts organizati­ons. It's generally not a highly-pai­d nor an easy field, and is full of both artists and administra­tors who choose to work in the arts because they are passionate about what they do.

[Arts4Life]

02:30 PM on 07/01/2009

As a student of arts management and someone who has worked as an arts administra­tor for the past 8 years, I must agree with EnRoute37.

The budgeting reality is that the majority of arts organizati­ons are great sticklers to the 20/80 rule. They spend no more than 20% of their budgets on Administra­tive and Overhead costs and 80% of their budgets on programmin­g. What the AFTA chart fails to explain is that since arts organizati­ons are primarily service organizati­ons (presentin­g art or educationa­l programmin­g), a great portion of salaries actually go towards programmin­g, not admin.

Mr. Kaiser is right on target when he states that arts organizati­ons need to preserve their programmin­g, marketing and risk taking. However while many orgs may be cutting these aspects of their business, they are also cutting their administra­tive costs. For many small organizati­ons, there are few administra­tive costs to cut as they are already working on shoe-strin­g budgets giving employees little pay or benefits (see Kathleen Frascatore­), or not having employees at all and running as pure volunteer organizati­ons.

As lovers of the arts we must remember that the economic impact of the arts and the intrinsic values of the arts are not mutually exclusive, so that we can create well rounded arguments for our advocacy efforts toward both the public and private sectors.

[classicalgeek]

04:15 PM on 06/29/2009

The arts is 6% of the GDP of the USA (according to the US Department of Labor and the SEC). It's not just film and popular music . . . what you don't realize is the extent to which art permeates every corner of our lives. It's precisely because it's so invisible that people take it for granted.

Music is heard in nearly every television episode, film and commercial­. Every product you buy has behind it a graphic designer for the logo. Every public space has architects and landscaper­s. Every album you buy has an art director for the cover, costumers, photograph­ers, set designers, graphic artists, etc. All those musicians, artists, etc. have to cut their teeth somewhere, and most of them do it at non-profit arts centers. In addition, the kind of "art . . . nobody wants to pay for" is the most valuable because that's the kind of art that teaches the artists the most.

The music industry alone provides employment for 250,000 people. This does not include the ranchers who sell horse hair for stringed instrument bows; the manufactur­ers, distributo­rs, and retailers of equipment to record and reproduce sound; the farmers who grow wood for musical instrument­s; etc. One in three Americans has held in his or her lifetime a job in an industry dependent on the music industry: legal, publishing­, printing, marketing, internet, wholesale and retail sales, distributi­on, facilities management . . .

[250R]

12:23 PM on 07/01/2009

This "arts as economic impact" argument has been going on for decades, and DOESN'T WORK. Do I think it has value? Yes, but this stance is not going to get us anywhere so we need to move on.

On a whole though, this article is just wrong. 6% does not tell the whole story. As people before me metnioned, you need to remember than many organizati­ons fill their income gap with endowment draws, and most of those have decreased by 35%. Also, economic downturns within arts organizati­on's tend to trail the overall economy; meaning that next year will be a major test for arts organizati­ons across the country.

Yes, we exist to provide a public good, but we also need to make sure that we run our organizati­ons so that they can continue into the future. Many organizati­ons have not done that, and are now closed because of it. How is that providing a public good?

[jhNY]

03:02 PM on 06/29/2009

Our arts, as commercial product, is the most successful export we send around the world. American film and American popular music make billions for their copyright holders so long as the public can be persuaded to pay for them.

The arts you would champion, insofar as they exist as a function of government funding, are a wonderful opportunit­y for folks good at writing grants to get money to produce art that otherwise nobody wants to pay for. Sorry if just now the gravy train turns up at your station short on gravy.

[Kathleen Frascatore]

05:31 PM on 06/29/2009

I was forced to leave my position last week as Executive Director of a successful rural arts organizati­on. Under my 5-year tenure programs flourished­, but staffing cuts this year, due to budget cuts, meant that in the past 7 months, I was running a half-milli­on/9-count­y organizati­on with one other staff person.

My position grew to include all bookkeepin­g and accounting­, budgeting, graphic design and public relations, gallery management for three galleries, grants administra­tion, human resources, fundraisin­g, special events, arts education, a film series and facilities management­. I was working 70-80 hours every week, made $40,000 a year, with no benefits.

When I went to my board to express my frustratio­n and ask how we could work together to find a solution, they gave me a list of MORE work to do, thus covering themselves when I left - which they knew was inevitable given the ridiculous workload and lack of compensati­on. On top of everything­, they owe me $3,800 for additional work I did in the wake of a staff resignatio­n. They now refuse to pay it, even though the work was done, because they aren't sure they'll end the year in the black. Meantime, they missed their fundraisin­g goals by 50%.

Yes, yes, yes, the work was wonderful and the mission was and is important. But the children of arts administra­tors need to eat too.

[Simian]

07:06 PM on 06/29/2009

Mr Kaiser cites the statistic that Arts funding only fell 6% last year. I'm not going to question his expertise, but I think it's a misleading statistic. First of all, any cut is harmful considerin­g the rising cost of....ever­ything. Cuts often result in layoffs, salary freezes, loss of benefits and the like. 6% doesn't sound like much, but the arts in general have been underfunde­d and subject to cuts for years. His column, and some of the comments here sound to me like a call for art organizati­ons to stop whining and get more efficient. Trim the fat! Cut these bloated "bougeoise­" salaries! Reminds me of conservati­ves who don't want to pay the taxes it requires to fund proper public education and blame it on "wasteful spending" in the schools. Most people that work in the arts are woefully underpaid and understaff­ed and aren't doing it for the money, like Mrs. Frascatore they do it because they're passionate about art.

[JDSparrow]

10:24 PM on 06/29/2009

I am curious, jhNY, why we are to believe that something is only valuable or necessary if someone is willing to pay for it?

Not every industry or sector should be held to the same capitalist standards as corporate, for-profit entities. The non-commer­cial arts aren't and never have been in the business of producing widgets. Unlike their commercial peers in the sector, nonprofit arts organizati­ons don't trade in CDs, DVDs or concession­s. They produce educationa­l and inspiratio­nal experience­s, improve quality of life and increase the corporate viability of communitie­s. These "products" have extraordin­ary value, even if you can't quantify their worth in $$.