The Pandemic's Impact on Arts Attendance: Report from the NEA

The Arts Participation Patterns in 2022, is a report released by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) analyzing the results of the 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA).

The report explores how American adults participated in various arts activities over a 12-month period ending in July 2022, including attending arts events, creating art, reading books, and consuming art through digital media. The document highlights key findings, demographic differences in attendance rates, and provides an overview of the survey's methodology. The report also examines trends in arts participation, particularly in comparison to previous SPPA surveys conducted in 2017 and 2012.

One of the most striking findings is the overall decline in arts attendance. Compared to 2017, the rate dropped by almost six percentage points.

Attendance at performing arts events not specifically listed in the survey actually rose. This category, which encompasses genres like rock, folk, country, rap, hip-hop, comedy, improv, magic shows, and circus acts, saw participation grow to 21 percent of adults. This suggests a potential shift in audience preferences towards more diverse and non-traditional art forms.

The survey also highlighted the growing influence of social media in promoting arts events. Over 17 percent of adults reported first learning about an event they attended through social media, while 15 percent learned through friends, neighbors, or coworkers. This underscores the importance of digital platforms for arts organizations seeking to connect with audiences and build excitement for their programming.

Book readership, unfortunately, continued its downward trend. Fewer than 50 percent of adults reported reading any book in the past year, a decline of four and six points from 2017 and 2012, respectively. Novels and short stories experienced a particularly steep drop, with the reading rate diminishing by 17 percent over the past decade. This decline is concerning, raising questions about the future of literature and the factors contributing to this trend.

While the 2022 SPPA reveals a mixed landscape for arts participation, it offers valuable insights into the evolving ways Americans engage with the arts. The data underscores the resilience of art making, the growing importance of digital platforms, and the potential shift in audience preferences towards more diverse and accessible art forms. As the arts sector continues to recover from the pandemic, understanding these trends is crucial for developing strategies to promote participation and ensure the arts remain a vital part of American life.

Breaking (when it means dance, not news): Links

Years ago when I worked at Ballet Hispanico I saw a dancer rehearsing wearing a t-shirt that read "I'm not a tomboy, I'm an athlete". The phrase stuck with me. I remember thinking that a variation of the shirt could easily be "I’m an athlete because I’m a dancer."

Since Breaking was announced as the latest addition to the Olympics that phrase has been on my mind. I've been pleased to see so much conversation on my feeds with Breaking being about joyful, curious, exciting subjects instead of the latest in news mayhem.

• B-Girl Ami Yuasa wins first-ever breaking Olympic gold medal. (YouTube)

• B-Boy Phil Wizard claims inaugural men's breaking gold at Paris Olympics. (YouTube)

• How Breaking Went From a Street Dance to an Olympic Sport. This summer, 32 athletes will compete in what's commonly known as breakdancing, a dance sport that combines athleticism and artistry. (Smithsonian Magazine)

• Dance Leads the Way as Art Meets Sport at the Cultural Olympiad. A program of arts events shown in conjunction with the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games looks at the relationship between art and sport. (New York Times)

• Fantastic feature explaining Breaking: More than 50 years since its inception, BREAKING will debut as an Olympic sport in Paris, where B-boys and B-girls will vie for gold and glory. (New York Times)

• How Will Breaking Be Scored at the Olympics? A panel of nine judges will apply Olympic rules to the dance form that originated as a free-flowing expression of hip-hop culture. (New York Times)

• What if All Dance Forms Were Considered Equal? At the Palais Garnier, ballet met hip-hop and beyond in a glittering Cultural Olympiad presentation of Saïdo Lehlouh's ever-evolving "Apaches." (New York Times)

• Once Sidelined, Breaking's B-Girls Now Throw Down at Center Stage. Women are competing in breaking in greater numbers and, thanks to better training and more opportunities, with more dynamic moves. (New York Times)

• The Surprise of the Olympics: Breakers' Delight. Breaking was invented by Black and brown kids, mostly male, in the Bronx in the 1970s. That it made Olympic history by opening with B-girls was everything. The logic of introducing breaking as a new competitive event aside, these female competitors, with their B-girl spirit and ethos, pulled the Olympic Games into the global here and now. (New York Times)

• A Viewer's Guide to Breaking at the Olympics. (Dance Magazine)

• Judging Breaking at the Olympics Is an Art, Not a Science. Breaking debuts as an Olympic sport at the Paris Games. To get there, the breaking community had to figure a way to objectively judge the subjective, while letting the dance remain a dance. (Wired)

• Don't Think Breakdancing Is a 'Real' Olympic Sport? The World Champ Agrees (Kinda) Phil Wizard, the current favorite for Olympic Gold, says it's an art and culture first. But if you're gonna hate, he'd like you to at least learn the proper terminology. (Wired)

• Poetry Was an Official Olympic Event for Nearly 40 Years. What Happened? Pierre de Coubertin hoped the modern Games would encourage the ancient Greek notion of harmony between "muscle and mind." (Smithsonian Magazine)

Immersive Experiences: Links

• Tribeca Games and Immersive 2023: How are immersive technologies changing the way we tell, view, and perceive compelling stories? (Wunderman Thompson Intelligence)

•  Vision Pro: What has Apple built, what is it for, what does it mean for Meta, and why does it cost $3,500? Check back in 2025. (Benedict Evans)

• Early Stats from the General Social Survey: How Virtual Arts Participation Fared in 2022: The arts module of the 2022 GSS was designed to track various types of arts activity among adults in the U.S. Unlike previous surveys, the module includes many questions about virtual participation in arts events. The module also asked respondents whether, at the time of the survey, they were taking part in such activities more or less often than when the pandemic was in its first year. (Arts Journal Blogs)

• NASA Is Behind New York’s Newest Immersive Art Show: The federal space agency has a surprisingly long history of art collaborations. (Observer)

• Some quick notes on Apple’s Vision Pro by Andy Matuschak: The hardware seems faintly unbelievable—a computer as powerful as Apple’s current mid-tier laptops (M2), plus a dizzying sensor/camera array with dedicated co-processor, plus displays with 23M 6µm pixels (my phone: 3M 55µm pixels; the PSVR2 is 32µm) and associated optics, all in roughly a mobile phone envelope.
But that kind of vertical integration is classic Apple. I’m mainly interested in the user interface and the computing paradigm. What does Apple imagine we’ll be doing with these devices, and how will we do it? (Andy’s working notes)

• Olfactory Overload: How it feels to have hyperosmia, a heightened sensitivity to smells, which can accompany autism. (The Polyphony)

• How your brain stays focused on conversations in a noisy room: The brain processes voices differently depending on the volume of the speaker and if the listener is focused on them. (New Scientist)

• Why Being in Nature Makes You Smarter, According to Neuroscientists: The scientific evidence is overwhelmingly clear: spending time outdoors boosts your brain function. (Outside)

• Why VR Photography Could Be the Next Big Thing: Pictures that let you see more; Apple’s new Vision Pro headset lets you take immersive photos and video; Canon is showing off a camera that lets you take 360-degree shots; The new technologies could boost the popularity of virtual reality photography. (Lifewire)

Arts and cultural economic activity accounted for 4.4% of U.S. GDP, $1 trillion, in 2021

Report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis:

Arts and cultural economic activity, adjusted for inflation, increased 13.7 percent in 2021 after decreasing 4.8 percent in 2020, according to statistics released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By comparison, the broader economy, as measured by real gross domestic product, increased 5.9 percent in 2021 after decreasing 2.8 percent in 2020.

Arts and cultural economic activity accounted for 4.4 percent of U.S. GDP, or $1.02 trillion, in 2021, the Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account shows.

Real (inflation adjusted) value added for core arts and cultural production industries, which include performing arts, museums, design services, fine arts education, and education services, increased 22.4 percent in 2021. Supporting arts and cultural production industries, which include art support services and information services, increased 11.6 percent in 2021.

• Performing arts increased 33.9 percent in 2021 after decreasing 34.3 percent in 2020. The leading contributor to the increase was promoters of performing arts and similar events, which increased 122.4 percent in 2021 after decreasing 54.5 percent in 2020.

• Museums increased 15.6 percent in 2021 after decreasing 5.0 percent in 2020.

• Design services increased 18.1 percent in 2021 after decreasing 0.8 percent in 2020.

• Fine arts education increased 27.4 percent in 2021 after decreasing 30.9 percent in 2020.

• Education services decreased 1.7 percent in 2021 after decreasing 4.9 percent in 2020.

Visit BEA’s arts and cultural production webpage for the full report and an interactive map of the arts and culture economy in each state

The iconic and era-defining work of Milton Glaser

Just as what is arguably his most iconic and well-known work gets updated (perhaps ineffectively) and a new anthology of his work is released, The New Yorker has a comprehensive profile on Milton Glaser by Adam Gopnik:

No art director’s work was more influential or instantly identifiable than that of Milton Glaser. The extent of that style, which adorned books and records and movies—and is revealed in a new anthology from Monacelli, courtesy of Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber, titled simply “Milton Glaser: Pop”—is astounding. Glaser was famous as the co-founder and original design director of ‘New York’ and as a creator of two images that helped define two decades. One was the 1966 poster of Bob Dylan that showed him with snakelike hair blossoming into a skein of rainbows. The other was the 1976 “I❤️NY” logo—which was commissioned by the State of New York but promptly adopted as a local symbol of the city, and, being keyed to the city’s unexpected revival, is the closest thing there has ever been to a logo that changed social history.

But Glaser’s real achievement lies in what the book lays out: a breathtaking empire of imagery that encompassed both decades and more. Anyone who came of age in the sixties and seventies will be astonished to discover that so much of the look of the time was specifically the work of Milton Glaser and Push Pin Studios, which he founded with Seymour Chwast and Edward Sorel and then oversaw.

Reading the above intro to the profile I can’t help but wonder, is that the last time the graphic design on a poster or a logo had that much impact and influence?