NEA survey shows that the arts have it bad, but sports and movies have it worse

If misery loves company, then arts folk dismayed by a recent NEA survey showing audiences dwindling in almost every genre needn’t feel quite so bad.

Delve more deeply into the study of Americans 18 and older, and you find that moviegoing and sports attendance have fared much worse than the arts.

Culled from questioning that the U.S. Census Bureau conducted for the NEA in May 2008 (before the financial meltdown), the results show that the share of the adult public attending at least one museum exhibition, play, jazz performance, classical concert, opera or dance event fell 4.4% from 1982 to 2008.

The comparable figure for the movies was a decline of nearly 10%, and for sporting events a loss of 17%.

“I don’t know if misery loves company, but it’s comforting to know it’s not just you,” says Andrew Taylor, director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Experts say that when it comes to getting people to go out and buy a ticket, a rising tide of unprecedented competition from technologically driven home entertainment alternatives is helping to sink all boats. But the arts don't have the financial backstop film studios and sports leagues get when they reap huge sums from the sale of broadcast rights and home video. And don't even ask what the bleak survey results on arts education portend for the future.

For the full story, click here.

-- Mike Boehm 

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NEA report shows declining attendance in arts events nationwide

Photo: The stands at Qualcomm Stadium during a 1997 San Diego Chargers football game. Credit: Los Angeles Times.

Comments

[Donald Frazell]

WE Americans still love our sports, we can just get it on a million different Fox and ESPN stations, though much of those were more into gambling than the beauty of competition and human excellence.

College ball is way down, many have gotten rid of their football programs, and even baseball to satisfy equal scholarships for men and women. And women just dont draw well, mostly family and some local HS girls teams. I know, been to many CSULB events and we got the best volleyball in the country, besides Stanford. Where many of our travel ball kids went. Landry Fields kicking ass right now.

Pros are down because of the many new stadiums and fields that have lower attndance than before, but lots of boxes to sell to the big shot corporation types, and pasted their names all over them, just as bad as the arts. The rich still control both fields of human endeavor, more so than evere as they control the product, especially in "art". Kids just too lazy to pay their dues and work to improve, and then the venues want that MFA before looking at anyone, Though cant think of any MFAs who were worth a dam, few great artist never graduated from art schools.

At least in sports the best rises to the top, gotta compete, can't hide talent or promote self interest, winning is everything. That gives everyone a shot. Talent and hard work pay, developing mind body and soul into one efficient and pworeful unit, even if some are immature and sadly dead from not being able to handle the life, like Chris Henry. Most are out of sports in three years with little left to show for it, except a destroyed body.

And believe me, I know both, no way are artistes any more intelligent than athletes. Know lots of dumb ones in both, but few intelligent in art like in sports. Damian Hirst more intelligent than David Robinson or my eldest son, who both balled and went to Annapolis? Hell no! What a tard that tiny brit boy is. Court jester to the filthy rich. Cant do that in sports, even a fool like Ocho Cinco is immensely talented and hard working.

Art is filled with jackalopes. Mythical creatures of limted minds with unfulfilled dreams of grandeaur. Athletes are bucks, sadly too often shot down in their prime by hunters of avarice and greed. Artistes just soft and vain. Get runover by BMWs, roadkill, if not the drivers sons.

Sport is the current pinnacle of American ingenuity and talent, passion and dedication. That and the Navy, go Navy! Beat Notre Dame again, how damn great is that!

art collegia delenda est
Save the Watts Towers, tear down the Ivories