Pittsburgh bucks national trend of dwindling public interest in arts

“Pittsburgh seems to be on a roll,” said Pittsburgh Cultural Trust president and CEO Kevin McMahon. “We’re fortunate to have all of these wonderful assets. Many cities are much less robust in their arts and cultural scene. That doesn’t mean the job is done. We have a way to go.”

The NEA’s 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (its fifth since 1982) is a statistical snapshot of audiences for the performing and visual arts. Last year, in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau, the NEA surveyed 18,000 adults.

According to the survey, 1 in 3 (36.2 percent) adults went to an art museum or attended a performance in 2008.

Compared to the last survey in 2002, the percentage of adults attending performing arts events declined for virtually all art forms in 2008, including music, theater, and ballet.

Opera showed the largest drop off (34 percent), followed by jazz (28 percent). Musical theater fell the least, with a 2 percent decline, although it dropped 10 percent compared to the initial 1982 survey period.

The visual arts suffered a similar outcome. There was a decline of 14 percent of people attending art galleries and museums, compared to the 2002 figures, and a 27 percent decline in those attending arts and crafts festivals. The percentage of people that visited parks and historical buildings was down 21 percent.

In Pittsburgh, however, the opposite seems to be happening. In Downtown’s Cultural District, attendance at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s wide array of arts events has held steady, with some growth, McMahon said. Recent years have seen 1.3 million to 1.5 million visitors in the Cultural District, with 2 million in 2008.

McMahon noted that musical theater was the one exception to the performing arts downturn cited in the NEA report. The Trust has brought several blockbuster musicals to town lately, including “Wicked” and “Jersey Boys.” Those can skew the results of our own attendance. But in general we have continued to see increases every year, despite the current economic issues and a population that is not growing rapidly.”

McMahon said that he is “not completely surprised” at the NEA survey results. “For some of the traditional art forms, it continues to be a struggle to gain audiences. That’s why it’s very important that we continue to look at a variety of ways to attract and cultivate audiences.”

The Trust is putting forth a lot of effort into building younger audiences which the NEA numbers show as being in the biggest free fall. They are doing this for the visual arts, with its regular evening Gallery Crawl series, and the performing arts, with events like last fall’s Festival of Firsts and the annual Pittsburgh International Children’s Festival.

In 2008, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History had a record year in admissions. A large reason for this could have been two huge events - the Carnegie International at the Museum of Art and the reopening of the dinosaur exhibits at the Museum of Naturall History.

Last year, the two museums (which sell combined admissions to both) had 386,284 admissions, compared to 256,017 in 2002. They are also on track to meet their goal of 325,000 admissions in 2009, said Kitty Julian, director of marketing for the museums.

Local jazz performances also seem to be running in opposition to the national trend. Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild’s MCG jazz presents an annual subscription series of concerts. It had fewer number of concerts per season, in 2008, yet saw no decline at the box office.

“We changed the subscription and concert model dramatically to have more artists of a wider musical mix within jazz,” said Marty Ashby, executive producer for MCG Jazz. “Our audience for the year was about 18 percent above what we had projected.” Younger audiences are part of that mix, he said noting that MCG uses tools like Twitter and Facebook to market its concerts to that age group.

Ashby said he also sees standing-room-only crowds at CJ’s Thursday night jazz jams in the Strip and the Cultural District’s weekly outdoor jazz concert series. “Maybe we’re an anomaly in Pittsburgh. But the audience for live jazz is very strong.”

The age of arts audiences is going up as reported by the NEA survey. Since it began in 1982, the survey has shown attendance rates among young people (ages 18-24) declined “significantly.” For example, attendance at jazz concerts declined 58 percent among that age group.

Attendance among ages 45 to 54 (typically a strong arts audience) also declined across the board for performances and art museums.

Arts attendance has traditionally been highest among people with college educations in these surveys. But even attendance among this group declined in 2008.

The survey doesn’t attempt to explain the decline but notes that it took place in the middle of 2008, when economic downturn was in full swing. It also pointed high prices for gasoline and airline tickets as factors in hurting travel and tourism.

One thing has changed since the first survey in ‘82, and that is the presence of the internet. Most of the respondents (70 percent) said they went online daily. Among that group, 39.4 percent used the Web for arts-related activities, including downloading or listenting to music, watching performances or posting their own art.

By Adrian McCoy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette http://www.pittsburghpostgazette.com/pg/09168/977788-51.stm