Transcript Performing arts and culture

Performing arts and culture
The character of the performing arts
“industry”
• Most organizations are nonprofit, subsidized
by government and private foundations grants,
and individual contributions
• The audiences are dominated by highly
educated individuals in high-income brackets
Audiences by education (2002)
Audiences by income (2002)
The audiences
• The effect of education on attendance at performing
arts is substantially stronger than the effect of income
• Members of the professional classes (doctors,
lawyers, engineers, teachers, artists) are the big
attenders, with CEOs and managers (well paid but
less educated) less numerous.
• The pattern holds also for jazz and folk music and
even cinema.
Commercial theater
• Mostly Broadway District (On, Off Broadway)
• Most shows are musical reproductions or
restorations.
• In New York about 45-50% attendance from
tourists
• About 40% of box office receipts from “on-road”
performances
Commercial Theater: Top 10 Broadway
long runs (2012)
Show
Opening season
No. performances
Phantom of the Opera
87/88
10,089
Cats
82/83—2000
7,485
Les Miserable
86/87—2003
6,691
Chicago
96/97
6,416
A Chorus Line
75/76—1990
6,137
The Lion King
97/98
6,024
Oh, Calcutta!
76/77—1989
5,959
Beauty and the Beast
93/94—2007
5,461
Rent
95/96—2008
5,123
Hit musical v. hit movie
Musical
Phantom of the Opera
Motion picture
Titanic
Global box office
$5 billion
$2.8 billion
Average production &
premarketing costs
$9 million
$200 million
Length of run
25 years
15 years
(most earnings
during the first year)
Nonprofit theaters
• Nonprofit theaters preserve, develop, and
extend the availability of performing arts (new
and “rediscovered” plays, new art directions,
new talent).
• Often the source of new production OnBroadway and in other commercial theaters
and/or are adapted by Hollywood.
Nonprofit theaters
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Supported by a combination of:
Subscription fees
Foundation grants
Individual contributions
Ticket and merchandise sale
U.S. nonprofit theater survey
Number of theaters
Attendance
Performances
1,893
30,500,000
172,000
Productions
14,000
Subscribers
1,760,000
Earnings
$923,000,000
Contributions
$868,000,000
Total Income
$1,791,000,000
Expenses
$1,667,000,000
Net Assets
$124,000,000
Nonprofit theaters contribution to the
U.S. economy
• Made a direct contribution of nearly $1.67 billion in
the form of payments for goods, services and salaries.
•
• The real impact on the economy is far greater: when
audience members go to the theatre, they frequently
go out to eat, pay for parking, hire babysitters, etc.
Center Theater Group (Los Angeles)
• A non-profit arts organization.
• One of the largest theatre companies in the nation,
programming subscription seasons year-round at the
Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theatre and the
Kirk Douglas Theatre.
• It has a combined subscription audience of about
60,000 and a total audience exceeding 750,000 a year.
Economic issues in culture-related goods
and services
• Demand is highly uncertain (nobody knows)
• Creative workers care greatly about what they
produce (art for art’s sake)
• Many creative ventures require diverse skills
• Although the demand for attendance at the
performing arts are price-inelastic, the overall
income rise or fall have impact on demand.
Economic issues in culture-related goods
and services
• Live performances are economically
inefficient because performances are
“consumed” at the point of production.
• Productivity cannot be raised significantly
Purely economic issue
• Taxpayers financial support for money-losing
programs enjoyed by an elite few is a waste of
resources better spent elsewhere
• Sol Hurok (Theater producer): “If I would be
in this business for business, I wouldn’t be in
this business.”
Arguments for public support
• Opens opportunities for development of talented
individuals from non-affluent backgrounds
• Has educational benefit, exposing young people to
cultural activities that they might not otherwise
encounter
• Encourages artistic innovation, which is a source of
economic growth
• Arts are public goods that, when provided to
individuals, are of collective benefit to other members
of the community.
Positive “externalities”
• An externality (spillover): the impact on a party
outside of and not directly involved in the transaction.
• An option value to having a supply of culture even if an
individual does not currently use the supply.
• A bequest value for future generations unable to express
preferences on currently existing markets
• An existence value such as for historic landmark building,
which, once destroyed, cannot be rebuilt
• A prestige value even for those who are not interested in art
National Endowment for the Arts
• The NEA funds an array of works and activities in
music, theater, and the visual and performance arts.
• NEA grants range from $5,000 to $100,000, but all
grant recipients must obtain matching private
funding.
• Most grants fall into one of five main categories:
creativity, organizational capacity, access, arts
learning, and heritage/preservation.
National Endowment for the Arts
• At its inception in 1965, the NEA had a budget of
$2.5 million
• The endowment's highest level of federal funding
was its $175 million budget in 1991. But
controversy over grant recipients led to major budget
reductions in late 1999, when annual funding dipped
below $100 million.
• Obama administration asks Congress for $200
million for 2010.
The NEA's impact on American culture
• Between 1990 and 2002, the NEA provided support to thirtyfive recipients of National Book Awards, National Book
Critics Circle Awards, and Pulitzer Prizes in fiction and
poetry.
• It funded the regional theatrical production of A Chorus Line
that went on to become a Broadway smash in 1975
• Supported Maya Lin's design of the Vietnam Veteran's
Memorial, dedicated in Washington, D.C., in 1982.
• The NEA has also made a special effort to recognize American
jazz masters through a series of fellowships.
Arguments against public support for
the arts (from The Heritage Foundation)
• The arts will have more than enough support without
the NEA
• The NEA is welfare for cultural elitists
• NEA funding threatens the independence of art and
threatens artistic inspiration
• The NEA promotes politically correct and indecent
art
• Funding the NEA disturbs the U.S. tradition of
limited government