Building audiences for the arts

I'm thinking that a city conference on successfully marketing the arts is needed, because there are lots of facilities, and more opening (and some closing) all the time, and more are opening in the suburbs, which provides more competition as well.

This NYT piece, "Big-Name Playwrights, Still Bargain Tickets," is interesting in two ways as the Signature Theater specializes in showing the plays of one playwright during each season, and tickets for the original run of the play will be only $20 (if the play is extended, the cost of the tickets goes up). From the article:

For the last two seasons Signature charged $15 for every seat through a deal with Time Warner, the lead sponsor of the ticket initiative. (When shows are extended, tickets go back up to the normal price, which was $55 last season and will be $65 in the coming four.)

James Houghton, the Signature’s artistic director, said the ticket initiative was an unambiguous success, with all productions selling out, some within 48 hours. According to surveys conducted at the theater, half of the ticket buyers were new to the Signature, a quarter earned less than $50,000 a year, and a fifth were under 35.

“We worked very hard to reach audiences and communities that just don’t think about going to the theater because they’ve been priced out,” Mr. Houghton said at a news conference. Mr. Houghton would not say how much money Time Warner pledged to be the lead sponsor for the next four years. (“A lot” was as specific as he got.) Margot Adams, a board member, is also a major sponsor.

More money must be raised to keep tickets this cheap until 2011, Mr. Houghton said, but he added that the Signature was about four-fifths of the way there.

Speaking of new audiences, see "Hockney says the iPod has turned young people off art. So why are our galleries packed with children?," from the Guardian. From the article:

Hockney's claim is that the young generation's involvement with auditory stimulae - as represented by the iPod - results in a decline in their understanding and appreciation of visual art. "We are not in a very visual age," he said. "I think it's all about sound. People plug in their ears and don't look much, whereas for me my eyes are the biggest pleasure. You notice that on buses. People don't look out of the window, they are plugged in and listening to something."

The proliferation of portable listening devices cannot, of course, be denied. But I see no evidence that Hockney is right in suggesting that, if the iPoddists weren't listening, they'd be gazing around in some meaningful way that increased their sensitivity towards the visual arts. They might be reading instead or, more likely, staring vacantly around, absorbing nothing. Besides, why does it have to be an either-or? Who is to say that the youth on the bus listening intently to his plugged-in tunes will not, later in the day, be looking at something that stimulates his visual senses? I know many under-30s whose enthusiastic adoption of earphone music has not in the least interfered with their enjoyment of other arts.

Hockney has another target. He blames, apart from iPods, the decline in the teaching of drawing in art schools. "Teaching drawing is teaching you to look," he says. The importance of looking is something that Hockney has stressed time and time again. I offer a positive development to neutralise the pessimism he exhibited the other day. More and more children are being taken to see art, particularly paintings. It used to be unusual to see packs of schoolchildren in museums and art galleries; it is now unusual not to have them around, sometimes even to the detriment of one's own quiet enjoyment. Moreover, there is more stimulating art to be seen, in a greater number of good museums, outside of London, than ever before. Being marched to your local art gallery by your school doesn't necessarily awaken an immediate interest in, or appreciation of, paintings. Even less often does it result in the making of a fledgling artist. But it may plant a seed which, I would like to think, will not be easily destroyed by the buying of an iPod.