January 24, 2001Contact: Princine Lewis, (615) 322-NEWS[email protected]
Arts audiences aging; baby boomers prefer to dabble
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - While grandma and grandpa may be attending Rigoletto or enjoying the music of Duke Ellington, their children and grandchildren likely are not, a recent study by Vanderbilt University researchers indicates.
The study, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), tracked arts participation for classical music, opera, ballet, musicals, jazz, plays and art museums. Researchers looked at the age of the audiences for the seven art forms in 1982, 1992 and 1997. Income, education, gender and health were also factored into arts participation rates.
"There is a crisis coming for the arts in America. The average age for all of these art forms has increased. Even jazz, which had a much younger audience in the 1980s, has experienced a significant decline in the number of patrons who are under 30 years old," said Vanderbilt sociology professor Richard A. Peterson, lead author of the study.
Peterson said he believes the study reveals the boomer generation's penchant for sampling a number of leisure activities and interests rather than focusing in on the fine arts.
Without widespread support for the arts, Peterson cautioned, funding for the arts could dry up. "Another implication is something that has already begun to happen that I like to call 'art lite,' which includes practices such as not presenting 'difficult' compositions, plays, dances or art exhibits and screening audiences from works that are seen as controversial."
He added, however, that the study might provide guidance for how to reverse the trend. "Positive things that could come out of this study and others like it are that the arts community could embrace the current generation's 'dabbling,' and that more attention could be focused on arts education for our schools."
The arts participation study also indicated:
-- The audiences for all the art forms, except opera, aged faster than the entire survey sample during 1982-1997. In 1982, the opera audience was already older than the entire sample.
-- By 1997, a higher proportion of the classical music audience was over age 60 than was the audience for any other performing art form.
-- From 1982-1997, opera audience members over 60 jumped from 17 to 24 percent, while the number of audience members under 30 dropped from 18 to 13 percent.
-- In 1982, 57 percent of the jazz audience was under 30. By 1997 the number of audience members under 30 had fallen significantly to 23 percent. The number of audience members over 60 increased from 5 to 15 percent during the same time period.
-- Museums attracted the second highest participation of people under 30 after jazz, while its over-60 attendance has not increased significantly. The researchers believe this is because of older persons' impaired ability to walk and stand for extended periods of time.
"Some of the decline in arts participation from the pre-boomer to post-boomer generations can be attributed to the fact that baby boomers seem to really value pop culture and are unwilling to give up the music of their youth. Pre-boomers grew out of pop culture, got married and believed it was time to move on to better things such as attending the fine arts," Peterson said.
"The younger generation does not have the same view of the arts as pre-boomers had. They do not feel one art form is better than another. Now it seems that status comes from dabbling in a variety of interests such as opera, pop music, soccer and ethnic cuisines, rather than consistently following a particular art form."
However, looking at the age of arts patrons alone does not present a complete picture of the change in arts participation rates, Peterson said. When factors such as education, income, gender and health are also examined, the picture becomes much clearer. For example, when researchers examined age combined with education, income, gender and health, they found:
-- Older persons attend all the art forms except jazz more often than do younger people of the same education, gender, marital status and income.
-- Education in every instance is the best predicator of participation in each art form separately and when the art forms are combined.
-- Age is the fourth most important predicator of arts participation for the seven art forms combined after education, income and gender.
When examining participation for the seven art forms combined, researchers split the sample into three groups - baby boomers, pre-boomers and post-boomers - which further clarified the changing arts audience and showed:
-- Age is significantly linked to arts attendance for baby boomers and post-boomers.
-- Education is the best predictor of arts participation for the three age groups with respondents' fathers' education significantly associated with participation for pre-boomers who were at least in their mid-50s at the time of the survey. The second most important factor in arts participation among post-boomers is being a full-time student.
-- Family income is the second most important predictor for baby boomers and pre-boomers, and sixth most important for post-boomers.
-- Being female is the third most important factor in predicting arts participation for baby boomers and pre-boomers, but gender is hardly a factor for post-boomers.
Vanderbilt graduate students Pamela Hull and Roger Kern joined Peterson in making the study. The team followed up on research by Peterson and Vanderbilt colleague Darren Sherkat published in a 1996 NEA report that tracked arts participation from 1982 to 1992 with a focus on baby boomers' attendance rates.
After the 1996 report was released, some arts presenters who did not perceive their audiences as aging contested the results. To further explore the issue, the NEA asked Peterson to revisit the age of arts audiences with new data from the 1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.
-VU -
RSS