The NEA Survey for Participation in the Arts is revealing a suprisingly quick moving seachange in the American relationship to the arts. For those involved in longstanding institutions devoted to live exchange between artist and audience, the findings reveal stark changes to our future -- rapid adoption of online arts consumption that seems to be replacing the lived experience. For example, classical music is seeing the maturation of the seachange that has been in progress the last twenty years such that middle-aged audiences are attending less and less often yet they are still consuming mediated formats.
http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2009/12/day_of_reckoning.html
Many arts organizations are riding the wave of the change (see below) and it seems that many will need to do the same if there is a to be a salient future for the arts in our culture.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/09/AR2009120904233.html
