By Terry Teachout
Extra, Extra! The locked-out Minnesota Orchestra is all but dead. New York City Opera has filed for bankruptcy. Everyone who keeps up with the National Endowment for the Arts' Survey of Public Participation in the Arts data knows that high-culture attendance numbers have been shrinking across the board for more than a decade. Opera, theater, dance, symphony orchestras, even big-city art museums: All are drawing smaller crowds. So what's the larger meaning of these figures? Might it be possible that some of them should disappear? According to management guru Peter Drucker, hiring an effective successor to a departing CEO is "the ultimate test of any top management and the ultimate test of any institution." When it comes to arts organizations, I'd say that the ultimate test is knowing when an institution is suffering from a case of creative and administrative sclerosis that is about to become terminal, then doing something about it, as the Metropolitan Opera is endeavoring to do. In order to survive, such institutions will have to constantly re-examine their missions and adapt to the brutal challenges of American culture in the 21st century. [link]
Three recent articles that view the problem from different perspectives come to similar conclusions:
- "North America has too many of them" ~ Jaime Weinman, Maclean's magazine
- "My later years will see a contraction in overall production at the professional level" ~ Howard Sherman, Theatre Blogger
- "witnessing a major transition in the arts from regional organizations to fewer mega-organizations" ~ Michael Kaiser, Kennedy Center
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