Arts organizations & a new generation of donors

[dirac]

Arts organizations are having trouble making their case to deep-pocketed millennials.

Though millennials like Van Nostrand and Salvatier are a generosity-minded bunch, this data-driven approach has left a traditional beneficiary of charitable giving out in the cold: the arts.

Cultural institutions, which have historically been high on the list of those with flush pockets, as well as smaller arts nonprofits, are straining to attract a new generation of donors that demands a metric for each dollar spent.

[California]

Michael M. Kaiser (the "fixer" for struggling arts organizations, from Pennsylvania Ballet and the Kennedy Center to the Royal Opera House) makes this point pretty clearly in his several books (which I highly recommend). If they have a lot of money, they're giving it elsewhere. And ordinary millennials don't have much money, especially with student loan debt. Yet I see most ballet companies (and other performing arts groups) forming Junior Members groups of various kinds. I think they probably have to do this, but the company's programming is awfully important to attract these audiences even to attend performances, let alone support them financially with donations.

[Jack Reed]

I'll see you and raise you, California. Besides the books, which I still haven't read completely, Kaiser has a blog on the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kaiser/

In particular, he wrote a recent entry which speaks to the main subject of this article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kaiser/where-is-earned-income-gr_b_6830446.html

What brings us our most passionate donors is the quantity and quality of our art -- if fewer people are coming to our performances, then fewer people are likely to be moved to contribute to us. This has to be a factor in the reduction in interest of many corporations in underwriting the arts. Corporations are looking to create visibility for their products and services; if our attendance is falling, we do not appear to be a very strong vehicle for their own marketing efforts.

He's touched before on the idea that the best donors often come from among the most enthusiastic fans; the trouble this article points to is that the development managers or marketers are focused differently, unaware of Kaiser's implication, as I read him, that if you sell these newly-rich people tickets, some of them will enjoy themselves and become donors.

We hear a lot today (if we want to) that the older generation, which supported the arts, is dying off, and must be replaced if the arts are to survive. So it was refreshing to read in the Seattle Times article that

Representatives from Seattle Theatre Group, Seattle Opera and Seattle Symphony all said legacy-arts organizations have traditionally done better with the older generation. Though the organizations don’t have data on individuals, anecdotally Rick Johnson, the chief financial officer of the Seattle Opera, said, “It’s almost always been the case.” He pointed out that in 1906 at the Metropolitan Opera, “They all had white hair then, too.”

So, if this is a problem, taking Mr. Johnson at his word (I first went to the Met in 1958, 52 years later), it's not new, it's perennial.

It fell to the reporter herself to observe that

Joy may be immeasurable...

Which for me (with Kaiser's support) is key, and it reminds me of an old anecdote about a man who was curious about ballet, and listened with interest to someone who ran a ballet company about the years of training, the weeks of rehearsal, the expense of production. Finally the neophyte asked his version of what for me is the quintessential American question: "What's ballet for?" "It makes people happy," came Balanchine's reply. (You couldn't get ahead of him.)

If this new generation can be helped to understand that the value of art is not well reflected in numerical "data" they may come to appreciate it, feel its value, and support it. It doesn't take much, but the marketers omit it.

(Instead, the people near me in the theater or the gallery have often have seen the PR - that's what got 'em in - but they're at a loss, until they get a few remarks from me. Then, if I say so myself, they smile and begin to enjoy it.)

I would agree, though, that saving lives in the Third World instead of enriching those in the First is a powerful Utilitarian argument. (Not an Altruistic one at all, but never mind.)

[Natalia]

It's unfortunate that Millennials get much less early exposure to the arts than did Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers...unless you count things like Flesh and Bone. We had a steady diet of real ballet on TV. Unless the kids live in NYC and have well-off grandmas who take them to Lincoln Center, they aren't exposed to ballet as we were 20-30 years ago.

[California]

It's unfortunate that Millennials get much less early exposure to the arts than did Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers...unless you count things like Flesh and Bone. We had a steady diet of real ballet on TV. Unless the kids live in NYC and have well-off grandmas who take them to Lincoln Center, they aren't exposed to ballet as we were 20-30 years ago.

I'm as distressed as anyone about the near-disappearance of the classical arts from public television and the drastic cut-backs in arts education in the schools. But there is one bright spot: the wealth of quite wonderful regional ballet companies all over the country, encouraged in large measure in the 50s and 60s by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the state arts councils. If you look at their web sites and Facebook pages, you see terrific outreach efforts to the schools -- dress rehearsals with audiences full of school children, live-streaming to outlying areas, etc., etc. Know hope!

[dirac]

Thanks for commenting, everyone. Classical music has also disappeared from NPR and only a few classical radio stations are hanging on, and those just barely. The Met Opera broadcasts are also gone from the public airwaves, at least in my vicinity. On the other hand, the Internet has made such broadcasts by the Met and others far more easily accessible - for those who seek them out. It's always been true that the arts in the U.S. have depended on older people with the money and leisure to spend on them. The question is whether those grayheads of the future will be that interested or invested in the arts in sufficient numbers - and not so much the Millenials but their kids, who will have been raised from the cradle getting their entertainment from their gadgets, and mostly for free or almost free.

It also seems to me that the arts aren't the middle-class totems they once were in this country. It's okay to be educated and upwardly-mobile and not interested in art music, for example. So is the glass half-full, or half-empty? The former, one hopes. Other opinions?

[Kathleen O'Connell]

If I were running an arts organization and I wanted to get a recording of its work in front of a millennial audience, I wouldn't bother with broadcast media. Heck, I wouldn't even bother with anything delivered to a computer screen via a web browser. Media needs to be streamable -- preferably on demand -- and mobile. Someone interested in classical music need look no further than their phone -- and if they're under 25, that's where they'll look.

The withering away of arts education matters far more, I think, than the absence of dance on PBS.

[sandik]

It also seems to me that the arts aren't the middle-class totems they once were in this country. It's okay to be educated and upwardly-mobile and not interested in art music, for example. So is the glass half-full, or half-empty? The former, one hopes. Other opinions?

I think another part of the equation is the lack of free time in general. With more two-income families, people are living far more organized lives just to get the standard stuff accomplished. The time it takes to plan and attend cultural events of any sort eats into the increasingly limited free time most families have.

If I were running an arts organization and I wanted to get a recording of its work in front of a millennial audience, I wouldn't bother with broadcast media. Heck, I wouldn't even bother with anything delivered to a computer screen via a web browser. Media needs to be streamable -- preferably on demand -- and mobile. Someone interested in classical music need look no further than their phone -- and if they're under 25, that's where they'll look.

The withering away of arts education matters far more, I think, than the absence of dance on PBS.

Good points about streaming media -- that is indeed where you'll find the most eyeballs.

And yes, the privatization and segmentation of arts ed is a big concern, but I think you're missing one of the real benefits of arts on public television -- it's an indication that the arts are a standard part of our culture. Not something just for the affluent or the educated, but for us all.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

And yes, the privatization and segmentation of arts ed is a big concern, but I think you're missing one of the real benefits of arts on public television -- it's an indication that the arts are a standard part of our culture. Not something just for the affluent or the educated, but for us all.

I'm not convinced that a broadcast on PBS really sends a signal that art "something for us all." Especially if no one is watching.

Making sure that every child has the opportunity to learn about, experience, and, especially make art in some way, shape or form on a regular basis without it costing a small fortune would be a genuine demonstration that art is for everyone, not just the wealthy. Putting an opera on TV now and again means nothing if schools cut their music programs.

I know, I sound like a crank ...

[Amy Reusch]

I saw a lot of ballet on PBS as a child and found it inspiring, and there certainly wasn't any ballet in the public schools in my area. I am a strong believer in STEAM over STEM, though I don't undertand why the study of English has become so devalued.

[sandik]

I'm not convinced that a broadcast on PBS really sends a signal that art "something for us all." Especially if no one is watching.

Making sure that every child has the opportunity to learn about, experience, and, especially make art in some way, shape or form on a regular basis without it costing a small fortune would be a genuine demonstration that art is for everyone, not just the wealthy. Putting an opera on TV now and again means nothing if schools cut their music programs.

I know, I sound like a crank ...

We are all cranky around my house!

[Kathleen O'Connell]

Just to be clear, I have no objection to performing arts programming on broadcast media. There's value showcasing exceptional talent performing exceptional work or emerging talent performing experimental work or, indeed, any permutation of "exceptional," "emerging," and "experimental," even if the audience is small. But the value today doesn't lie where it did 30, 40, or 50 years ago when there were three major broadcast networks, NET / PBS, and a handful of UHF channels programming old movies and re-runs -- and you could be reasonably certain that a huge percentage of the population would be sitting in front of the television at the same time every night. In that environment, putting the performing arts on TV did give them general visibility. (It should also be noted that it gave TV -- "the boob tube" -- legitimacy as a medium and justified selling then-valuable public spectrum to the highest commercial bidder.)

Today the landscape is entirely different: we have a firehose content aimed at right us every waking moment of our lives. In this environment, even 500-channel cable packages seem quaint. Putting a ballet on broadcast TV and hoping someone notices is like yelling a Shakespeare sonnet into a category 5 hurricane.

The recording and subsequent dissemination of specific performing arts performances needs to be rethought from the ground up. What's the objective: Entertainment? Education? Curation? Documentation? Getting butts in seats at live performances? Who's the audience? Where are they? (Increasingly, they are not in front of the TV.) How should the 500 pound gorilla of rights and compensation issues be handled in a digital age? Who's going to pay? As disruptive as the digital revolution has been, I think it's a moment of magnificent opportunity for the arts -- I hope we don't let it slip through our fingers.

[dirac]

There's no doubt that arts organizations need to get with the new era in many of the ways Kathleen describes. However, I wouldn't write off the idiot box just yet. Television and particularly the networks still command the attention of a lot of eyeballs. True, the networks have discarded the arts programming that originally justified their sweet deals (they'd get rid of a lot of news, too, if they could get away with it), but the arts programming that PBS still makes available is of considerable value IMO and it's available to anyone who has a television set, and there are still a lot of those around. And not everyone can afford those 500 channel packages.

There were no special arts programs in my schools. I saw dance and orchestras and foreign language movies on TV, specifically on PBS. Television shouldn't replace arts education in the schools by any means - but sometimes it has done, and it may continue to do so at least in the immediate future and possibly for some time to come.

[Jack Reed]

...

There were no special arts programs in my schools. I saw dance and orchestras and foreign language movies on TV, specifically on PBS. Television shouldn't replace arts education in the schools by any means - but sometimes it has done, and it may continue to do so at least in the immediate future and possibly for some time to come.

Agreed. I don't really know what people mean when they talk about arts education in the schools. Are we all supposed to try to paint or sing?

Personally, I hated that. It was forcing me into something I didn't care about, and I wasn't any good at it, and the teachers got on me for not imitating the other kids and just following the lesson. Mom had been trying to help me with anything good I was interested in - the judgement was hers but the initiative was mine - but that's a hard method to replicate on an industrial scale - in a classroom of twenty-five kids or more.

I have a hunch they don't mean struggling through Aristotle's Poetics of Tragedy and then applying those ideas to Shakespeare's Othello. That's so very, very rare I might have missed it entirely myself except for some rare coincidences, like getting some good advice, but if there's any fine art on TV, somebody may stumble over it, and it may change them. Likewise movies, music on the radio, anything. Is that how you found that content on PBS, dirac, or did you know it was there through their marketing? I'm guessing the former method. The initiative was yours, mostly.

But what the commercial media carry depends on what market - what audience - that content will attract for their sponsors. Public media might carry what isn't profitable according to that system, but there seems to be powerful opposition to using a smidgen of the national budget for that, or for arts generally. I don't understand the reason for that either, but I persist in thinking if you want to change something, it's likely to help if you know why it's the way you want to change.

But don't public media also have a marketing problem? Who's tuned in? Do we hear that "Antiques Roadshow" has a much larger audience than "Great Performances"? Is the first one marketed more effectively than the second, or are neither marketed much at all? (I don't contribute, because as far as I know, it all goes into one pot and they would use as much or more of it for "Antiques Roadshow" than for "Great Performances." I presume "Antiques Roadshow," with the larger audience, has more corporate sponsorship, as well.)

[Quiggin]

I think having ballet compnies come to noontime seminars at law firms (like ours used to) and tech companies with dancers and a coach and show the nuts and bolts construction of ballets from the vocabulary of steps and phrases - as if it were building code - would help build a curious new audience. Like Guggenheim words &process.

But I think the experience of ballet has to be live, not in clips, it can't be equivalentized in video - where two or three dimensions are lost. And will such a distractable audience stick with it?

Also in our changing world, instead of going out to a play or ballet and at supper discussing the event, people now go to dinner and (endlessly) discuss the food and don't go anywhere else. The recent Times restaurant review of Per Se ("slips & stumbles") seems to be cultural scandal of the winter.

[Kathleen O'Connell]

I don't really know what people mean when they talk about arts education in the schools. Are we all supposed to try to paint or sing?

Yes. It's like reading, math, geography, history, and science. You learn to sing, or paint, or play an instrument, or make stuff, or listen, or look, or whatever as well as you can whether you like it or not. You go to museums so you can see what that's all about. Artists come and show you what it is that they do and explain what's involved. Not everyone has a parent who has the time or money or interest to guide them.

I was fortunate to go to school at a time when it was deemed important that we try our hands at singing, painting, acting, and dancing. It was fun. These weren't fancy schools in affluent neighborhoods: they were run by the US military in far-flung places like the Philippines.

[volcanohunter]

I think another part of the equation is the lack of free time in general. With more two-income families, people are living far more organized lives just to get the standard stuff accomplished. The time it takes to plan and attend cultural events of any sort eats into the increasingly limited free time most families have.

An NEA report on "barriers and motivations affecting arts attendance" released one year ago noted that 95% of American adults spend an average of five hours each day on leisure activities. (This drops to fewer than four hours in famillies with children under age 6.) These include things like going to the gym, socializing and, of course, watching television. I'll be the first to admit that turning to Netflix is cheaper and easier than heading out to an opera house for some Wagner.

https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/when-going-gets-tough-revised2.pdf

[Jack Reed]

Personally, I don't go to performances for technique primarily - though if I see dancing that is clear and distinct, say, rather than muddy and vague, I must be seeing it, or what it conveys. But demonstrations like you describe can nevertheless be good eye training just because it gets people seeing into something they haven't looked at at all before.

(I remember not so long ago watching a demonstration of the difference between "Balanchine technique" and what the demonstrator considered traditional ballet movement, making the point that Balanchine's adjustments and modifications made a stronger, more vivid effect at each instant. You got "more." It was like a tune-up or something for my eyes, for my ballet-watching, a little like watching successive dancers in the same role can be.)

But while I agree that the best experience comes when you have a good seat for a good performance, if the video is not too badly made, we can get a lot from that. As I say when people ask me how I look at ballet - what the marketers leave out - I listen as I watch to see how the dancers hear their music, and I can get that effect, that - illusion - diminished, for sure - from a good video. Yeah, there's some presence missing, and so on, but there is that. And then when you go in the theater for "the real thing," you're attuned, you're vulnerable, and it knocks you over. Sometimes? No?

[Amy Reusch]

Like live vs. canned music... I agree.

But there actually are some dance elements that look better framed on video than by the proscenium*... But very few... Mostly dance is diminished by the flat screen. However, not many in the theater can sit in those prime seats. I remember going to see ABT in one of your local venues, The Auditorium... A friend in the company let me slip into the top row of sests. The performance was so far away, it felt like it was going on in a building across the street. A good dance video can put you in the best seats in the house... seats I never could have afforded... I am grateful for every good video that passes my way.


* and these mostly have to do with line, that can be made more significant by good framing. I have seen some rather dull in the theater choreography become more fascinating on screen. High energy fast and complex work, by comparison, really tends to suffer.

[sandik]

A good dance video can put you in the best sets in the house... seats I never could have afforded... I am grateful for every good video that passes my way.

And some videos put you in seats that don't even exist -- during one of the recent Giselle broadcasts I realized I was watching something from the wings.

[Amy Reusch]

Ooooh... I would love to be in the best sets. All the same, thanks for the typo alert!

I am not a fan of presenting something from the wings when it was designed for a proscenium stage presentation, exciting though it might be, it does not seem to honor the choreographer and artists intent.

[sandik]

Ooooh... I would love to be in the best sets. All the same, thanks for the typo alert!

I am not a fan of presenting something from the wings when it was designed for a proscenium stage presentation, exciting though it might be, it does not seem to honor the choreographer and artists intent.

Oh oops -- I didn't even notice the typo!

I agree about the side view shots. As someone who loves to watch rehearsal, they offered some fascinating insights on the work, but we're not seeing it the way the author/choreographer intended.

[dirac]

Agreed. I don't really know what people mean when they talk about arts education in the schools. Are we all supposed to try to paint or sing?

Personally, I hated that. It was forcing me into something I didn't care about, and I wasn't any good at it, and the teachers got on me for not imitating the other kids and just following the lesson. Mom had been trying to help me with anything good I was interested in - the judgement was hers but the initiative was mine - but that's a hard method to replicate on an industrial scale - in a classroom of twenty-five kids or more.

I have a hunch they don't mean struggling through Aristotle's Poetics of Tragedy and then applying those ideas to Shakespeare's Othello. That's so very, very rare I might have missed it entirely myself except for some rare coincidences, like getting some good advice, but if there's any fine art on TV, somebody may stumble over it, and it may change them. Likewise movies, music on the radio, anything. Is that how you found that content on PBS, dirac, or did you know it was there through their marketing? I'm guessing the former method. The initiative was yours, mostly.

But what the commercial media carry depends on what market - what audience - that content will attract for their sponsors. Public media might carry what isn't profitable according to that system, but there seems to be powerful opposition to using a smidgen of the national budget for that, or for arts generally. I don't understand the reason for that either, but I persist in thinking if you want to change something, it's likely to help if you know why it's the way you want to change.

But don't public media also have a marketing problem? Who's tuned in? Do we hear that "Antiques Roadshow" has a much larger audience than "Great Performances"? Is the first one marketed more effectively than the second, or are neither marketed much at all? (I don't contribute, because as far as I know, it all goes into one pot and they would use as much or more of it for "Antiques Roadshow" than for "Great Performances." I presume "Antiques Roadshow," with the larger audience, has more corporate sponsorship, as well.)

I don't remember exactly, but I imagine it was probably while channel surfing. I would have had very little exposure to the high arts without PBS, and even in the changing media landscape what PBS offers is still very important (also true with regard to documentaries). It doesn't offer anything comparable to the BBC, but PBS is hamstrung by nasty political opposition - although that's not an excuse for all of PBS' failings.

[Jack Reed]

… t was probably while channel surfing. I would have had very little exposure to the high arts without PBS, and even in the changing media landscape what PBS offers is still very important (also true with regard to documentaries). It doesn't offer anything comparable to the BBC, but PBS is hamstrung by nasty political opposition - although that's not an excuse for all of PBS' failings.

"Channel surfing" resonates. It was how I discovered Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" in the 50's. I didn't care much for the music, having long since outgrown overhearing Mom's crooning pop singles in the 40's (does anybody remember Bing Crosby?) and finished with Les Paul, too, and Duke Ellington - amazing playing, but too slick, not to mention the strut and swagger of it put me off; improvised jazz had more immediate vitality - so Clark's interviews promoting musicians weren't interesting, but watching his kids dance was! Dancing to the music! Listening, and dancing what they heard! Moving as the music seemed to tell them to!

I watched on and off for some time, but I wouldn't have that experience again until one evening in the mid-60's. I had by then found my way into classical music, listening casually at first, like at the movies, where music accompanies something else, and then eventually into "close listening" - listening note by note, and phrase by phrase - to the music itself, for itself.

That evening at a ballet performance, when the orchestra struck up a light favorite of mine, Stravinsky's witty and playful Capriccio, which I was intimately familiar with in this way, George Balanchine's "kids" danced to it. Plainly, they were listening, and dancing what they heard - I knew in the back of my mind this was an arranged illusion, it was theater, but it looked - well, better, more exalted than Dick Clark's kids' improvisation could ever be, but still - and I was hooked. Need I add, I still am? Although my repertory of ways to watch dance has broadened a little, I mainly listen as I watch to see how the dancers hear their music.