Exploding the Explosion

If the U.S. is undergoing a cultural explosion, much of the noise is being made by the clatter of rising new arts centers. That does not mean, however, that the arts themselves are in step with construction or that audiences are in step with the arts. According to a massive three-year study published last week by the Twentieth Century Fund,* professional performances and audiences constitute a woefully weak link in the chain reaction. Items:

-- Despite the rising affluence of Americans, expenditures on the performing arts grew only proportionately to the gross national product from 1932 to 1963; and between 1961 and 1963, even that rate diminished. In 1963 Americans spent only $3.23 per capita on admissions to the theater, opera, concert and dance.

-- Less than 5% of Americans attend a live professional performance in a typical season. They are younger, better educated (55% of the men went to graduate school), and twice as wealthy as the urban population as a whole.

-- With the exception of the Broadway theater, which is more or less selfsupporting, the performing arts in the U.S. are running about $25 million in the red. The deficit climbs at a rate of 6% to 8% a year, will double by 1975.

"In the performing arts," the study unsurprisingly concludes, "financial crisis is a way of life." This crisis, contrary to most notions, is not caused by bungling management, featherbedding stage unions, overpriced prima donnas or "ice" (boxoffice funds sluiced away to scalpers); such factors are only "peripheral," according to William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, the Princeton economists who wrote the report. The root problem is the built-in technological liability of the live performing arts.

In most of the U.S. economy, output per man-hour increases 21% annually, doubles every three decades. Live performance is not subject to labor-saving breakthroughs--it takes four musicians 40 minutes to play Beethoven's String Quartet, No. 14, just as it did when it was written in 1826. Thus, while wage increases in an industry such as auto manufacturing are at least partially offset by productivity increases, matching raises in performers' salaries, to say nothing of other production expenses, can only lead to higher costs.

If the public does not defray the costs in full at the box office, obviously the difference can be made up only through private philanthropy or Government grants. Figuring the iron law of live performance v. technology, the authors predict that even Broadway faces "grim" times without some sort of help. For the rest of the performing arts, adds the report, direct and vastly increased subsidization is essential.

But who should--or will--provide the support? The authors themselves do not offer any substantive recommendation beyond pointing out that governments at all levels provide less than 4% in the way of subsidies; the rest is contributed by corporate and private philanthropy. In a foreword to the report, Twentieth Century Fund Director August Heckscher reasons that the annual federal appropriations for the arts--$8.5 million--is "disproportionately low, will be quite hopelessly inadequate if it is not at least doubled within the next five years."

* Performing Arts--The Economic Dilemma ($7.50).

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