September 15, 2005 | Read Time: 1 minute
A Portrait of the Visual Arts: Meeting the Challenges of a New Era, by Kevin F. McCarthy, Elizabeth Heneghan Ondaatje, Arthur Brooks, and Andras Szanto, argues that despite record attendance at museums and soaring prices for artists’ works, visual-arts organizations face significant obstacles to their financial success. The report, based on a study supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, notes that population increases have driven the spike in attendance at museums, and that all but a handful of “superstar” artists struggle to make a living. It also says that increased competition for visitors and donors has intensified the problems museums have always faced in balancing scholarship, preservation, and presentation with reaching out to the public and raising money. In light of these trends, the report encourages museum leaders to examine carefully their goals and missions and determine ways to measure their success. Finally, it discusses different ways that public policy can promote the arts, including by maintaining tax policies that encourage charitable giving and backing programs that expose young children to the arts.
Publisher: RAND, Customer Service, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, Calif. 90407-2138; (877) 584-8642; fax (412) 802-4981; order@rand.org; http://www.rand.org; 150 pages; $20 or free for download on the publisher’s Web site; ISBN 0-8330-3793-5.
