There are many reasons to worry about the future of arts venues in the United States. In the boom times before lockdowns, they had grown accustomed to putting on display every eccentricity. Funding was plentiful and audiences over time learned to put up with it. After all, everyone knows that the world of high-end art and music is full of eccentrics.
Everyone knew the rules. You go for Titian and Manet and put up with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Damian Hurst. You buy a ticket for Haydn and Mahler and suffer through Milton Babbitt and John Cage.
The symphony would preen in its modernity by putting on “world premieres” before the intermission that humankind would never hear again, in exchange for which they get to hear Modest Mussorgsky.
Even so, the old subsidized the new and there was a certain stability about the whole thing. Audiences developed a weary tolerance. It’s been going on for nearly a century, actually, since art took a dark turn after the Great War. The balancing act wasn’t particularly inspirational, but it was serviceable.
Then came lockdowns in the 21st century. Forget bravery in the face of danger. The notion of art as the salve for crisis was gone. The art venues themselves demonstrated that they believed their product was wholly dispensable in the event of a pandemic in which players and audience would certainly survive. They pulled the plug anyway, for sometimes as much as two seasons and even two years.
In-person arts went silent with nary a protest from the artists themselves. Certainly management was happy for an extended paid vacation.
In these actions, they betrayed the musicians, employees, donors, patrons, and audience. Anyone who complained they would denounce as right-wing, uncaring, unconcerned about death, or downright immoral. The entire display was overwrought and appalling, but it went on and on.
When the venues finally did open, it was with masks only and then vaccination only. Broadway was the archetype, and it nearly committed institutional suicide. It’s finally back with no mandates but in a much diminished state.
It took three years before these people opened again, whereas they should have stayed open the entire time.
Let’s just say that it was a low moment in the history of American art.
Audiences meanwhile had their season tickets canceled and otherwise lost a great deal of interest. It was an especially appalling way to treat wealthy benefactors who had previously sacrificed vast fortunes under the idealist notion that civilization needs art as a sign and symbol of its greatness. Oh, but when a virus was on the loose, the management of these venues all decided that the music could just die the death.
Here we are three years later. Audiences are crabbier than ever. Everyone is on edge and deeply suspicious. They are willing to give it another go but they are more jaded than they used to be and pretty bitter about the whole thing. Nothing is as it was. Tolerance is gone.
One might suppose that these venues would 1. seek to pay the talent a bit for all the damage they caused, 2. program more audience-friendly offerings, and 3. avoid throwing themselves aggressively into more political controversies.
Alas, it isn’t to be so. High-end venues still have the same management structures, same cultural biases, and same supercilious detachment from popular preferences. They believed that they would just go back to normal as if nothing happened. But the audiences aren’t cooperating.
For one thing, audiences aren’t showing up as faithfully as they once did. For another, the old deal—you give us classics and we tolerate your “woke” nonsense—is no longer working now that they broke the deal. We did without for two and more years, so the patience of audiences for the muck they don’t like is pretty well worn out.
Pride Month has come at a highly inopportune time. In the past, audiences would just roll their eyes, put up with the blather, and move on. These days, it’s different. The agenda of shoving woke theory down our throats at our own expense isn’t consistent with the aspiration of these institutions to revive themselves.
Whereas a few years ago, drag queens seemed like a tacky if harmless eccentricity, now they are regarded as a genuine threat to basic values that civilization holds dear. Dress how you want in private, but when these movements start going after the kids with medical invasions and propaganda in schools, all bets are off.
Traditionally, arts venues have been given a pass. They were permitted to dabble in politics and audiences saw it as mostly harmless. Today, not so much. Ever more people are starting to take seriously that they must be more careful about how they use both their money and their time.
This is different from the way it used to be. In many decades of creeping progressivism, I’d never seen a conscious consumer revolt succeed to utterly take down brand after brand. It only took one customized can of Bud Light that celebrated a delusionary boy trickster pretending to be a girl so that he could hate on the whole gender to trigger a nationwide revolt that could end in the complete decommissioning of what was once the best-selling beer.
Many other brands face the same problem, from Target to Kohl’s and beyond. And in terms of media venues, CNN can’t seem to get its act together to avoid being taken down by fed-up audiences. The same is true of many mainstream media outlets.
I asked a seasoned arts industry expert what this means. He explained that a sudden end to applause following the final notes represents the only way audiences have to express profound disapproval. It’s the equivalent of giving your server at the restaurant a 5 percent tip. It’s a strong suggestion to do better. The performers figured this out quickly, but will management?
How can they do better? It’s a very long road. Short term could involve some easy fixes. Museums need to move the old masters to the center and stop forcing visitors to slog through rooms of folk art and pretend that it’s on the same level. Their websites too should emphasize beauty over conformism with woke narratives. The ugly tokenism of identity politics needs to end on the grounds that it’s banal and transparently manipulative.
Long term, what they must do is rediscover beauty itself. The whole of modern art experience has been about redefining it to the point of erasing it altogether. This has to change. And by beauty, we don’t just mean audible and visual beauty. We mean intellectual, moral, and philosophical beauty—the elevation and celebration of ideals amid the drama of life in this vale of tears. That has been the essence of art from the ancient world until the lame attempt in the mid-20th century to turn everything on its head.
Arts can make a comeback but not through ever more intense invocations of the same progressive tropes. The revival will come through respecting and understanding the desires of audiences and donors for a more elevated experience of the art itself. Sadly, I’m not optimistic about a dramatic change anytime soon.
If live venues can’t manage to shift with the times, artificial intelligence and the pastiche of gaming and action-film music are going to continue to dominate the market until the old forms are completely gone. The slogan “Go woke, go broke” applies to the arts, too.
