Los Angeles Times Interview : Judith Balfe

Trouble is brewing in the nation’s high-cultural institutions, and it not just coming from budget-trimming politicians. Across the country, supporters and patrons of symphonies, opera companies, theater groups and other high-brow arts organizations are literally dying away--and they’re not being replaced by younger people. Study after study shows the nation’s baby boomers--some 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964--are far less interested in attending and supporting cultural institutions than were their parents.

The generation that survived the Depression and fought World War II embraced the arts in the postwar years, fueling an explosion of high culture that peaked during the 1970s. Despite their parents’ interest, and generosity, many boomers failed to contract the “art bug.” The reasons for this are myriad, and not entirely clear.

Boomers are steadfast in their support of modern popular culture--movies, television and popular music. But, with such exceptions as ballet, jazz and the visual arts, boomers are often too busy--and feel too financially strapped--to attend and support the traditional not-for-profit arts. One problem is certainly the explosion of other leisure activities--everything from working out at the gym to spelunking on the Internet. Another is economic reality--many boomers work longer hours in two-career families. That makes plopping down with Jerry Seinfeld more attractive than getting gussied up and driving downtown to the Music Center.

Faced with aging subscribers--a 1989 survey of L. A. Philharmonic subscribers found more than half over age 55--arts organizations are scrambling to find ways to attract younger audiences. Some symphonies have hired rock promoters to drum up business; others promote concertgoing as tonic for stressed-out overachievers. Good old snob appeal might also work. Sociologist Judith Balfe notes boomers have a need to distinguish themselves from their all-too numerous peers. Perhaps arts organizations can create a sense of eliteness and give boomers a way to separate themselves from the masses, she says.

Balfe, 58, is co-author of a study commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts, due to be published next month, that focuses on the baby-boom generation and their attitudes about high culture. A former art-museum worker, she now teaches sociology at City University of New York, Staten Island. Balfe’s conclusions about the future of the high arts didn’t leave anyone smiling at the NEA, and sparked new debate about the outlook for high culture in America.

*

Question: What are the differences between the baby-boom generation and their parents in terms of overall support for the high arts?

Answer: The highest involvement, whether you measure it by attendance or support, are the war babies--the generation that immediately preceded the boomers. The birth rate in 1957 was 3.8 children per family; it’s now 1.8--just at the end of World War II, it had dropped to just about two children per family. When you outnumber your parents, the likelihood that they will sit over you and insist that you practice the piano, or whatever, is somewhat diminished.

The sheer number of these children entering school meant that teachers who had been assigned to art or music were often reassigned to something else. And while the baby boomers have considerably higher levels of education than their parents, it wasn’t the same education. In higher education, fewer boomers opted for traditional liberal-arts degrees--where you get the broadest exposure to the arts--and more opted for degrees in things like business and engineering. This means that, on the whole, fewer boomers were grounded in the kinds of subjects that lead to an understanding and love of the arts. For their parents’ generation, those who had higher education and higher income, the arts were far more important to their understanding of themselves and their civic responsibility to society.

Steve Proffitt, a contributing editor to Opinion, is project director for the Hajjar-Kaufman New Media Lab. He interviewed Judith Balfe at her home in New Jersey.

*

Q: What are some of the other factors you see as contributing to this lack of interest in the high arts by baby boomers?

A: Boomers give less to charity, and they specifically give less to the arts. They do less volunteering, because they have less leisure time. Two people are working for the same income, and they have a sense of declining fortune. Then, of course, there are the two biggies: television and rock music. My father happened to work for Westinghouse, and so we got the first television set on the block, in 1947. But I had my immediately formative years without television, so I was practiced in living without it. And popular music was whatever the grown-ups happened to like. That’s because it had to be played on the only radio or phonograph in the house--which was in the living room.

By the 1950s, most every house had a television, and there were 45-rpm records and cheap radios and record players so teenagers could listen to their own music in their own rooms. So what happened was that you had a critical mass of consumers--the baby boomers--whose tastes could be targeted by advertisers. Suddenly, instead of everybody being part of the same general culture, audiences were segmented; and the sense of a culture--at least a popular culture--which transcended generations, was lost.

*

Q: So if we’ve established that this baby- boom generation, which is now beginning to take on the reins of society, is not very interested in the arts--how does that affect the arts as a collective whole, and within individual organizations?

A: It’s disastrous. For the premier arts organizations, it may not be a huge problem. They’re big, prestigious and they bring in the big bucks. But they will end up suffering if there are not middle-range arts organizations to create interest. You need the minor leagues, where you have local participation--community theater and the like. All that builds support for the arts--and those mid-range organizations are the ones that are going to go under.

But back to this matter of education. One could provide evidence of what I’ve said about baby-boomer higher education by looking at the freshmen in Congress at the moment. From my perspective, they don’t seem to know a whole lot about culture and heritage--about its importance and what must be done to protect it. Obviously, they didn’t get it, and their constituents didn’t, either.

*

Q: So are you saying that the boomers’ indifference is tacit support for government cutbacks in support for the arts?

A: Absolutely. It’s not any longer worth anybody’s time in Congress to be militant in favor of the arts. What had been a fairly large arts caucus is now gone--most of those people have retired. Once the issue of obscenity came up, people began refusing to stick their necks out, because this became a target for the religious right and for others. People who had previously found it easy to defend the arts are no longer there to be counted.

And we must not absolve the arts community--which has not, in fact, acted as a community. When [Ronald] Reagan attempted to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts, everybody got all organized and Charlton Heston came riding into Washington and they saved it. There has not been that kind of militancy of late--perhaps because the art community has been divided and has been too focused on freedom of expression, which may not be the biggest issue. Perhaps we should remember that the arts exist to comfort the afflicted and not just afflict the comfortable.

*

Q: It seems like the bottom line here may be a failure of the arts themselves. Art exists to engage the imagination, and obviously, for many baby boomers, high art isn’t engaging. Have these art forms become anachronistic, even obsolete?

A: Perhaps. Popular entertainment is so sophisticated nowadays that, indeed, it has undermined the fine arts. It’s sure a lot easier to stay home and watch television--why go out?

But what is fascinating about the baby boomers is their omnivorous appetite for culture, high and low. They do everything, which means they can’t do anything quite as often. In our survey, we asked about what kind of popular music people liked. There were something like 16 categories--everything from big band to rock and reggae and rap. The more categories people checked--the broader their taste in popular music--the more likely they were to also enjoy high art like opera, theater and dance. I think the one exception was country music. So perhaps what we have is a generation whose tastes are so widespread that they are less able to focus time and energy on any single art form.

*

Q: What are arts organizations doing to attract more boomers to their offerings, and what are some success stories?

A: For starters, it’s harder for the performing arts than it is for art museums--which is why museums have been more successful with baby boomers. You know, you go to a museum, it’s like a shopping mall. You look at what you want to see, you can push the kid in the stroller, get something to eat and leave. Whereas a performing-arts event requires you to book a ticket, probably get a baby-sitter and so on. But opera performed in public parks works great--taking the performing arts to where people are. Sometimes, that means allowing for less sophisticated audiences and making people feel more comfortable. Many arts organizations feel that if they do that, if they pander to baby boomers, they are in danger of losing their art and diminishing their purpose.

But here’s what works: anything that involves their children. Something on Sunday afternoon. The kids are allowed to move about and fidget. And the parents have a good time, and they get interested. It gets them plugged in, and they become invested in the arts. But you’ve got to keep doing it.

*

Q: What about this whole idea of getting back to using snob appeal to bring in boomers? Could arts organizations succeed by making boomers feel they are special, part of an elite, by supporting the arts?

A: I think it’s inevitable. Look, the popes and kings and princes supported the arts, for the most part, not because they loved them, but because they convinced other people that high position meant sophistication and taste. That still prevails today--we are all social climbers, and sociologists have no problem with that. But the fact is, even very wealthy baby boomers don’t seem to be very philanthropic. And the older generation, which endowed the organizations, and built the concert halls--they’re not being replaced.

*

Q: But boomers are still relatively young. Isn’t there a good chance that as they get older, they will become more supportive of the arts, and behave much like previous generations?

A: Well, if they haven’t done it yet, I wouldn’t count on it. If they haven’t started getting involved when they are 40, 45 or 50, it seems unlikely they’re going to have a change of heart. Unless you go out and actively recruit them. Artists are inventive. But they need to understand the nature of what they are fighting and invent against it. If there is continual denial, saying “Oh, well, the baby boomers have always been late, they got married later, had kids later”--it will be too late to get them.

*

Q: What about the post-baby-boom generation--are they different from the boomers?

A: In many respects, they continue the pattern of the baby boomers. And these are folks with champagne tastes and beer budgets--they’re either still in school or just starting their careers. They turn away from classical music, continuing that trend, and they attend art museums, continuing that trend. They go to classical ballet, but, after all, they’re just out of college and may have taken dance there.

*

Q: So what is your assessment? As the years pass, and many of the classical art forms become more alien to each passing generation, what’s the prognosis?

A: For many arts organizations in this country, I think it’s very grim. Unless they start paying more attention to cultivating folks than they have in the past. But some sort of shrinkage is inevitable if only because Generation X, and presumably subsequent generations, will be smaller than the baby-boom cohorts--and, therefore, there will be fewer artists and fewer art consumers. Some groups will survive, but for sure, many will not.

It’s grim if you think the arts are wonderful and humanizing and everybody should have more of them. I remain a bit agnostic about the function of art. As sociologists, we don’t have good ways to measure its effects. But if I were running an arts organization, I’d be worried.