From the Field

Pandemic’s Impact on Museums

More than 700 museum directors shared their pandemic experiences in a survey conducted by the American Alliance of Museums. The resulting report, National Snapshot of COVID-19 Impact on United States Museums (fielded December 2021-January 2022), includes their responses about museum closures, layoffs and financial losses; what museums are doing to cope; and new investments in nontraditional community services.

Culture as a Global Public Good

A new report published by UNESCO promotes culture’s value as a public good. Re|shaping Policies for Creativity: Addressing Culture as a Global Public Good describes how the cultural sector has suffered from the pandemic, what nations can do to recover and which cultural policies to promote.

Making Arts and Culture More Accessible

A new white paper from the Utah Division of Arts & Museums, Breaking Barriers or: How We Learned to Stop Fretting and Make Cultural Organizations More Accessible, offers a general breakdown of disability in the United States then discusses the need for greater accessibility in museums, arts and culture. An overview of Utah Division of Arts & Museums and Art Access‘s new accessibility program, Breaking Barriers: A Cultural Accessibility Project, and its impact also is presented.

Update: When Will Arts Attendance Return?

SMU DataArts’s When Will Arts Attendance Return? updates previous results from two sets of analyses looking at the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on ticket sales across 100 organizations. New results are based on data through December 31, 2021, and show that vaccinations and boosters no longer play the “savior” role that they used to; highly vaccinated counties are purchasing fewer tickets, likely due to breakthrough cases. Overall, according to the update, fluctuating COVID-19 case rates continue to exert a strong effect on ticket demand, and if case rates trend toward June 2021 levels in the first six months of 2022, predicted sales may reach 46% of their most recent four-year high by June 2022.

Arts Relevance and Engagement within Communities

SloverLinett has just published Rethinking Relevance, Rebuilding Engagement, the cumulative findings from the second phase of Culture + Community in a Time of Transformation. The report analyzes survey data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand changing community needs, context and behaviors in relation to arts and culture organizations. Findings from the study emphasize the growing importance of arts and cultural organizations, the desire for arts organizations to be proactive in addressing social issues, and the evolving role of arts and culture organizations in both community involvement and digital engagement.