Aspen Ideas Festival

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Did you know?

Fact: Arts

Fine artists will see a 9 percent increase in employment.
—Bureau of Labor Statistics
30%: China’s share of the art and antique market, in 2011, based on both auction and dealer sales. For the first time, China bumped the US out of first place. The UK remains in third.
—BBC, March 2012
45: percentage of high-arts, low-income young adults who voted in the 2004 national election.31: percent of low-arts, low-income young adults who voted.
—National Endowment for the Arts, March 2012
$32 billion: Amount spent annually on the arts in the US. More than ¼ of that comes from private individuals.
—New York Times, March 2012
$64 billion: Amount of US exports of arts goods (e.g., movies, paintings, jewelry) in 2010. This is a 12 percent increase over 2009.
—Americans for the Arts, April 2012
In 2008, 57 percent of eighth-graders attended schools where music instruction was offered at least three or four times a week. There were no statistically significant changes since 1997.
—National Center for Education Statistics
Arts-engaged, low-income students are more likely than their non-arts-engaged peers to have attended and done well in college, build careers, volunteered in their communities and participated in the political process by voting. The conclusion of these recent studies is that on average, arts-engaged low-income students tend to perform more like higher-income students in the many types of comparisons that the studies tracks.
—Presidents Committee on the Arts and Humanities, May 2011
Racial/ethnic and gender gaps evident in both music and visual arts: Average responding scores in both music and visual arts were 22 to 32 points higher for White and Asian/Pacific Islander students than for Black and Hispanic students. Average responding scores for female students were 10 points higher than for male students in music.
—National Center for Education Statistics
Nationally, the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity every year—$63.1 billion in spending by organizations and an additional $103.1 billion in event-related spending by their audiences.
—artusa.org
Attendance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art reached 5,240,000 visitors during 2009 - 2010. This is the first year since 2001 that attendance at the Metropolitan has exceeded five million.
—metmuseum.org