Some Reflections on the Relationship between Supply and Demand in the Formalized Arts Sector

Grantmakers in the Arts: The purpose of this article is to provide a broadly economic perspective on what has become an increasingly prominent debate within the cultural community: how best to ensure a vital organized arts sector in a period of prolonged economic malaise. It seeks to adopt a position between unquestioning boosterism and dismissive philistinism. Engaging sensitively with the possibility that the nonprofit arts sector may be overextended is often difficult. The sector’s skill at advocacy and its can-do optimism and determination — qualities that keep it going against the odds — have not prepared it well for a chapter in which forensic analysis and explicit prioritization and consolidation — and all that euphemism implies — may be required. The proposition in this article is that what got us here, unfortunately, may not get us there.