I write a weekly column for the website AudienceOutlookMonitor.com which collects audience surveys taken by arts groups from around the world and analyzes the results and tracks the data over time since this spring. Here are some columns over the last few months.

Aug. 15, 2020

By Frank Rizzo for AudienceOutlookMonitor.com

During this pandemic time, many arts groups are discovering in profound ways what’s important is the art, not the building.

Shiny new edifices may be seen now not as grand temples for the arts but rather formidable, scary and even dangerous places to be.

A lot of money was spent globally on cultural buildings that were completed last year. Nearly $8 billion, point-of-fact, according to a story in artnet.com. The funds spent on cultural capital projects — that were $10 million and up — echoed the same amount spent the previous year, citing a survey by AEA Consulting. That’s a lot of bricks and mortar aimed at “the old normal.”

“The lasting effects that lockdown will have on the design of arts buildings remain unclear, as will the changing social expectations of public spaces…Projects currently on the drawing board will be reexamined and tested rigorously against new expectations,” AEA writes in the report. “As public health redefines how we gather physically, many existing arts spaces will end up adapted for new patterns of use.”

So one can surmise that it’s back to the drawing board for many of those proposed new edifices for some significant tinkering.

Or at least to the re-imagining room.

If a return to “like it was” isn’t in the foreseeable future, there’s…

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