Dip in Arts Attendance Tied to Decline of the Omnivore The omnivore may not technically qualify as an endangered species. But the coveted creature — known for its sensitivity, inquisitiveness and tendency to congregate around galleries and concert halls — is in decline. And that poses a major challenge to America’s arts organizations. Omnivores — defined by sociologists as people who regularly participate in a broad range of cultural activities — represent a small minority of the population, but a large portion of the arts audience. In a new analysis recently released by the National Endowment for the Arts, author Mark J. Stern concludes that this engaged, energetic group is both shrinking in size and becoming less active. Stern, a professor of social policy and practice at the University of Pennsylvania, describes this trend as “a double blow” to the nation’s arts organizations. In Age and Arts Participation: A Case Against Demographic Destiny, he argues the largely unexplained diminution of this group is a key reason attendance at arts events continues to dwindle. Stern notes that, in recent decades, there has been “a precipitous decline in attendance” at art museums, plays, operas, dance performances, and concerts of both jazz and classical music. According to NEA statistics, classical music attendance has declined at a 29 percent rate since 1982, with the steepest drop occurring form 2002 to 2008. The only art form that did not record a statistically significant drop between 2002 and 2008 — and the one that has had the smallest decline overall since 1982 — is musical theater. This drop-off has often been ascribed to demographic factors, with some worrying the baby boom generation (raised on television) and its kids (raised on computers) are too caught up in the world of mass media and pop culture to cultivate a taste for the arts, which demand a level of focused attention that seems anathema to contemporary life. Others have argued the graying audience many arts organizations have noted is a natural phenomenon. According to this school of thought, it isn’t until people’s kids have grown that they have the money and time to enjoy the finer things in life, including going to concerts and museums. Stern argues that, when you look at the population as a whole, neither of those arguments hold much water. Using data from the NEA’s 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, he breaks down the audience by both age and generation (pre-1937, World War II, Early Baby Boom, Late Baby Boom, Gen X and Post-1975). “When we control for other influences — especially the role of educational attainment — the predictive value of age and (generational) cohort turns out to be quite minor,” he writes. In contrast, the likelihood of attending arts events increases dramatically with education, from less than 10 percent for those whose education stopped at high school graduation to more than 40 percent for those with graduate degrees. That said, age and generation become relevant when you focus on the aforementioned slice of the population known as omnivores (as well as their close cousins, highbrows). First identified by sociologist Richard Peterson in the 1990s, omnivores are people who attend both a wide range and a large number of arts events. Highbrows also attend arts events frequently but limit their participation to such art forms as ballet and classical music.