Trends in arts funding that were ominous enough late in the 20th Century have worsened in the 21st. Government support, all levels combined, fell by 31% in real dollars between 1992 and 2012. (And, Kaiser might have noted, had already lost much ground from its promising NEA/state arts councils beginnings.) The large private foundations have, by and large, turned away from major arts initiatives. Corporate giving has also slowed, due in part to economic unpredictability (see, especially, 2008 and the subsequent jitters) and in part to the quickened pace of mergers and acquisitions that has led to the removal of many a corporate HQ and a loosened loyalty to the abandoned localities. Finally, individual giving has of course been affected by economic worries and (as Kaiser well delineates) the advent of an artistically uneducated generation that’s living the new lifestyles (see above) and that, even when interested in the arts and well-intentioned, is not strongly committed for the long haul. In short, the American funding model hasn’t quite broken down, but is sputtering and slowing significantly. And this is happening in the very moment that Europe is recognizing its need for the American example to augment its traditional system of state (i.e., public) patronage.

From this clear and, I think, correct analysis of our current situation, Kaiser moves to a forecast of the next twenty years, envisioning the condition of the live performing arts in 2035. It’s a black picture for all but the largest, richest, and most expertly governed organizations, and is particularly discouraging for the midsized entities (“regional” opera and theatre companies, symphony orchestras in the metropolitan category, etc.), caught between the money-raising juggernauts of global reach at the high end and the pocket start-ups or community-level efforts relying on volunteer or very low-paid talent at the low end–a sort of miniature model of a society with no middle stratum. It could be argued that Kaiser makes many predictive assumptions, all negative, and I wish I could find some of them lazily made or sloppily argued. But I don’t. He simply extrapolates from the current trends and follows them along for a couple of decades. Refreshingly, he doesn’t hedge his language. He says “will,” not “could” or “might” or “may,” and my only reservation as I read through this section (entitled “Brave New World: Part 1”) was that in many instances “will” should have read “already does.”

Kaiser applies standard economic models to the arts, and this is where artistic souls will have to overcome their resistance to seeing their noble calling defined as an industry. He talks, for instance, about the steps from innovation (of a product or service) to standardization to commodification. The language may not seem appropriate in the high-culture context. But think about it in relation to the concept of co-production, which is obviously attractive from the cost-sharing POV, but which also serves to weaken the artistic identity of each participating company.^(I) Or recall what eventually became of the once-booming trade in commercial opera recording, with its endless versions of standard repertory works and debut recital discs of every potentially exploitable singer, until the industry ran into the same problems now besetting live performance–only sooner, since it was nominally for-profit, and had long since declared itself commodified. Kaiser introduces the Porter Model of analyzing the evolution of an industry, and examines the arts in its light, which is particularly harsh at this stage with respect to the prevalence of substitutes. (This term always rattles citizens of the artistic realm. But as used in economics, it doesn’t mean that a movie meets the same aesthetic need as an opera, or even that The Merry Widow can stand in for Tristan. It just means something a buyer chooses to buy instead of something else, because it’s cheaper, more convenient, more casual, less strain on the brain, or for any other reason. Its application to the current predicament of the live performing arts is, I think, self-explanatory.)