Art Education is often left behind in the drive to increase the amount of time students spend on academics. As a result, special programs fill in the gap in many schools and districts. And more are needed. The Wallace Foundation sponsored a three-day gathering to discuss appreciation for the arts. Here’s the report that focuses on the future.

The subsequent report, Arts for All, Connecting to Audiences, reports that attendees were asked to consider three major areas of concern and potential action:
•    How might arts organizations harness innovative marketing methodologies to build audiences?
•    How might technology catalyze these efforts, especially when it comes to cultivating younger audience?
•    And how could research make organizations smarter about designing their programming and outreach to encourage broader participation?

The question of technology and youth was directed at professional art groups seeking to market to youth. However, the discussion could also spark some innovation for K-12 arts education through building school/community programs and creating interest in student art work.

Technology provides arts presenters with new opportunities. Most immediately, technology lower the “transaction costs” of linking people to the arts, helping to accommodate spur-of-the-moment decisions.
More significantly, the latest online services are creating new, more interactive and participatory forms of engagement and altering the traditional relationship between arts presenters and their audiences.

New York Times technology columnist Seth Schiesel, explained “people are gravitating toward entertainment formats where they can take an active role in shaping the experience, rather than merely consuming the experience.”  His marketing advice for traditional arts was to mimic gaming by creating an online, social environment for patrons.

For example, for an exhibition of amateur photos from the 1920s to the 1960s, the Newark Museum in Newark, NJ set up a page on Flickr, the popular photo-sharing website, and then invited people to post their own snapshots online. “That way,” said Ted Lind, deputy director for education of, “we invited our patrons to become part of the exhibition.”

When the curators of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco set about creating a community artwork that they titled the “Making Peace”, the curators invited city residents to send in their own ideas and images, using e-mail and mobile communication devices. The materials were assembled into a digital mosaic that ended up being projected on the Center’s wall facing Mission Street, a busy downtown thoroughfare.

Proven resources provide inexpensive distribution channels for professional artists or students. Conference participants pointed to standards such as YouTube, iTunes, and Second Life. They also recommended FORA.tv, which gathers lectures and seminars online, and sites such as, Flavorpill, that offer “curated” recommendations from expert editors. Twitter, participants added, allows thousands of people to send and receive tiny, sentence- long messages about their everyday activities.

The San Francisco-based Long Now Foundation, which was established as a counterpoint to today’s fast-paced lifestyles and devotes itself to “slower/better thinking,” mounted an installation in Second Life of recording and visual artist Brian Eno’s digital artwork, 77 Million Paintings. Conceived by Eno as “visual music,” the piece is a constantly evolving sound and image-scape that was originally intended to bring art to millions of darkened flat panel TV screens. Being a work of digital art, it posed no obstacle to premiering in the virtual environment of Second Life.

The Wallace Foundation also commissioned a related RAND study, Cultivating Demand for the Arts: Arts Learning, Arts Engagement, and State Arts Policy. While it makes a strong case for arts education, it does not include any discussions of technology.

Wallace Foundation conference summary, Arts for All, Connecting to Audiences
RAND, Cultivating Demand for the Arts: Arts Learning, Arts Engagement, and State Arts Policy