Open seats. As an economist, I see open seats - at museums, operas, the theater, etc. - and I think, “there’s a supply/demand issue here.” Put another way, when I was a child and I couldn’t finish what I’d put on my plate my mom would say, “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”
I wonder if - in our quest to become destination communities and under the “quality of life” banners that we wave - our eyes got bigger than our stomachs? Are we investing for the audiences we have, or for the ones we wish to have? And if we don’t get the audiences we hope for, what’s the cost of open seats? In Milwaukee in May, the Public Musuem announced it might not meet its next payroll and would lay off half the staff. In Madison, it’s rumored to cost $3000 per month to wash the windows on the new Overture Center for the Arts. Across the country, arts organizations struggle with attracting younger patrons. The supply of Next Audiences patrons is going down across the country. Let’s make sure our eyes are not bigger than our stomachs.
