The City: Brightness in the Air

(3 of 10)

third part of the complex is an auditorium seating more than 600 for lectures, films, concerts and televised programs. In the past, several major collections (notably the Avery Brundage and the Arensberg collections) have been given to other museums in other cities because the donors felt that their paintings could not have a suitable display space in Los Angeles. Now such space is at hand, and already the Art Museum's board of trustees has voted a $5,000,000 fund-raising program for new acquisitions.

"Los Angeles," says Carter, "was uniquely ready to spend money on culture. It is a center of artistic and musical activity, and spending money for their development is a prideful act. Besides, it tends to offset the image that the place is populated largely by kooks."

Staggering Statistics. But Los Angeles is only the latest example of what has become a major new trend in U.S. life—listening and looking and reading and doing the things uppercased as Art. The statistics of the change are staggering.

∙ MUSIC is in the air to the extent that the number of amateurs playing instruments rose from 19 million in 1950 to 37 million this year. In the same period, the number of symphony orchestras grew from about 800 to 1,300, playing to an audience of some 10 million. From 1947 to 1964, the number of children studying music at home or in school jumped from 2.5 million to 12 million—an increase of 380%. Last year the U.S. public bought 18 million classical records.

∙ ART galleries are springing up all over the place. In Phoenix, Ariz., for instance, there were two in 1950, and there are about 18 today. In Manhattan, there were 96 art exhibitions in December 1950 and 236 exhibits in December 1964. On a recent weekend, the Metropolitan Museum clocked 96,971 visitors, the Museum of Modern Art 11,708, and the Guggenheim 13,701.

∙ BOOKS are now selling at the rate of $1.7 billion a year. A 1963 survey by the National Book Committee estimated that book sales and library circulation have increased three times faster than the population during the previous five years.

∙ THEATER is no longer limited to Broadway and the road; there are currently 35 playhouses off-Broadway, and there are top-quality repertory companies, such as the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the Arena Stage in Washington, and their counterparts in Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee and San Francisco. The stage is not simply a spectator sport; there are reportedly some 5,000 nonprofessional theater groups in the U.S., not counting those in colleges.

∙ BALLET has become a major U.S. art form. There are 18 professional and 200 semiprofessional ballet companies in the country, two of which—Balanchine's New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theater—are rated among the best in the world. Their chief international competition—Russia's Kirov and Bolshoi, Denmark's Royal Danish and Britain's Royal Ballet—consistently play to sellout audiences during their extensive U.S. tours.

∙ MOVIES no longer mean Hollywood, period, to the man in the street. About 15 years ago, there was no more than a handful of theaters outside New York City specializing in what the trade calls art films—foreign movies, oldtime classics, experimental shorts. The "art circuit" today consists of