Is high culture riding high?

According to the Wall Street Journal, high culture is flourishing in America. The evidence? In a front-page story published a couple of weeks ago, the paper noted that Americans are drinking microbrews instead of Bud and that you can now get a cappuccino in Alpena, Ark.

Though it might shock my Seattle-based colleagues, I'm not sure that better coffee is the ultimate measure of a civilization. But if we don't count Starbucks, how do we know that the arts are flourishing in America? There's some support for the notion in a recent survey of public participation in the arts published by the National Endowment for the Arts. According to numbers extrapolated from a poll, 97 million people, or half the adult population of the United States, participate in the arts in some way. A full 34.9 percent of us went to an art museum last year; 15.6 percent attended classical music concerts. From these numbers, the NEA has derived a figure of 88 million classical music concerts attended in 1997 vs. 60 million in 1992, and 225 million art museum visits in 1997, up from 163 million in 1992.

However, the NEA points out that its 1992 numbers aren't comparable to the 1997 ones. Weirdly, the 1992 survey was appended to the National Crime Victimization Survey. (Has anyone in your household been mugged in the past 12 months? Have you been to see Riverdance?) The bleak context may have led to underreporting. The 1997 poll, by contrast, was free-standing, but one can see how it might register false positives. An NEA survey that asks whether you like to go to the theater, opera, ballet, etc., subtly begs for affirmative answers. And in fact, the five year increase indicated by the NEA is much greater than the numbers tabulated by various arts-service organizations--which in some cases report a decline where the NEA sees growth.

But the chief limitation of using the NEA numbers as a proxy for the health of high culture is that it's a demand-side picture--it captures consumption rather than production. It tells us nothing about the quality or quantity of high culture being created in the United States today. And in fact, the new study's upbeat tone cuts directly against the conclusions of a report issued by former NEA Chair Jane Alexander on her way out. The American Canvas study, published in 1997, argues that arts institutions are elitist, complacent, and largely hostile to popular audiences. Last year, according to the NEA, the arts were sick. This year, they're thriving.

Of course, numbers can never resolve the inherently subjective question of cultural health. For a consensus about whether a lot of masterpieces were painted or written in 1998, check back in 100 years. But it may be possible to come up with a more rounded portrait of relative cultural well-being--one that takes into account how well artists are doing as well as how many butts are in auditorium seats.

To that end, I hereby initiate the Slate Arts Index. This is a measure based on statistics culled from various sources that give a clue about the health of different art forms. Here's how it works. The baseline is 100 points, composed of six separate categories. It breaks down as follows: 20 points for literature, 20 for music, 20 for the fine arts, 20 for theater, 10 for film, and 10 for dance. On the basis of the numbers I've gathered, it's hard to say how well any art form--or culture as a whole--is doing. But in a year, we should be able to say whether they're doing better or worse. If the music score rises to 22, that would suggest a 10 percent improvement. A total tally of 92 would mean an 8 percent decline in the health of high culture overall.

Literature (20 points)

10 points--number of weeks that literary books were on the New York Times best-seller list

(1997 = 295)

5 points--number of full-length poetry titles published