Nonprofit arts and culture in the USA: Roles, audiences and participation

Abstract

The nonprofit arts and cultural sector in the USA is bifurcated between a large and highly professionalized infrastructure of cultural institutions, on the one hand, and significant numbers of small, informal groupings and organizations at the grassroots, on the other. The cultural policy debate of the past has near exclusively focused on the former, whereas the latter capture America’s associational spirit more truly. This contribution reviews the role of the nonprofit arts in the larger cultural economy as well as its revenue structure, and focuses on participation in both professional and grassroots endeavors as a gauge of how Americans associate in arts and culture.