For many years here at RSA, one of our favorite statistics about the arts in America went something like this: “More people go to museums than attend all the sports contests in any given year combined.” That claim rests within quotation marks because it is a direct quote from J. Carter Brown’s foreword to the book World Art in American Museums, published in 1983. The original research source is unstated – and since then, the phrase itself has evolved to fit different audiences and needs, permeating news articles, blogs, and other areas of discussion about culture in the U.S. (as evidenced by the wide results shown in an internet search). For instance, the advocacy group Americans for the Arts states on its web site that “Research shows more people attend the Arts than sporting events,” and the Performing Arts Research Coalition likewise reports this statistic, in the context of the performing arts, claiming it as a result of their research in 2002. Meanwhile, a report by the National Endowment for the Humanities, published in 2000, reiterates the statement in the context of museum attendance, citing the American Association of Museums (AAM) as the source. This museum-specific context was also reinforced by museum director Maxwell Anderson, in an important essay he wrote in 2004 for the Getty Leadership Institute, noting that “in 2002 they [museums] drew some 100 million visitors, more people than attended sporting events.”

 

For us, this statistic has largely fallen out of use. Among other things, we were wary of the numbers involved: first because the volume of sports attendees is so high (e.g., more than 76 million for Major League Baseball alone), and second because the surveys of arts organizations seem to have their own challenges. (E.G., a Cincinnati Post article about the 2002 Performing Arts Research Coalition survey mentioned that the data was gathered by local performing arts organizations “via questionnaires at performances and by mail to subscribers,” which cannot help but raise eyebrows.) More to the point, we well know that this factoid (certainly a better term in this case) always raised more questions than it answered for anyone who cared enough to examine it closely. When “museums” were the focus, did we mean only art museums, all AAM-member museums, or anything bearing the word “museum” in the title? Defining the statement to include “the arts” more broadly was also a difficult task: did that term include galleries at community centers and stadium-filling concerts by the latest pop music star? “Attend all the sports contests” was rather vague; did this include high school and college level games, or just professional sports? We were careful, too, since attendance is not the only measure of a museum’s success. And we took for granted that “attendance” did not stretch to cover television audiences, since the number of people who watch sports from the comfort of their homes almost certainly exceeds the number of people who participate in “the arts” or “visit” museums in the same way.

 

However, the idea of people engaging with museums from home (or anywhere else) has definitely taken on a new life in our wired, internet-driven world – and as of June 2006, when Google Labs made public their Google Trends tool, another avenue opened up to evaluate how the museum world stacks up against other forms of entertainment, sports included. Google Trends provides two sets of data: a comparison of the search volume for up to five keywords or phrases, and a comparison of the news volume (within Google News) for those same search terms. The site allows users to select for specific regions or countries, as well as chart data for 2004 through June 2006. (Other details about the data can be found on the About Google Trends page.)

 

I tested Google Trends using a few different terms, with surprising results; even the skeptical part of me that always looked slightly concerned about the museums vs. sports factoid found these charts intriguing. In a comparison of the word “museum” against the words “baseball,” “football,” “hockey,” and “soccer,” the results show that only “football” had significantly more searches or appearances in news articles than any of the other terms. The chart shows the words “museum,” “baseball,” “hockey,” and “soccer” all appearing in close proximity, with “hockey” having some noticeable lows and “soccer” enjoying a strong peak point around the time of the 2006 World Cup. 

 

Change things a little, and search for “art” in comparison to those same sports, and the results are dramatic: the search volume for “art” floats comfortably above everything, only periodically intersected by the peak points of “football” searches, and putting the other sports solidly to shame. The picture isn’t entirely rosy. While “art” fared quite well against terms such as “movie” and “TV,” and even “hip hop,” “museum” searches generally lagged behind those for “art” in each case. Similarly, substituting “dance” for “art” – in comparisons with sports or “TV” and “movie” – does not show off that art form in the best light, and the same is true for “theater.” Nor is a high search volume for news articles necessarily about good news, since the headlines Google Trends shows are often about controversies (e.g., discussions about Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code, and the movie of the same name) rather than exciting opportunities for the public to experience the best of art or museums.

 

Beyond the charts of the searches, the most surprising and encouraging element of this research concerned the geographic distribution of the searches. One might naturally expect, given the density of people and likelihood of computers and internet connections, that the biggest cities and states in the U.S. would always lead in search volume. Yet in the art vs. sports search, the number 2 and 3 cities by search volume – for the word “art” – were Salt Lake City and Seattle respectively, with Los Angeles ranking at number 9, just below Denver. As of this writing, Pleasanton, California, located to the southeast of Oakland, ranked number two in searches of “dance” against those same sports.

 

Google itself is careful to note that the geographic rankings only mean that people in specific places may use Google to conduct their internet searches for particular terms. Although New York, Chicago, and other obvious centers of high art and culture were consistently well-represented, it is nonetheless refreshing to see evidence of interest in the arts beyond their borders (at least as represented by internet searches on Google). Likewise, a broader caveat is needed for this whole endeavor. People who search for things on the internet may very well use other, more specific terms, such as the names of particular artists or athletes. Legitimate questions may also be raised about the value of comparing these kinds of internet searches in the first place. Do they really indicate greater interest in or engagement with the arts? Are they mutually exclusive, as the results might suggest – even though we know, in real life, art fans may also be sports fans? Can the sheer volume of searches for any of these terms be seen as a validation of the role they play in our society? (Perhaps these results suggest the answer is yes, for better or worse.)

 

There are other internet mechanisms to help gauge interest in specific subjects. A recent trend in the museum community has institutions launching their own blogs. Museums could therefore use Technorati, the major search engine for blogs, to evaluate either their blog’s popularity, as well as to see how frequently a particular word or phrase has been used within the blogging world (e.g., well over 10,000 mentions a day for the word “art,” compared with about 2,500 per day for the word “museum”). Alexa.com, an internet information aggregator owned by Amazon, has a tool that provides information on web site traffic and overall rankings within the vast world of the internet.

 

There is an addictive quality to this research. After a while, I found that the comparative searches I could conduct on Google Trends started to become either a reflection of personal taste (this one really surprised me), or to devolve into art world minutiae probably best addressed outside of this context. While the results of all these internet tools and statistics can hardly be considered definitive – there is, after all, much more to a thorough analysis than just comparing these types of scores – the data can certainly be seen as indicative, given Google’s position as the leading internet search engine. It may not prove the interest in or success of the arts over other popular forms of entertainment, but really, what is there to “prove”? The point is that used properly, this information can help those of us working in the arts evaluate how we are perceived, find new ways to engage specific audiences, and ultimately improve the quality of the public’s experience.

  

  

Sascha Freudenheim is a Vice President at Resnicow Schroeder Associates.  The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author.