Not so long ago the “advantages” of attending performing or visual arts events came solely from the events themselves. You were a member of the audience because of the gratifications of whatever was on stage, screen or wall. It seldom occurred to attendees that the primary experience required incentives to make it more desirable.
But small incentives usually were present in the last 50 years. From the liveried usher who took you to your seat in a theater to the guide who lectured while walking you through galleries of a museum, some extra service or amenity was on offer. A few did little more than create an aura that might set the event apart from the everyday. Other perks, however, increased audience comfort or awareness, and those especially have proliferated, on occasion even changing the audience experience.
Take movie theaters. Where once there were the added attractions of raffles, preliminary stage shows or souvenir programs, now there are large, plush upholstered seats — some rocking — fitted with cup holders so viewers can keep hands free for a broadened offering of food from snack bars in the lobby. The declared model for the newest theaters is the sports stadium, but one that aspires to the comforts of home, sometimes including video games, which, like the presence of more munchies, extend moviegoing into a different realm.
Halls presenting classical music also have played to audience ideas of comfort. At Chicago’s Symphony Center, rows and seats were widened and European-style bars (serving alcoholic beverages) were added. Those who prize seeing above hearing can now sit behind the orchestra, sharing the players’ visual perspective. Two gourmet restaurants — one, a club accessible only through membership — have been opened on the premises. An enlarged gift shop, which plays pieces in the orchestra’s current repertory as Muzak, offers a selection of recordings and videos that include different performances of many of the works presented live during the concert season. A VIP Services department, intended to function almost as a hotel concierge, has been established to care for special needs of the concertgoer.
“I am a firm believer that an ad in the newspaper may draw patrons, but it’s service that retains them,” says John Turchon, the CSO’s director of ticketing and sales. “It’s very personal service because we are dealing with a highly personal product. Audiences have changed. There are many, many things for people to do just in the Loop. [VIP Services was created] to maintain the regular and ongoing attitude of our patrons.”
Since the 1960s, promoters of the visual arts have moved further, championing the display of pieces in the workaday environment: streets, plazas, building lobbies, offices. People, therefore, become an audience for art without having to visit a museum or gallery. Because this art usually is contemporary, viewers effortlessly become acquainted with unfamiliar artistic conventions in familiar settings. Awareness is raised, no matter how slightly, by repeated exposure.
American museums began in earnest to deepen such awareness during the 1970s. Forty years ago the catalogs for major exhibitions often were scarcely more than aids to memory, presenting but a brief essay and a selection of reproductions, the majority in black and white. Now museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago direct a range of beautifully illustrated publications to casual visitors as well as scholars. These supplement introductory brochures, audio-visual preambles, wall texts, reading rooms, recorded tours and expanded labels — all within exhibitions — plus an array of educational programs for children and adults alike.
“The Art Institute has made many improvements in the last five years that enhance the visitor experience,” says Eileen Harakal, executive director of public affairs. Chief among them is “a new Touch Gallery, where visitors who are visually impaired can discern an artwork’s form, line, size, style, temperature and texture” through direct contact. For those in wheelchairs (and families with children in strollers), a “People on Wheels Map” aids in navigation of the galleries.
Commercial galleries, once thought the most forbidding because of their cool, hushed atmosphere, have similarly changed, combining relaxedness with a museumlike emphasis on education. Many galleries now publish detailed catalogs with regularity. But more helpful is the access to information in different forms — books, lectures, discussions, seminars — that galleries give visitors who, after all, pay no entrance fee and may not plan to purchase the works being discussed.
“Galleries are definitely in business,” says Natalie Van Straaten, executive director of the Chicago Art Dealers Association. “So it’s like with theater: You have to train an audience, for the sake of what will happen down the road. The more educated person is going to be the future [art] collector. We have to educate now, otherwise there’ll be no collectors.”
