Abstract
There is hardly an art museum not running, or at least preparing, a special exhibition of some sort. Such an exhibition may feature one particular artist (often in commemoration of his or her birth or death), or a group of artists, may focus on a period or a genre of paintings, or may establish a connection to some historical event (see Belcher 1991, p. 49).
This chapter is based on Bruno S. Frey and Isabelle Busenhart (1996), “Special Exhibitions and Festivals”, previously published in Ginsburgh and Menger (eds.), Economics of the Arts. Selected Essays, pp. 275–302, used by permission of Elsevier Science.
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References
The same applies to other countries. The “International Exhibition Guide” lists 231 exhibitions in Germany for the years 1994/95, whereas alone in 1991 as many as 1600 exhibitions took place, according to data from the German Institut fir Museumskunde (1992).
Our analysis is restricted to temporary special exhibitions at art museums, neglecting similar events taking place in other types of museums. It must be
Attendance figures are quite important, though this is often disputed by the art people involved. According to one museum expert “Attendance figures still constitute an index of the popularity of museums and exhibitions . . . ” (Belcher 1991, p. 197; see also ch. 6 on the Beyeler Museum in this book).
Only festivals devoted to serious music and operas are considered here. But even so, exactly what a music festival is, is ill-defined. There are, of course, many other types of “festivals”, ranging from country music to jazz, theatre, circus or films. A classification is e.g. provided in Getz and Frisby (1988). Economists have tended to ignore art festivals as a general phenomenon; they have confined their attention to the local and regional multiplier effects of festivals (see, e.g., Vaughan 1980 for the Edinburgh Festival, Mitchell and Wall 1989 for the Stratford (Ontario) Festival, or O’Hagan 1992 for the Wexford Opera Festival), to the welfare theoretic implications of subsidization (e.g., O’Hagan and Duffy 1987; Pommerehne 1992), or to specific festivals (see, e.g., Frey 1986 for the Salzburg Festival; Galeotti 1992 for the Spoleto Festival).
The analysis of the Cost Disease is due to Baumol and Bowen 1966, and is sometimes also called Baumol’s law. Major contributions to the large subsequent literature on the topic are included in Towse (1997b). Further contributions can be found in the special issue of the Journal of Cultural Economics (Vol. 20, No. 3, 1996) devoted to the topic, with contributions by Baumol, Cowen, Peacock and Throsby.
Klein (1990) provides extensive empirical evidence on the sociodemographic background of the “museum visitor”. Data refer mainly to the Federal Republic of Germany.
The situation is quite different for museums of technology or transport. Automobile and railway museums, especially, are very popular. In Switzerland, for instance, which boasts many fine museums of art, the museum with by far the largest attendance is the Verkehrshaus, the museum of transport, in Lucerne. In 1998, it attracted over 480,000 visitors (and 510,000 for the affiliated IMAX theatre) while the (famous) Basle Kunstmuseum was visited by a total of only 176,000 persons.
A good example is the “Opera Spectacular” which tours the whole world. Its production of Aida is normally performed in sports stadiums, and has so far attracted many millions of visitors. Open air performances have attendances of up to 45,000 people (in Montreal), which can be attributed to its concrete visual elements (e.g. a sphinx 15 meters high, live elephants and camels), a large number of performers (roughly 600 supernumeraries) as well as the extraordinary emphasis on acoustic quality.
For art exhibitions, see Börsch-Supan (1993), Feldstein (1991), Fronville (1985), DiMaggio (1985); for festivals, Frey (1986) and O’Hagan (1992).
At the festival of La Roque-d’Anthéron (France), for example, artists accept to perform for half the fee they get on other occasions (L’Expansion 1994, p. 35).
As Baumol and Baumol (1994, p. 178) point out, this was not always so. In Mozart’s time “ . . . audiences generally were prepared to listen only to new music, usually to works written no more than a decade earlier”.
This argument especially applies to Europe. In the United States, where generally less regulations are imposed on cultural institutions (at least compared to other institutions), the incentive to evade regulations is lower. In the case of festivals, the empirical picture is consistent with that observation: fewer festivals take place in the U.S. than in Europe (see Frey 1994b).
Abundant evidence exists, showing that festivals enjoy greater financial freedom than normal music establishments. A good example is the Schleswig-Holstein Musikfestspiele, where the originator and promoter, Justus Frantz, enjoyed more leeway than he would ever have had at an established venue. While receiving public subsidies, he kept his independence by relying on financial support from many different sponsors. However, he perhaps went too far, and was subsequently dismissed.
Personal communication by the director of the Kunsthalle Tübingen, Professor Götz Adriani, to the authors, 20 June 1994.
Many museums employ part of their personnel only temporarily when they have an exhibition on display (Bayart and Benghozi 1993, p. 199). For an analysis of temporary work contracts in the performing arts, see Menger 1991.
DiMaggio (1985) confirms that it is possible in the U.S. to get government subsidies to cover the cost of mounting an exhibition. See also Frey (1986) for the reverse causality of deficits in the case of the Salzburg Festival.
Data from the Ifo-Institute Munich suggest that enterprises do more often sponsor special art events than regular art institutions (Hummel 1992). For examples of business sponsorship in the arts, see Tweedy (1991) and Perrot (1992).
An example is the Cranach exhibition in Kronach in 1994 which, according to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (25/26 June 1994, pp. 65–6), is less interesting and of a lower standard than the Cranach exhibition in Basle in 1974.
A similar complementary relationship exists with special sports events. A world football championship makes many people interested in this sport who would otherwise not care. Empirical evidence suggests that TV-reporting of football games raises, rather than reduces, attendance in subsequent games, i.e. complementarity outweighs the substitution effect (Gärtner and Pommerehne 1978).
High expectations are also produced by audio and TV recordings, or radio broadcasts, and are therefore difficult to distinguish from the effect produced by a local festival. In any case, raised expectations enhance the “superstar effect” discussed in chapter 4.
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Vautravers-Busenhart, I. (2003). Special Exhibitions and Festivals: Culture’s Booming Path to Glory. In: Arts & Economics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24695-4_5
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