This essay was prepared for Creative America: A Report to the President by the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. That report describes the system of support for cultural life in the today.

Performance Art (Felshin 1995; Goldberg 1977) is a form of artistic expression that employs both conventional and unconventional theatrical and artistic techniques to convey meaning that lies outside of both traditional art and theatre worlds. Derived from surrealist theatre, happenings, life/art, and feminist conceptual art, performance art has historically been anti-entertainment, anti-institutional and noncommodifiable.

The work of the National Task Force on Dance Audiences, launched in 1996, unfolded in three key phases. Through research, dialogue, and analysis, the process has drawn on the expertise of many people, both within and outside the field. The major areas of Task Force activity include the following.

The authors apply the full spectrum of marketing principles to an industry that has long resisted them--the performing arts. Drawing on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, the authors review all of the key marketing functions--from segmentation to pricing to public relations--in the context of arts management, illustrated through numerous examples.

Describes and assesses data resources on arts organizations that inform policy makers, arts managers, and researchers working in the arts fields

This study is the seventh survey of Americans and the Arts, the landmark series of studies under the auspices of the American Council for the Arts which have documented the levels of interest and involvement in the arts among the American people, as well as how they feel about key issues such as the arts and education and the pivotal issue of support and funding of the National Endowment for the Arts.

This report identifies broad patterns of arts participation and arts education among American public and investigates the effects of arts education on arts participation as they apply to all Americans.

According to nationwide surveys of arts participation sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, American participation in theatre or non-musical stage plays increased from 11.9 percent of all adults in 1982 to 13.5 percent in 1992 - an increase of 13.4 percent and the largest increase among the six benchmark categories studied (jazz, classical music, opera, musicals, plays and performing arts). For purposes of this survey, a non-musical stage play is a theatrical production consisting of spoken dialogue.

Six months after the bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, 140 survivors and families of victims came to Quartz Mounting in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma to participate in a four-day art institute organized by the Oklahoma Arts Institute. In the process of making art, the participants had an opportunity to share their experiences with each other and to personally express themselves in the work they produced.

This report examines a number of national Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) household surveys plus the 1991 Census of Population and Housing and compares the cultural activities undertaken by youth, either as part of their work or part of their leisure, with those pursued by older Australians. Some results from the Domestic Tourism Monitor, a survey conducted by the Bureau of Tourism Research, have also been included.