Paper presented at Conference on the Economic Impact of the Arts, sponsored by Cornell University, Graduate School of Business and Public Administration, held in Ithaca, New York, May 27-28, 1981. The author discusses specific arts organizations and links their growth to the general impact of the arts on the economic development of an urban area. In the 18 years I have lived in Pittsburgh, I have noted the most remarkable growing interest in the arts, which can be described as a true explosion: a new phenomenon in a city which until recently, due to its coal and steel industry, counted blue collar workers of various ethnic origins as the bulk of the population. This growing interest in the arts caused the flourishing of innumerable art organizations from the highly professional ones with an international reputation to the dilettantes. (p. 1).

Paper presented at Conference on the Economic Impact of the Arts, sponsored by Cornell University, Graduate School of Business and Public Administration, held in Ithaca, New York, May 27-28, 1981. The author discusses specific arts organizations and links their growth to the general impact of the arts on the economic development of an urban area. In the 18 years I have lived in Pittsburgh, I have noted the most remarkable growing interest in the arts, which can be described as a true explosion: a new phenomenon in a city which until recently, due to its coal and steel industry, counted blue collar workers of various ethnic origins as the bulk of the population. This growing interest in the arts caused the flourishing of innumerable art organizations from the highly professional ones with an international reputation to the dilettantes. (p. 1).