Horowitz presents the history and current status of arts audience research at the National Endowment for the Arts. He discusses key policy questions that can be addressed by data forthcoming from the Survey of Public Participation in the rts and by active analyses of these data.

In November of 1975, the National Council on the Arts accepted a program for the study of arts audiences and of public participation in and demand for the arts by the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Arts. Despite cancellation of some planned projects and delays in general, the arts audience and arts public study has survived and continued along its initial conceptual lines. It is slowly but surely reaching the milestones that were envisioned in 1975. The study, as suggested by its name, links two distinct goals, the improvement of methods for studying audience characteristics of individual arts organizations, and a broad focus on the public as a whole (both audience and nonaudience). These fundamental differences led us to divide the program at the outset, and the two divisions have proceeded on their own separate courses.

CONTENTS
Studying arts Audience Studies.
Studying the arts public.
The survey of public participation in the arts.

Horowitz presents the history and current status of arts audience research at the National Endowment for the Arts. He discusses key policy questions that can be addressed by data forthcoming from the Survey of Public Participation in the rts and by active analyses of these data.