Live and digital engagement with the visual arts

The cluster of innovations brought about by information and communication technology (ICT) is dramatically changing the ways in which the visual arts can be produced and consumed. By using the USA 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, we explore visual arts consumption through both onsite attendance at museums and electronic and digital media. To disentangle the complexity of the relationship of different forms of museums attendance, both a multinomial logit and a recursive bivariate probit model are estimated to obtain direct and indirect effects of the alternative forms of participation. Results demonstrate that there are no age consumer differences in the form they consume visual arts. Noticeable differences concern race, gender, families with children attending arts school, and type of occupation. In addition, results show that there is a trade-off between online and onsite visits. Visiting museums and art galleries have a positive correlation with the digital access to visual arts, both through handheld and mobile devices and via the internet, whilst the same correlation is not found for internet access on museum attendance. This means that for many consumers, online attendance is the only way to overcome time constraints and other costs involved in an onsite visit.