Trouble on the horizon

Arts Journal missed the boat and linked to a third party summary press release of a RAND report on the visual arts. Luckily, RAND has published the full report (100+ pages!) for your subway reading pleasure. Or displeasure. The report isn't all that positive. A summary of findings: (even more digestable than the press release.)

• Increases in museum attendance are the result of broad demographic changes, not anything done by the institutions themselves. And the shift is done, so things are likely to get tough real quick.
  
• Most artists don't make much money selling art. (Duh.)
  
• The art market is increasingly controlled by a few influential buyers, not dealers or critics. Investment value is the king criteria. (Which reminds me of the mid-90s comicbook speculation bubble.)
  
• Powerhouse institutions are sucking up all the available money, people and objects, leaving small museums gasping for air.
  

Honestly, it looks like the art world is rich with opportunity to make some sense of this mess. But who'd have thought we'd get this kind of research out of an Air Force think tank? (Interestingly, RAND used blogs as a source of information on the state of the arts. I imagine hundreds of bloggers going back to their log files to find RAND.org footprints.)

UPDATE: Edward Winkleman has posted his initial commentary about this report.