Did You Know?
a r t facts
- Michigan
ranks 4th nationwide in per-capita arts and cultural
spending.
- Each
state dollar invested in the arts yields a direct return
of $10 and a multiplied return of $34.
- About
100,000 people in Michigan earn their livelihood as
artists.
- 93%
of Americans agree that music is part of a well rounded
education.
- Music
majors have the highest rate of admittance to medical
school (66%) of any other subject area (including
biochemistry, chemistry and physics).
- Students
with 4 years of arts studies scored an average of 104
points higher on their scholastic aptitude tests than
students with no arts education.
- About
8 million Americans volunteer time to work with arts
organizations.
- 56%
of Americans say they would be willing to pay $10 more in
taxes to support federal arts funding.
- When
the Greeks besieged Athens in 1821, the Turks' ammunition
ran short. So,they began to dismantle sections of the
Parthenon, prying out the 2,300-year-old lead clamps and
melting them down for bullets. The Greek fighters,
horrified by this defacement, sent the Turks a supply of
bullets. Better to arm their foes, they decided, than to
let the ancient temple come to harm.
- The
oldest known art artifacts in Western Europe, one of the
world's better explored crannies, date from about 35,000
years ago.
- A
1995 study conducted by the College Entrance Examination
Board found that students who studied the arts more than
four years scored 59 points higher on the verbal and 44
points higher on the math portions of the SAT exam than
students with no course work or experience in the arts.**
- Funding
for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has been
set by Congress at $98 million for 1998, a 40% cut in the
agency's budget from 1995.**
- The
nonprofit arts industry generates $36.8 billion annually
in economic activity.**
- Each
year, the nonprofit arts industry returns $3.4 billion in
federal income taxes, $1.2 billion in state government
revenues, and $790 million in local government revenue.**
- The
nonprofit arts industry supports 1.3 million jobs
annually (nearly 1% of the US work force).**
- In
1994, international visitors spent $78 billion in the US.
Approximately 40% of these tourists visit museums or art
galleries and attend concerts of plays.**
- The
NEA costs each American 36 centes per year and consists
of 1/100 of one percent of the total federal budget.**
** cited from the American
Arts Alliance