In his third article for The Huffington Post, Randall Bourscheidt, president of Alliance for the Arts, shares the speech he gave on Saturday, Nov 14, 2009, at the symposium called "The Arts and the Economic Crisis," organized by the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University. An excerpt of the first post is below. Read the full article on The Huffington Post.
"Let me begin with an invocation, in the form of some numbers. $21 billion in economic impact. 160,000 jobs. 26 million visitors. 2 million student visitors. 7.5 million tourists. These are the indicators of the arts industry in New York City, the findings of a recent study by my organization, the Alliance for the Arts. I'll return to these numbers before I close.
This morning I'd like to speak about the role of cities.
Quite simply, the center of cultural life is the city and the regeneration of the arts economy must be led by cities. Unlike France--and more like Germany--there is no one city that sums up our national culture. But New York has the largest concentration of artists and cultural activity and is also the most likely to lead the US into a new period of cultural globalism.
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