ABSTRACT
This chapter examines arts participation and audience composition for immigrant arts and speculates on the future of both in the United States. This pilot study draws on in-depth interviews with four artists located in Nashville, Tennessee, a rapidly globalizing interior city. From these interviews and supporting survey data and archival research, strategies are explored by which immigrant artists and their communities engage with one another. These strategies represent the motivations and relationships artists have with their art and communities as well as the tensions and dynamics of art that intends to appeal both to coethnics and native-born Americans. The strategies presented here lead us to project three potential pathways for immigrant art participation in the future and to identify what we believe are the primary factors influencing these pathways.
