ABSTRACT
In many respects, encouraging people to love art is a government project. According to Labour, one of the party’s defining characteristics on coming to power in 1997 was its ‘fundamental belief that the individual citizen achieves his or her true potential within the context of a strong society’. This chapter examines the evidence. It comprises five sections which consider: The political context and policy background which is encouraging what Collings refers to as ‘the new pro-art public’; the size and the profile of the audience for contemporary art; the robustness of the data; the public’s attitude to contemporary art and some observations. In making claims for the popularity of contemporary art, advocates have been known to assert that more people go to art galleries than to football matches. The closest there is to a national survey about awareness of and attitudes toward contemporary art was carried out by the private sector.
