47% of Americans Participated in Some Type of the Arts Last Year

Here is an interesting slice of across the board arts consumption of adult in the U.S. in 2012.  You may be surprised.

The National Endowment for the Arts released its annual Public Participation in the Arts report, revealing that 54 percent of adults read books that were not required for work or school last year. Are you surprised?

Beyond that figure, 45 percent of adults read novels or short stories. As you can see by the chart embedded above, electronic media was the dominant medium for art consumption.

Adults are included in this category if they did at least one of the following types of reading in the preceding 12 months: Books not required for work or school (54 percent of adults) Literary reading (47 percent of adults). Types of literature may have included: Novels or short stories (45 percent of adults) Poetry (7 percent) Plays (3 percent) … adults’ rates of literary reading (novels or short stories, poetry, and plays) dropped back to 2002 levels (from 50 percent in 2008 to 47 percent in 20.)