Columbia University’s National Arts Journalism Program director Andras Szanto opened an informative, all-day conference Thursday on current arts research called “Measuring the Muse,” co-sponsored by the Alliance for the Arts. He offered his favorite explanation of why the arts are necessary. As the president of Amsterdam’s arts council informed him of that city’s support of the arts: “We do it because we get better people.”

National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia opened his keynote address by reciting Edmund Waller’s poem “Go, Lovely Rose,” about a man addressing a rose he sends to a woman he loves. After reciting the poem, Mr. Gioia said that it is good for those who work in arts administration “never to get too far” from the phenomenon of art itself.

In addressing what is art, Mr. Gioia laid out three different ways of knowing the world: scientific knowledge, conceptual knowledge (theories and philosophy), and art or “poesis.” Art, he said, grasped things in their totality and had a “curious enduring quality.” While “there’s not a lot of classical Greek chemistry we find extremely useful” today, Sophocles’s writing, for example, continues to resonate. He said in explaining quantum physics to a 10-year-old, one would have to use conceptual language and metaphors, saying “It’s like …” But, Mr. Gioia said, one can take a 10-year-old to the Sistine Chapel, and the child could have a true and authentic reaction to the art itself.

Following Mr. Gioia’s talk, the day featured a series of rapid-fire brief presentations of current research by various practitioners in the arts field. Randy Cohen of Americans for the Arts discussed trends in business and employment in the arts. Using Dun & Bradstreet data from January 2005, his research found that almost 3 million people in America are employed in arts-focused businesses. Americans for the Arts cultural policy coordinator Joni Cherbo discussed financial support for individual artists in America. She and a co-researcher have calculated that in the year 2000 about $214.5 million of direct money went to individual artists. (This does not include indirect funds that foundations and arts agencies gave to arts organizations who re-grant money to artists.) The question remains, she said, “Is $214.5 million a lot? Is it a little? What does it mean?” The next step, she said, is finding out if this money is going to established artists, mid-career or early-entering artists, writers, painters, and composers.

Steven Tepper of Vanderbilt University discussed how college students discover new music. His research has found that those students who use new technology the most are not more likely to experiment in trying new music. The experience of broadening appears very much dependent on social relations: people sharing something and saying, “Hey, you ought to listen to that.” Despite “risk-free grazing” online, he said – whereby it is cheaper and easier than ever to try new artists because the cost of browsing is less – the technology did not appear to be broadening their horizons. What may be happening, he said, is that technology is deepening students’ interest in music they’re already familiar with.

Joan Jeffri, director of the program of arts administration at Columbia’s Teachers College, discussed how dancers, who like athletes often have relatively short careers, often need to make a transition to careers either within or outside of dance. One important finding from a study in 11 countries of a variety of dancers (classical, contemporary, folk, and commercial) was that the “transition does not happen at a particular moment, it happens over time.” The transition, she said, needs to be viewed as integral to a dancer’s career and not something stuck on at the end. If dance schools, companies, and artistic directors thought of this transition as part of the process of a dancer’s career, the topic would not be faced with such desperation.

An afternoon panel featured Rand Corporation senior social scientist Kevin McCarthy and others discussing intrinsic and instrumental benefits of the arts. This panel focused on a RAND Corporation study that Mr. McCarthy co-authored called “Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts,” commissioned by the Wallace Foundation. How does one build sustained involvement in the arts? Mr. McCarthy asked. He said the quality of the experience was central to people’s repeat involvement in arts participation.

On a panel on the future of advocacy and research, Theatre Communications Group director Ben Cameron spoke of approaching arts in a “holistic way” and “overcoming false divides.” He praised, for example, a theater that displayed photos in its lobby of everyone involved in its production – from those backstage and those involved with costume and props to even the board members. This helped the audience realize, he said, that more than the four actors onstage, for example, were responsible for bringing them Virginia Woolf.

The director of Columbia University Arts Initiative, Gregory Mosher, welcomed the afternoon sessions. Drawing on a phrase of playwright and politician Vaclav Havel, Mr. Mosher spoke of the importance of “living in the truth.” This can only be done well through facts and research, he said.

He told a joke about a theater producer who checks with the ticket office about how many tickets were sold to his show. He is told, “17.” The producer heads for Sardi’s in a glum mood. The bartender sees his unhappiness and asks why he looks so down. The producer replies, “You’d be down too if you had 35 people in your house.”