National Center for Arts Research

Digging Deeper into Arts Vibrancy

Read the Arts Vibrancy Index

After a brief hiatus, SMU DataArts, the National Center for Arts Research, is proud to once again release the Arts Vibrancy Index Report in its seventh iteration, celebrating arts-vibrant communities across the United States even as they grapple with the ongoing realities of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each county has an overall arts vibrancy score indicated by the colors shown in the legend, made up of weighted scores on the measures found along the left of the map. Each of these measures are scored akin to percentiles – i.e., if your county has a score of 56, it means it did better than 56% of communities on that measure. There are just over 3100 counties in the country, so scoring 90 means there are about 310 counties that ranked higher.

Display MSA Communities

County Scores

Arts Providers
Arts & Culture Employees
Arts & Culture Organizations
Arts, Culture & Entertainment Firms
Independent Artists
Arts Dollars
Program Revenue
Contributed Revenue
Total Expenses
Total Compensation
Government Support
State Arts Dollars
State Arts Grants
Federal Arts Dollars
Federal Arts Grants
Socio-economic
% Employment
% Bachelor's Degree
% of Households > $150K
Per capita income
% Not in Poverty
Other Leisure
Hotel
Restaurant Rank
Zoo & Botanical Rank
Cinema Rank
Professional Sports
Bar Rank
Overall Art Vibrancy Percentile