Tag: 03.07.18

Lyric Opera entered into a swap agreement in 2006 to cover $40 million in bonds. The fixed rate that Lyric’s paying is 3.8 percent, while the variable rate it’s getting in return is now 1.58 percent. Over the 12 years that the swap has existed, Lyric’s paid about $16.8 million for it. During that same period, the cost of interest on the bonds amounted to about $4 million. But Lyric is hardly alone in this. A look at financial statements from a few randomly selected cultural organizations suggests that it’s the rule for our major institutions, not the exception.

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Endowment for the Arts on Tuesday unveiled their most recent analysis of the economic impact of arts and culture in the U.S. In 2015, the year with the most recent reporting data, goods and services generated by museums, architecture firms, artists and other artistically inclined businesses and agencies accounted for 4.3 percent of the Colorado’s GDP, the feds say. It was part of $763.6 billion arts and culture contributed to the U.S. economy as a whole that year, 4.2 percent of GDP and more than mainstay industries like agriculture and transportation. Creative industries accounted for a $20 billion trade surplus that year, according to the analysis.