Contemporary art is on the rise, and with the attention toward the form growing, United States museums are seeing more and more visitors.

According to a March 30 article published by the Art Newspaper, an annual survey of 29 museums was conducted between the years of 2007 to 2015. After examining 2,360 exhibitions from the 29 museums, the team of analysts found that both museums’ and visitors’ attention toward Contemporary art has gradually increased.

This shift is a significant change from the 1990s when Contemporary art remained relatively unseen by museum visitors due to the popularity of Impressionism — a nineteenth century art movement — according to the Art Newspaper. Due to this increase in popularity, several questions are then raised: What is the cause of such a shift, and what does this imply about the fate of museums and other art forms?

Locally, we can seize the opportunity to benefit from the increasing popularity of Contemporary art here at the Rose Art Museum.

Contemporary art is art of today. However, the movement can be traced to the 1970s with influences from Expressionism, Surrealism and abstract Expressionism. Contemporary art incorporates a range of media, from painting to sculpting to technology, and is often depicted in ways that are highly unusual in comparison to the older forms, such as Minimalism or Pop Art.

Research has shown that museums attract more people when there are Contemporary art exhibitions, according to the same March 30 Art Newspaper article. Clearly, people find connections to make with Contemporary art, prompting their museum visits. The works of the Contemporary artist Walid Raad, for instance, connect photography, video and sculpture to the memories and narratives of the Arab World’s conflicts.

Contemporary art is another form of dialogue within society and, with an increasing number of issues the world grapples with everyday, there is little wonder that there is a creative element within art that artists use to try to depict or explain the problems. Mohamad Hafez, for instance, is a Syrian-born artist and architect that depicts the ruins of Damascus, Syria with dangling wires, crumbling concrete and broken metal in miniature sculptures to represent a harrowing reality of the Syrian Civil War.

The works of Contemporary greats like Mark Bradford, Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning are part of the Rose’s collection and offer yet another interpretation of an increasingly complicated world. When they depict social problems, they show the issues visually through a Contemporary perspective. For instance, Bradford drew inspiration from the Bible and created his ark in commemoration of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster, as published by the LA Times on Sept. 24, 2008.

Since there has been a shift to viewing Contemporary art more than the older forms of art — like Impressionism — there is a point to clarify: older forms of art are not inferior in their messages. In fact, the older forms have not only been an inspiration to the contemporary — see, for instance, Kehinde Wiley’s “Napoleon Leading an Army over the Alps” versus Jacques-Louis David’s “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” — but also depicted social issues. For instance, the Spanish painter, Francisco Goya depicts the execution of Spanish soldiers by the Napoleon Bonaparte’s French army in The Third of May 1808.

Though meaningful, art can just be enjoyed simply for its aesthetics as well. Older forms of art, in comparison to Contemporary art, particularly emphasize this through their use of color, style or realism that the aesthetics can be portrayed.

Clearly, people enjoy art for all reasons, which is why museums exhibit it in different styles. Among the 29 museums surveyed, more than 1000 exhibitions of 2360 were dedicated to Contemporary artists. In 1997, only 20 percent of the exhibitions in U.S. museums were devoted to Contemporary art; today, the percent is 44. Recently, people have started engaging more with Contemporary art. Why might this be the case?

Increased media attention on Contemporary artists coupled with an increase in the demand for female artists and a greater academic study of today’s art have all contributed to this cultural shift, according to the Art Newspaper’s survey.

Is there, then, something that Brandeis’ Rose Art Museum might be able to do amid the increasing excitement over Contemporary art? As the Rose has one of the largest collections of Contemporary art in New England, the opportunity to attract more visitors would be advantageous. Not only would it increase revenue but also it would allow the wider world to engage with the fine arts.

The Rose, then, should make every effort to attract and increase its number of visitors. In recent years, financial burden on Brandeis have made the Rose’s collection a target for funding cuts. In order to prevent the auctioning of art as attempted in 2009, according to a Feb. 1, 2009 New York TImes article, one possible solution, is to gear the museum’s exhibits toward current artistic trends.

In a world that is moving toward Contemporary art, museums are capitalizing on this popularity. The Rose would be wise to move in that direction as well if they wish to maintain their collection and continue to provide cultural stimulation for the masses.