Randy Cohen, the vice president of research at Americans for the Arts, remembers how struck he was by the economic impact of the arts when he finally left his house during the coronavirus pandemic to visit The Textile Museum in Washington, D.C.

“It started two weeks before, where we went online and checked out The Textile Museum’s website,” he said during an appearance Monday morning at the Barbey Maritime Center in Astoria. “Arts organizations have websites, that means they employ web designers and programmers. So now you’ve got the financial e-commerce people seeing the benefits of all this arts activity.