Andrew Taylor on the Business of Arts & Culture
www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/

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Debt, spin, and intrigue in Milwaukee
  Posted: April 28, 2004
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The combined stories also led Mr. Gordon to post a response on ArtsJournal.com, reinforcing that the organization was doing just fine.

For me, the on-going public conversation about the new building and its cost/operating implications raises three main issues:

• The first is that cultural facilities are political buildings by their nature. They often boldly define, in a very public way, what a community stands for, strives for, and hopes to be. The public naturally has a lot ot say about that.
• The second issue is that cultural facilities, as art forms, are some of the most complex that modern civilization produces -- made not just from creative insight, bricks, and mortar, but from cash, debt, public finance, power, politics, and management savvy. Although often defined by its celebrity architect and his/her vision, a cultural facility is realized by a collective energy and forged by a collective will.
• Finally, I am struck by the endless challenge of arts managers to balance the tensions of time. All of us -- journalists, managers, citizens, governments, etc. -- are increasingly driven by a decreasing span of time (the annual report, the quarterly financial, the daily box office). The greatest art among us has often taken generations or centuries to blossom and be valued. In many ways, the nonprofit tax status was designed to buffer socially valuable organizations from the pressures of immediate returns. That protection never really worked as planned.