The Coming Arts Leadership Brain Drain, Continued

My brief post on a predicted looming crisis in future arts leadership seems to have struck a chord with young, arts-loving business types who have encountered obstacles to entering administrative positions in cultural organizations. I am posting two comments that you can access at the end of the above-linked post, and I have previously posted a particularly articulate and insightful response here.

Other bloggers who have commented on this (apparently) hot-button topic include Arts Journal contributor Andrew Taylor, The Artful Manager, who opines that "the best and only way to 'convince' younger citizens that the arts are valuable to them is to actually be valuable to them. That requires not just a change of face, but a change of nature."

Other blogs taking up this issue are here (dot-org, a blog for nonprofit business professionals) and here. The latter is a post by Barry Hessenius, author of the recent report that has occasioned all this comment.

Most commentators (and the report itself) have focused on whether young people are sufficiently interested in the arts to want to be arts leaders. My contribution to the discussion had focused on the fact that for many ambitious, bright young arts aficionados, the financial drawbacks of working for cultural organizations may be a deal-killer. The responses I have received to that post have come from several aspiring young business people whose interest in arts careers was short-circuited.

I think those are voices to which attention must be paid.