Why is it that some arts initiatives or disciplines tend toward commercial markets, others non-commercial? Some tend toward complex and durable nonprofit organizational forms and some toward episodic projects? Some are independent of major media companies and others deeply dependent? And how and why do some initiatives evolve from one dynamic to another over time […]
Twelve Functions of Arts Management
Ask any arts professional or arts-management academic about the “functions” of arts management and they will likely have a ready list in mind… But I haven’t seen many efforts to capture and sort these functions in more durable and consistent ways.
What is Arts Management?
Way back in 2011, I took a shot at defining what a master’s degree in Arts Administration (aka Arts Management) was about. A decade later, my definition of Arts Management has evolved a bit.
Substrate: The Embodied Brain
It is strangely common to talk about our brain and our body as separate entities. Or to consider our senses and sensibilities as opposites, at war with each other. And yet, even a cursory exploration of the question exposes an obvious truth: our brain is entirely in and of our body, not just in its […]
Substrate: The Predictive Brain
It’s common to consider our brains as reactive – receiving sensory information from our bodies and our environments, making sense of that inbound information, and directing our response thereafter. It’s also common to consider that much or even most of this reaction happens at a conscious level – there’s a tiger-like rustling in the weeds, […]
Substrate: The World Beneath the World of Arts Management
It’s a surprising and sobering truth that, after centuries of scientific inquiry, we only understand a tiny fraction of what makes up our universe. Everything we can see and name and touch – including ourselves, the objects around us, the Earth, the sun, all the other stars, and all the galaxies – adds up to five percent of the mass that evidence suggests is there.
Artful Manager: The Book
I’m thrilled to announce the publication of The Artful Manager: Field Notes on the Business of Arts and Culture. This book gathers 50 posts from the first 18 years of The Artful Manager blog.
The STEEP Road Back
The approaching summer is showing glimpses and glimmers of return to live performance in shared settings. Many theater, dance, and music companies are relaunching or reconfiguring themselves to be outdoors. Others, like The Shed, are threading the needle of audience readiness/reticence, pubic health regulations, and labor union requirements to design indoor performances. And many of […]
The Relativity Switch
This story may sound like a metaphor. But it’s actually a case-in-point: When preparing to launch the Navigation Technology Satellite 2 (NTS-2) in 1977, the NAVSTAR GPS engineering team was in a bit of a pickle. The satellite contained the first cesium atomic clocks to be sent into orbit. That highly accurate timing device would […]
The Five Flavors of Strategy
As the chaos and confusion of the global pandemic shows distant glimpses of something less chaotic (by Fall, or Winter, or Spring, or…), the question of “strategy” is emerging once again. In the freefall and free-for-all of the past eleven months, arts organizations necessarily spent most available time on survival and rapid innovation. Long looks […]
