Archives for 2005

KCRW’s The Business has a great interview with Hollywood CPA/Attorney Steven Sills on the ‘creative accounting’ of movie blockbusters (it’s about 3-1/2 minutes in on the audio file). His clients come to him asking how a movie can gross $100 million at the box office and still show up as a loss on their profit […]

There are a bundle of initiatives out there working to make communities or organizations more supportive and encouraging to artists. But often, these efforts are missing a crucial cog: a definition of what they mean by ”artist.” I’m not suggesting that there should be a single definition that we all claim as true (that would […]

Orientation begins this week for our new batch of MBA students in Arts Administration at UW-Madison. I’m guessing my posting here will be fairly patchy as we welcome the new folks to our program, and get them settled in for two years of arts/business boot camp.

There’s an article archetype in the press every few years, about how difficult it is to fill the top slot at America’s leading museums, and about whether boards should search for business leaders or art scholars to plug the hole. This time around, the article is in the Wall Street Journal. In a nutshell: Who […]

A recent local editorial about the debt refinancing of Madison’s Overture Center (discussed earlier this week) uses an interesting phrase, which lives at the end of the excerpt below: Mayor Dave Cieslewicz is right to express reservations about signing on to a new long-term funding scheme for the $205 million Overture Center for the Arts. […]

Sorry to say that I’ll be disconnected again for a few days, as I make the long drive home from Boston to Madison. Please enjoy (or ignore) another blast from the past while I’m wandering without Internet connections. An interesting sidebar from the Discovery Channel web site suggests that the human race is too big […]

For the [very] few who are interested in how major new cultural facilities are financed and funded, there are interesting conversations on-going in Madison, Wisconsin. The Overture Center for the Arts — half done now, to be completed in April 2006 — is attempting to regain its financial footing after a good idea met a […]

August 8 – 12, 2005, is ‘rerun week’ at The Artful Manager. While I’m on vacation, enjoy some favorite entries from the past. So I get this pizza pan as a gift…I’m pro-pizza, to be sure. But when reading the promotional copy on the pizza pan, I find this: Sensible and sublime, practical and whimsical, […]

August 8 – 12, 2005, is ‘rerun week’ at The Artful Manager. While I’m on vacation, enjoy some favorite entries from the past. Choreographer/dancer Liz Lerman has always provided a broad and engaging perspective at any professional conference I’ve seen her present. A friend (thanks Becky) recently forwarded this 2001 keynote address she gave to […]

August 8 – 12, 2005, is ‘rerun week’ at The Artful Manager. While I’m on vacation, enjoy some favorite entries from the past. Sometimes when we try to talk our way out of a problem, we end up reinforcing the problem…or even making it worse. Such is the case with ‘the box,’ that clever phrase […]