This beauty course is not aimed at putting beauty in service of business. My aim is the opposite. I want leaders to put business in service of beauty. Diane Ragsdale (2022) The world lost a brilliant mind and beautiful spirit with the passing of Diane Ragsdale last week. Elsewhere, in time, I will share more […]

I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about human cognition – about how we make sense and take action. The useful answer describes a combo platter of species-wide sense-making systems and their unique manifestation in each of us…

Any strategy or plan for future action is essentially a story. It describes the present and coming world, the dynamics of the past that invoked them both, and the actions that will propel an organization toward a desired future.

The Arts Management Program at American University has just posted a full-time contract faculty position for the coming Fall. If you’re interested in joining an amazing learning community in Arts Management, in the global cultural city of Washington, DC, give it a look! And/or pass it along to friends and colleagues who might be a […]

One of the main takeaways from the classic in-depth case study of Steppenwolf Theater is that “self-sufficiency, sustainability, and success pull in different directions.” This tension is a constant balance and bother for arts managers who want to play the long game.

The Google Books Ngram Viewer offers an interesting way to track the popularity of a term over time. The service draws from the scanned contents of tens of millions of books encoded by Google. And it can offer a glimpse at the rise (and fall) of phrases, topics, or subjects over two centuries. A search […]

To imagine and explore other opportunities to support working artists and creative projects, Fractured Atlas commissioned an “Opportunity Scan” of six possible paths forward.

If you and I make a plan to meet for coffee, next Tuesday at 1:00 pm, in a cafe on the second floor of a building downtown, what are we doing exactly? It’s easy to say that “we’re planning to meet for coffee,” but you can’t define a term using the term itself. No fair.

I’m thrilled to announce the public launch of a new experiment, the #ArtsManaged initiative – a series of digital resources exploring and advancing the practice of Arts Management.