An odd little survey reported by the BBC shows the disconnect between audience intention and audience action, as well as the sad state of surveying in decision-making. The study concludes that tons of people have intentions to attend more arts events in the coming year, but few have shown any effort to actually do so. […]

I’ll be taking a break from this weblog over the holidays, to focus on family and friends, and experience some culture rather than write about it. I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season. See you in the new year!

Alert readers will notice a new item in the sidebar, offering a mobile edition of this weblog for handhelds, PDAs, and fancy schmancy mobile phones. If you have such a device and already grab and read headlines from your favorite news sources, now there’s another to add to your list. (I grab the New York […]

As an antidote to the complexity of social network mapping and other systemic ramblings of recent posts, friend and associate Mark Nerenhausen reminded me that most arts managers are running as fast as they can just to keep up. In a world of small resources, small staff, and gargantuan missions, rethinking how the universe works […]

Building on yesterday’s post about social network mapping, an associate pointed me to NameBase.org, an astounding on-line database of book and clipping citations of individuals and groups involving: assassinations, organized crime, and scandals; Wall Street and transnational corporations; foreign policy and media establishments; political elites from the Right and Left; and, Cold War history and […]

We’re all familiar with those hierarchy charts drafted by most organizations, that convey — through boxes and lines — how the command and control structure works among their paid staff and leadership. These are handy tools to show who reports to whom, and how information is supposed to flow through the chains of command. Despite […]

In recent posts I have complained about the ‘all good news all the time’ interactions among members of the nonprofit culture community…between funders and funded, between board and staff, between arts administrators and their local legislators. As usual, management luminary Peter Drucker made the same point a decade ago. In the promotional materials surrounding the […]

Whose Muse?, an upcoming book from Princeton University Press on the conflict of market and mission in the museum world, gets a summary treatment in this month’s ARTNews. Among the lectures and discussions of five leading museum directors contained in the book comes this wordplay from MoMA Director Glenn D. Lowry: ³There has been an […]

There are some great quotes from former Talking Heads artist David Byrne in a recent edition of Wired News, about his use of Microsoft Powerpoint presentation software as an artistic medium. Says Byrne: “American culture is becoming a culture of pageants….We’re surrounded by show, just as the Roman Empire turned to bread and circuses to […]

The question of who owns creative expressions has been a brain-buster for centuries now. Thomas Jefferson struggled with it in the early days of the United States, as did his lofty peers. The high-speed transmission of the Internet and my cheesy little photocopy machine have just made matters worse. Two articles rehash the troubles in […]