With the end of the semester at hand, and the coming of the holiday break, I’ll be taking a short pause from my blogging activities until the new year. Here’s hoping everyone a healthy, happy, and safe holiday season, and an artful 2011.
Learning the tricks of the retail trade
I know nonprofit arts organizations are supposed to use their powers for good, rather than for misdirection and tomfoolery. But, from time to time, it’s really useful to know what motivates people to spend time, money, and attention on anything — as consumers, as donors, or as volunteers. So, a keen eye on an industry […]
The fine art of self destruction
I’ve been referring lots of friends and colleagues to the fabulous keynote by Russell Willis Taylor at this past summer’s League of American Orchestra’s conference. Now, I’m pleased to discover that talk in video form online (you can download the text and slides from the presentation from the National Arts Strategies website). In the rather […]
Join me for an on-line chat on Wednesday
As a director of the MBA degree program in Arts Administration here at UW-Madison, I get lots of questions about when and why a master’s degree might advance a professional career in cultural management. To make it more of a public conversation than a one-on-one, I’ll be hosting a video webchat on that very subject […]
Is dynamic pricing a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
The fantastic Diane Ragsdale is now blogging on ArtsJournal. And she’s offering a fabulous voice and perspective to essential issues in arts and culture. Her most recent post explores the intent and impact of dynamic pricing for the nonprofit arts, and questions whether a tool designed to maximize yield is essentially inconsistent with the nonprofit […]
The problem with process
In so many of our public conversations about any public enterprise — education, justice, arts and culture — we’re talking more and more about transparency and accountability. Public money is scarce, the argument goes, and successful outcomes for these public enterprises should guide any allocation of that public money. Fair enough. But the tools we […]
Creative in Oklahoma
I’m in Oklahoma City this week, attending the 2010 Creativity World Forum, an international gathering exploring the nature and nurture of creativity in culture, commerce, education, and community. Speakers include creative education advocate Sir Ken Robinson, Whole New Mind author Daniel Pink, New York Times technology columnist David Pogue, and a cast of characters from […]
Everything old is…still old, actually
Name the publication year of the following excerpt from Time magazine: ”As a group, the symphony orchestras of the U.S. are unsurpassed in quality by those of any other nation in the world. Yet today they are in trouble — loud, unavoidable, cymbal-crashing financial trouble.” That’s right, 1969. Or, did you guess a slightly more […]
How our brains build our biographies
Big Think shares some interesting and useful thoughts from behavioral neurobiologist Antonio Damasio on how our brains build stories — particularly the stories of our own lives. He suggests that the on-going linear narrative, where our brains connect sequences of events, can be altered and even overwritten by particularly significant experiences. Says he: There are […]
The magic and challenge of ‘sunk costs’
There’s a magical truth about many arts and culture projects that makes seemingly impossible decisions a whole lot easier. That truth is this: If you’ve spent time, money, and energy on something, and can’t get any of those things back, it’s a ‘sunk cost‘. And sunk costs are best ignored in determining what comes next. […]
