• Home
  • About
    • About this Blog
    • About Andrew Taylor
    • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Other AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

The Artful Manager

Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture

Performing arts and higher education

May 3, 2004 by Andrew Taylor

Back in March, I participated in the latest American Assembly, which explored the co-evolution of the performing arts and higher education in the United States. The convening was based on the premise that these two cultural engines had supported and advanced each other’s work over the past fifty years, and that their future could be given more intention, more direction, and more success if we called that co-evolution forward.

The American Assembly conference model is quite intense…with 70 or so dignitaries sequestered in a mansion in upstate New York for days on end. We talked, we ate, we drank cocktails, we talked more. And we all came to realize what a complex interconnection we had come to explore.

Colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher education were the backbone of performing arts touring in the 1950s, and continue to be primary comissioners of new work. A large bulk of professional performers are trained and acculturated in higher education arts programs, many now discovering a complete disconnect between what they learned and what they need to know to succeed as engaged professionals. And both higher ed. and the professional performing arts now find themselves with serious, structural problems that actually might be addressed by a better connection.

I bring up this conference now because the Assembly recently posted its final report from this event on-line, along with two video keynotes, one by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and the other by Nancy Cantor, president of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (I’d recommend Nancy’s if you only watch one).

It’s a rich and dense conversation, and clearly just the beginning.

Filed Under: main

About Andrew Taylor

Andrew Taylor is a faculty member in American University's Arts Management Program in Washington, DC. [Read More …]

ArtsManaged Field Notes

#ArtsManaged logoAndrew Taylor also publishes a weekly email newsletter, ArtsManaged Field Notes, on Arts Management practice. The most recent notes are listed below.

RSS ArtsManaged Field Notes

  • Minimum viable everything July 1, 2025
    Getting better as an arts organization doesn't always (or even often) mean getting bigger.
  • The rise and stall of the nonprofit arts June 24, 2025
    The modern arts nonprofit evolved in an ecology of growth. It's time to evolve again.
  • Connection, concern, and capacity June 17, 2025
    The three-legged stool of fundraising strategy.
  • Is your workplace a pyramid or a wheel? June 10, 2025
    Johan Galtung defined two structures for collective action: thin-and-big (the pyramid) or thick-and-small (the wheel). Which describes your workplace?
  • Flip the script on your money narrative June 3, 2025
    Your income statement tells the tale of how (and why) money drives your business. Don't share the wrong story.

Artful Manager: The Book!

The Artful Manager BookFifty provocations, inquiries, and insights on the business of arts and culture, available in
paperback, Kindle, or Apple Books formats.

Recent Comments

  • Barry Hessenius on Business in service of beauty: “An enormous loss. Diane changed the discourse on culture – its aspirations, its modus operandi, its assumptions. A brilliant thought…” Jan 19, 18:58
  • Sunil Iyengar on Business in service of beauty: “Thank you, Andrew. The loss is immense. Back when Diane was teaching a course called “Approaching Beauty,” to business majors…” Jan 16, 18:36
  • Michael J Rushton on Business in service of beauty: “A wonderful person and a creative thinker, this is a terrible loss. – thank you for posting this.” Jan 16, 13:18
  • Andrew Taylor on Two goals to rule them all: “Absolutely, borrow and build to your heart’s content! The idea that cultural practice BOTH reduces and samples surprise is really…” Jun 2, 18:01
  • Heather Good on Two goals to rule them all: “To “actively sample novel experiences (in safe ways) to build more resilient perception and prediction” is about as useful a…” Jun 2, 15:05

Archives

Creative Commons License
The written content of this blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images are not covered under this license, but are linked (whenever possible) to their original author.

an ArtsJournal blog

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in