I’m on the road today to Pittsburgh for the annual gathering of Arts Administration degree program directors, faculty, and such (members of the Association of Arts Administration Educators). On the agenda, as always, are various panels, lectures, and breakouts about how to teach something that none of us can exactly define: proactive, effective, flexible, and engaged management and leadership of primarily nonprofit and public cultural enterprise.
It’s sure to generate some weblog fodder over the coming days. But for now, I’ve got an (awfully) early flight. Stay tuned…
Of course the arts are unknowable in the same sense that “I” and “you” are unknowable as soon as we stop measuring from the outside as scientists and move into the “inside” and experience. This is the same as saying the “world” is unknowable, and religion, philosophy, literature all address this same unknown.
Of course it isn’t unknown or unknowable. But we in the 21st century, overwhelmed by by science and its media, have nearly forgotten that half of what we call life is in the unknown area. The new Canadian $20 bill includes a quote: “If it weren’t for the arts, how could we know each other at all?”