In spite or because of its vast popularity, the word ‘partnership’ has become one of the biggest blinders to clear and responsive management in nonprofit arts and culture.
Too many cooks?
For those who love the politics and intrigue of cultural facility construction (that’s everybody, right?), Miami-Dade is like “West Wing” and “American Idol” combined. The latest plot twist is the open conflict between officials overseeing the construction and the construction consortium doing the work. It seems that structural flaws might affect the final acoustics and […]
Free a Book Today
I’m not usually one to pass along e-mail blasts, but this one seemed a particularly elegant way of remembering the events of two years ago today. A “Poetical Happening” On Sept. 11th, join a “poetical happening” and free a book. Because a book is a symbol of freedom, sharing and tolerance. On Sept. 11th, 2003, […]
Comfortable Being Out of Balance
PBS is running a great series on contemporary art, art:21, that’s rich with metaphor and insight into the creative process…the process we managers are supposed to be supporting, nurturing, protecting, enabling. But it struck me, during the segment on performance/scupture artist Janine Antoni, that discovery and creation are the greatest energies arts organizations have to […]
Google’s Birthday
September 7 was the fifth birthday of Google.com (reported everywhere, including this story from USA Today, and another from BBC News), the little search engine that changed the face of the Internet. While I tend to hate ‘best practices’ listings taken out of context and applied to arts management issues, I’ll break my own rule […]
Canadian Orchestras Unite
Thanks to an active reader of this weblog, Drew McManus, for providing a pointer to this article in La Scena Musicale. It discusses an initiative of Canadian orchestras to rethink what they do, and how they do it, and to get beyond the hyperbolic ‘crisis’ metaphors that seem to block our thoughtful view. The article […]
Is Art Good for Us?
Joli Jensen takes on a stubborn myth about the arts in American culture: that they make people and communities better. Jensen builds from a full range of authors, from Tocqueville to John Dewey, and maps out the history of this persistent belief in an effort to smash it apart.
Juxtaposition
Two stories in the news reinforce the growing power of earned income, as all other forms of income for arts and culture take a dive. On one hand, Philanthropy News covers this Wall Street Journal story about cutbacks and strategies of arts groups in the face of a down economy — ranging from reduced programming […]
Quotes to Live by
As I continue to juggle orientation for our new students at the Bolz Center, I thought I’d pass along some arts-management-relevant quotes from one of my favorite philosophers/comedians, Steven Wright. You can find more great stuff on his web site. These are all suitable for hanging on the office door: ”If at first you don’t […]
The Footprint or the Giant
The Boston Phoenix has an interesting story on Somerville, Massachusetts, a formerly downtrodden suburb of Boston that has begun to rebuild its vitality and community in part through efforts in the arts. Much of the credit in the story goes to the city’s local cultural council (LCC): While most other LCCs are small grassroots volunteer […]
