{"id":1222,"date":"2008-10-21T08:47:13","date_gmt":"2008-10-21T15:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2008\/10\/walking_the_boundaries\/"},"modified":"2008-10-21T08:47:13","modified_gmt":"2008-10-21T15:47:13","slug":"walking_the_boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/walking_the_boundaries.php","title":{"rendered":"Walking the boundaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bolzcenter.org\/\">MBA program in Arts Administration<\/a> that I direct here in the Wisconsin School of Business hosted our bi-annual alumni conference last week, launching our celebration of our 40th year. It was a rewarding and intriguing event, as I knew it would be &#8212; get smart and fun people in a room and lob a juicy question at them, and good stuff tends to happen.<\/p>\n<p>Our juicy question this time around explored the traditional boundaries of arts and cultural management along three different dimensions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The civic, creative, and commercial boundaries of arts and culture were nudged by Wisconsin&#8217;s own Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton, who is working perhaps more than any other state leader to reconnect arts, culture, expression, creativity, education, and commerce (at least, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsusa.org\/news\/press\/2008\/2008_07_18c.asp\">Americans for the Arts thinks so<\/a>). I&#8217;m guessing that Wisconsin&#8217;s Arts Board is one of the few such agencies with the word &#8221;commerce&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/artsboard.wisconsin.gov\/static\/images\/wiartsboard.jpg\">hard-wired into its tagline<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The corporate and tax structure boundaries around our traditional conception of arts and culture were also a matter of extended discussion. The nonprofit corporate form, particularly, was a matter of much frustration and dissatisfaction (oooh, the animosity toward board structures!). And our panel of three entrepreneurs serving arts and artists under the for-profit umbrella (Toni Sikes of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guild.com\/\">Guild.com<\/a>, Roy Elkins of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.broadjam.com\/\">Broadjam<\/a>, and Doug McLennan of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/\">ArtsJournal<\/a>) helped highlight the many ways to get our important work done.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, our keynoter Doug McLennan, founder and editor of ArtsJournal, suggested a new role and focus for cultural organizations beyond the production and distribution of artistic content. His keynote, &#8221;The Artistic Director of Everything Else,&#8221; explored the emerging opportunity for arts organizations to curate active and interactive communities around their work, rather than only presenting their work. The challenge is that few arts organizations are staffed and structured (or even inspired) to curate the communities that surround them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In between all the productive conversation, of course, were fantastic opportunities to see old friends and dear colleagues. Thanks to all who came to Madison. Here&#8217;s hoping our <i>next<\/i> 40 years are as rich with friends and fun as these past four decades have been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The MBA program in Arts Administration that I direct here in the Wisconsin School of Business hosted our bi-annual alumni conference last week, launching our celebration of our 40th year. It was a rewarding and intriguing event, as I knew it would be &#8212; get smart and fun people in a room and lob a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}