As I’ve worked and talked with arts professionals, funders, artists, and boards over the years, I’ve been continually struck by a nagging question: Why isn’t this work more fun? After all, many of these people are doing the very thing they longed to do — connecting audiences to art, creating or enabling new work, performing or presenting masterworks of human expression. While certainly the pay can be low and the resources skimpy, the work can be compelling, meaningful, and transformative.<\/p>\n
So why does the career and administrative work of artists and arts organizations so often seem like such a chore? Does it have to be? Or, are there ways of making our logistical and tactical work more artful? Of bridging the disconnect between the art we long to advance and the many other tasks required to get there?<\/p>\n
Those are the questions driving a new special topics course I’m co-developing and co-teaching with my colleague Stephanie Jutt at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall. Called ‘Arts Enterprise: Art as Business as Art<\/a>,’ the course is intended to bring business, community, and strategic skills to students exploring a creative career. But it seeks to do so by imagining such skills as part<\/i> of the artist’s palette rather than separate from it. <\/p>\n Our primary tactic in advancing the conversation is to bring in extraordinary artists and business leaders who are exploring the same path — connecting their aesthetic visions to their businesses, their venues, and their everyday work. Among these will be choreographer Elizabeth Streb, creative entrepreneur Lisa Sonora Beam, arts journalism maven Doug McLennan, cultural policy wonk Bill Ivey, and many others. And we’ve gathered an astounding group of students — undergraduate, master’s and PhD — from all across campus to learn along with us.<\/p>\n We’ll be posting audio interviews with most or all of these people on-line, and video captures of our three public forum sessions. And we’ll be blogging<\/a>, twittering<\/a>, and otherwise sharing the journey all along the way to include as many of you who want to join the conversation.<\/p>\n Can we find a more seamless interplay between art, business, community, and career? I’m honestly not sure. But we figure it’s worth a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I’ve worked and talked with arts professionals, funders, artists, and boards over the years, I’ve been continually struck by a nagging question: Why isn’t this work more fun? After all, many of these people are doing the very thing they longed to do — connecting audiences to art, creating or enabling new work, performing […]<\/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-1342","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\/1342","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=1342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}