The rhetorical power of similes lives in their connection of dissimilar things (through ‘like’ or ‘as’…remember your grade school grammar?). They infuse meaning and nuance into a conversation or communication by changing our frame of reference in intriguing and surprising ways. For example, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes ”Holmes looked at him thoughtfully like a master chess-player who meditates his crowning move,” he captures the flavor of the moment with an elegant paucity of words. <\/p>\n
But it’s that thoughtful and powerful use of simile that makes one particularly persistent argument in the arts seem as dull and pointless as the Home Shopping Network (see how I used a simile there…). Should an arts organization behave like a business or like an artist?<\/p>\n
I know I’ve raised the issue before<\/a> in many forms, but in my recent week at the Arts Presenters conference in New York it rose again, and again, and again. As an example, the similes play a central role in Kenneth Foster’s otherwise fantastic piece on the past, present, and future of the performing arts which was discussed at the conference (available in PDF here<\/a>), where he frames his conclusions like this:<\/p>\n Behave like an artist, not like a business. While there’s lots to commend in the recommendations — we should certainly strive to be more elegant, expressive, innovative, creative, and curious in our management practices — the false comparison between ”business” and ”artist” inevitably leaves us swinging and flailing like a novice golfer in a sand trap (another simile…just try to stop me). We all get the subtext: ”Business” is a proxy for an anal-retentive CPA obsessed with the bottom line; ”artist” is a placeholder for an idealized expressive individual who has healthy relationships, productive artistic practices, and cares little about food or shelter. But subtext, especially such vague and clumsy subtext, is insufficient for such an important conversation.<\/p>\n Arts organizations ARE businesses, so whatever they do is LIKE a business. Arts organizations are also ARTISTIC endeavors, so whatever they do is LIKE an artist. Whether they fulfill either of those explicit roles well is another question. Are they effective<\/i> businesses? Do they offer a compelling<\/i> artistic voice? These are the more focused questions that might actually get us somewhere.<\/p>\n If we hope to be extraordinary in either role (stipulating for the moment that they’re separate things), we might begin by striving for qualities common to the best examples of them both: focus, clarity, curiosity, passion, purpose, context, competence. All of those qualities would lead us to banish bad similes from our public conversations, when there are so many fabulous similes to be constructed that actually bring insight and nuance to what we say.<\/p>\n And don’t get me started about metaphor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The rhetorical power of similes lives in their connection of dissimilar things (through ‘like’ or ‘as’…remember your grade school grammar?). They infuse meaning and nuance into a conversation or communication by changing our frame of reference in intriguing and surprising ways. For example, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes ”Holmes looked at him thoughtfully like […]<\/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-1384","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\/1384","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=1384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/b>We have a moment right now in which we can remake our organizations into arts organizations that navigate the business world rather than organizations that are ”in the art business.” All of the suggestions that follow emanate from the idea that the creative process followed by artists is the appropriate ”management tool” for arts organizations. From planning to implementation to evaluation we need to let go of the rigid businesslike approach that so many of us have adopted (strategic planning, systems of efficiency, linear thinking, quantitative evaluation) in favor of creativity, experimentation, flexible organizational structures and systems that respond more easily and more quickly to a changing environment, intuitive thinking and qualitative evaluation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n