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Diane Ragsdale on what the arts do and why

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On artistic leadership and aesthetic values in a changed cultural context: A new keynote address

April 30, 2018 by Diane Ragsdale 4 Comments

Last week I had the privilege, pleasure, and honor to give the keynote address at the Canadian Arts Summit--an annual gathering of the board chairs, executive leaders, and artistic leaders of Canada's major cultural institutions. It was a terrific conference all around. Here is a link to a transcript of my keynote address. The talk was also live streamed and, as I understand it, a video will eventually be available for download. Following a preamble (which highlights some of the key themes that I've been circling around for the past decade), … [Read more...]

Art for ____________’s sake. What would you fill in?

June 26, 2017 by Diane Ragsdale 17 Comments

A few weeks back I was in NYC and had the opportunity to attend a Public Forum event featuring the brilliant Jeremy McCarter reading from his new book Young Radicals: In the War for American Ideals, and an equally brilliant panel of renowned activists and artists doing a staged reading of the timely, and at once harrowing and humorous, 1917 one-act by Susan Glaspell, The People. It was a great evening and McCarter's book is now sitting on my Kindle, next in the queue. Toward the end of the evening McCarter turned to the rather large panel of … [Read more...]

Irvine asks: Is there an issue in the arts field more urgent than engagement? My answer: Yes.

February 2, 2016 by Diane Ragsdale 9 Comments

A couple weeks back the Irvine Foundation launched an online Q&A series, Are We Doing Enough?—aimed at “exploring tough questions about engagement practices and programming." I was delighted and honored to be one of a small group of “outsiders” asked to provide some reflections in response to one of the Qs. The first two issues of the series (Part 1 and Part 2) featured a group of Irvine’s current grantees, as well as Irvine arts program director Josephine Ramirez, addressing such questions as: Should artists be responsible for creating art … [Read more...]

A Q&A on the Beauty Class with Students from the SAIC

December 14, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale Leave a Comment

Recently, I received an email from a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, preparing for a seminar on Arts Organizations in Society. She asked if I would be willing to Skype into the seminar to answer a few questions about the beauty class. Since the time difference made this impossible, I suggested that she email me a few questions and I answer them on a video, which could be played during class. Here are the questions the student sent me (with the times on the video where you can find my responses). What was it like for … [Read more...]

It’s creative; but is it beautiful? (My talk at the Pave Symposium on Entrepreneurship and the Arts)

June 21, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale 3 Comments

In May, I gave a talk at the Pave Biennial Symposium on Arts & Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University. The theme of this year's conference was Creativity and New Venture Creation. The videos from the conference should be posted here by early July at the latest (please check back if you are interested to see the proceedings). In the meantime, you may read a transcript of my talk (with selected slides helpfully embedded). The talk begins with a preamble on creativity and the reasons for my resistance to using that particular word in … [Read more...]

The last beauty class post

May 28, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale 1 Comment

Well, 12 posts later, we’ve come to the last post in the series covering my course in aesthetics and business (aka/ approaching beauty) offered at UW-Madison, for undergraduate business majors.  This post basically walks through the last two classes in which the students took stock, reflected on their journeys, and thought about where they go from here. (The photo (left) is from an article that ran in a UW-Madison magazine. Unlike my Jumper posts, it's a quick read.) As the course has come to an end, several people have asked me "What's … [Read more...]

Highlights from the beauty class visiting artists (post 2 of 2)

May 23, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale Leave a Comment

In my last post and this one I am sharing highlights from presentations by the several artists who joined us in the second half of the course and key ideas that resonated most for the students.  The last two sessions, discussed in this post, focused primarily on the notions of taste and craft. April 14 – On tastes, on obssessions, on beauty in unusual places (Fred Stonehouse & Polly Carl) In the first half of this class we enjoyed a great lecture by the artist Fred Stonehouse, who is on faculty at UW-Madison. Fred was laid … [Read more...]

Highlights from the beauty class visiting artists (post 1of 2)

May 22, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale 2 Comments

Apologies for the radio silence. The beauty course marched on but I failed to get anything written on Jumper the past few weeks as I was finishing up the term and writing talks for two symposia (a symposium on Beauty and Business that I helped put together at UW-Madison and then the fourth biennial Pave Symposium on Arts Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University). I’ll post transcripts from both conferences in conjunction with the videos from each being posted by the conference organizations (UW-Madison & ASU, … [Read more...]

Approaching Justice & Democracy (in Beauty Class)

April 29, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale 8 Comments

In last week's post I wrote about a lecture by Polly Carl on the first half of Elaine Scarry's monograph on beauty, which focuses on the relationship between beauty and truth. This week’s post takes as a starting point Polly’s lecture on the second half of Scarry’s book, which focuses on the relationship between beauty and justice. From there, it explores the importance of beauty in a democratic society. How beauty presses us toward justice Polly began her lecture by explaining that there are two enduring criticisms of beauty that Scarry … [Read more...]

What beauty does. (Taking stock in WK6 of the class.)

April 20, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale 2 Comments

  Approaching Elaine Scarry's On Beauty and Being Just: Elaine Scarry is a major contributor to the discussion on beauty. In the sixth week, the always brilliant Polly Carl gave a lecture on Scarry’s monograph (based on a series of lectures), “On Beauty and Being Just." Scarry is a professor of aesthetics and literature and her book is an attempt to rescue beauty from its banished state in the humanities (by which Scarry means the conversation about beauty, not beautiful objects themselves). It’s difficult to summarize Elaine … [Read more...]

“Disbanding our armies” (in Beauty Class)

April 12, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale Leave a Comment

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. Three years ago I was giving a workshop in the Rockies. A student came in bearing a quote from what she said was the pre-Socratic philosopher Meno. It read, “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” I copied it down, and it has stayed with me since. ... The question she carried struck me as the basic tactical question in life. The … [Read more...]

Awakening to truths about ourselves and the world (in the Beauty Class)

March 26, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale 1 Comment

This is the sixth post in a series of posts focused on the course on beauty that I am coordinating/teaching for business students at UW-Madison. In the fourth week of the Beauty Class I wanted to explore the notion, articulated by Jeanette Winterson, that “art can waken us to truths about ourselves and the world.” The class examined works by two artists: monologist/raconteur Mike Daisey, whose piece The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs was aimed at getting people to think about about the injurious labor conditions by which their beautiful Apple … [Read more...]

Approaching Beauty in Art (Beauty Class Continues)

March 16, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale 5 Comments

This post discusses how the business students prepared for a visit to the contemporary art museum; their three-hour visit to the museum and the exercises they completed there; and the portfolio assignments created by students both leading up to the museum experience, and in response to it. Before the Museum In anticipation of a visit to the museum I assigned a few videos for the students to watch. The first was Michael Kimmelman on Art Parts 1 & 2 (two brief segments excerpted from the documentary My Kid Could Paint … [Read more...]

On Selfies vs. Self-Portraits and Universal Beauty vs. What I Find Beautiful (Beauty Class Portfolio Assignments)

March 4, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale 1 Comment

  For those following the Beauty Class, this post is about the first two portfolio assignments. One of the primary methods of learning in this course is the creation of portfolios in which students are asked to catalogue their experiences of beauty in art, nature, work, and everyday life. The weekly assignments allow me to trace student progress over the course of the term and are intended to provoke and inspire thinking about beauty. My assignments are a subset of the larger portfolios the students have been asked to … [Read more...]

A Different Orientation (Beauty Class Wk 1)

February 23, 2015 by Diane Ragsdale 4 Comments

Art is a different value system. Like God, it fails us continually. Like God we have legitimate doubts about its existence but, like God, art leaves us with footprints of beauty. We sense there is more to life than the material world can provide, and art is a clue, an intimation, at its best, a transformation. We don’t need to believe in it, but we can experience it. The experience suggests that the monolith of corporate culture is only a partial reality. This is important information, and art provides it. - Jeanette Winterson, The Secret Life … [Read more...]

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Diane Ragsdale

Diane Ragsdale is an Assistant Professor in the College of Performing Arts at The New School, where she also serves as Program Director for the MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship. Alongside her post at the New School Diane teaches on the Cultural Leadership Program at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada and teaches a workshop on Cultural Policy at Yale University for its Theater Management MA. She is also a doctoral candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam (in the Netherlands), where she lectured 2011-2015 in the cultural economics and sociology of the arts programs. Read More…

Jumper

White's Tree Frog

About 20 years ago, when I was in graduate school, I came across the following poem: When an old pond gets a new frog it’s a new pond. I think the inverse also may be true. I’ve often been the new frog jumping into an old pond. Since 1988, I’ve worked in the arts in the US in various roles … [Read More...]

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Recent Comments

  • Richard Linzer on On Aesthetics, Ethics, Economics, and Consequential Decisions of Cultural Leaders in the Long Now: “Diane, the free manuals that we have created on fully secured borrowing for arts nonprofits, other nonprofits, and individual artists…” Jan 11, 20:48
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Approaching Beauty Course Posts

On artistic leadership and aesthetic values in a changed cultural context: A new keynote address

Last week I had the privilege, pleasure, and honor to give the keynote address at the Canadian Arts Summit--an annual gathering of the board chairs, … [Read More...]

Art for ____________’s sake. What would you fill in?

A few weeks back I was in NYC and had the opportunity to attend a Public Forum event featuring the brilliant Jeremy McCarter reading from his new book … [Read More...]

Irvine asks: Is there an issue in the arts field more urgent than engagement? My answer: Yes.

A couple weeks back the Irvine Foundation launched an online Q&A series, Are We Doing Enough?—aimed at “exploring tough questions about engagement … [Read More...]

A Q&A on the Beauty Class with Students from the SAIC

Recently, I received an email from a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, preparing for a seminar on Arts Organizations in Society. … [Read More...]

It’s creative; but is it beautiful? (My talk at the Pave Symposium on Entrepreneurship and the Arts)

In May, I gave a talk at the Pave Biennial Symposium on Arts & Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University. The theme of this year's conference … [Read More...]

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A Few Things I’ve Written

"Surviving the Culture Change", "The Excellence Barrier", "Holding Up the Arts: Can We Sustain What We've Creatived? Should We?" and "Living in the Struggle: Our Long Tug of War in the Arts" are a few keynote addresses I've given in the US and abroad on the larger changes in the cultural environment and ways arts organizations may need to adapt in order to survive and thrive in the coming years.

If you want a quicker read, then you may want to skip the speeches and opt for the article, "Recreating Fine Arts Institutions," which was published in the November 2009 Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Here is a recent essay commissioned by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts for the 2011 State of the Arts Conference in London, "Rethinking Cultural Philanthropy".

In 2012 I documented a meeting among commercial theater producers and nonprofit theater directors to discuss partnerships between the two sectors in the development of new theatrical work, which is published by HowlRound. You can get a copy of this report, "In the Intersection," on the HowlRound Website. Finally, last year I also had essays published in Doug Borwick's book, Building Communities Not Audiences and Theatre Bay Area's book (edited by Clay Lord), Counting New Beans.

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