The Artful Manager

Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture

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Time for a little housecleaning on this weblog, namely posting some of the responses I’ve received about previous posts. Thanks to all of you for your comments and notes, and if others have a thought, link, article, or complaint about the topic of arts management, please send them along to me.

Drew McManus took some issue with my last post about what makes a good arts manager. Here’s his response to the quote “An exceptional arts manager uses the tools and, yes, the ‘gobbledegook’ of business to serve an artistic mission. Whether that manager self-identifies as an artistic thinker or a business thinker is irrelevant, as long as he or she is actually both.”:

The problem with this seemingly agreeable statement is that it assumes an arts manager is trained. Yes, a good manager must have a complete grasp of both artistic and business necessities. The problem with the vast majority of managers out there today is that they honestly believe that they are an ‘artistic thinker.’ Most are woefully incapable of fully appreciating the necessary talent that comprises the players and the level of training, dedication, and sheer gifts necessary to accomplish winning a position in a symphony orchestra. They may claim that they understand and may have even earned some sort of degree in music but they tend to be failed performers or attended a hack institution to begin with. They never achieved the level of excellence necessary to qualify the claim that they posses artistic vision.

Here’s a prime example of the pervading insolence among today¹s arts administrators: salary. The average executive director (president and/or CEO) draws a base salary (not including bonuses, retirement, and other incentive based pay) of between 1.6 and 7.35 times more than the base pay for a section musician in their respective organizations (based on figures from charitynavigator.com and AFM.org). That averages to 4.18 times more than the base level of talent that comprises the ensemble. There isn’t a single arts administrator out there today worth that much money. Not a solitary individual among them can honestly say they are worth more than 4 times what the lowest paid player. The reason the inequality exists is their complete lack of understanding what it is to be truly artistically qualified, but they believe that they are.

In response to an older post‹raising the question “What would an organization look like who’s true mission was to engage a broad audience in classical music?”‹Kevin Laurence suggests the British Broadcasting Corporation:

The BBC broadcasts commercial-free ‘serious’ music nationwide on Radio 3 twenty-four hours a day. It provides live performances of classical music through the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers, among others, all year long. It funds and hosts the country’s biggest music festival, the Proms, which it also broadcasts on radio, TV and now the web, and for which it commissions a significant number of new works each year.

Given the BBC’s size, it’s easy to forget that it’s a non-profit organisation. Its ambitious mission is well defined. In the words of a great American lyricist ‘Who could ask for anything more?’

Thanks to all. This is becoming a great conversation.

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