A core service for most arts organizations is the connection of artists and audience. Hope that’s not a shock. But if you were to create a time diary for most organizations, tracking how they spent the minutes available in a single year, you’d likely find that the actual connection (face to face, voice to voice, […]

One major emerging trend in formal philanthropy over the past decade has been the increasing effort to quantify social return. As philanthropic dollars are fewer, and competition for contributed income grows more intense, it’s only natural for boards and big philanthropists to seek observable evidence that they’re making the right choices, and that the choices […]

I’ll be on a blogging break until the new year. But I wish all of you out there in the ether a joyous and recuperative holiday season. See you in 2010!

There are plenty of opinions about the place, purpose, benefit, or consequence of graduate study in Arts Administration. I’m of a certain opinion, as you might guess, since I direct an MBA degree in that very thing. But I’ll be first to claim it’s a complex question. To engage the question, Ron Evans invited me […]

There has been a bunch of conversation about how the on-line worlds are changing the nature of the traditional marketplace. Some have suggested we’re now in an experience economy, where people are buying an immersive experience surrounding a good or service rather than just the good or service itself (aka, Starbucks). Others have focused on […]

I was fortunate to take part in a planning session in New York last week, hosted by Fractured Atlas, to begin sketching out an open-source solution to a vexing but central part of engaging audiences with art: ticketing. Fractured Atlas is the project leader on ATHENA Tix, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and […]

The National Endowment for the Arts hosted its second webcast event this week (today, 11:00 – 2:00 pm Eastern, find it here), this time focusing on the findings of the 2008 Study of Public Participation in the Arts. The first, on Cultural Workforce, drew only a few Twitter commentary. This one kicked up a lot […]

During his recent visit to Madison to teach our Arts Enterprise class and present a public talk, ArtsJournal founder and editor Doug McLennan sat down for this podcast interview. Our subjects were community, conversation, and connection around the arts, and the emerging need for artists and arts organizations to engage their audiences in more varied […]

I’m thrilled to have ArtsJournal founder and editor Doug McLennan in Madison this week, where he’ll be the final guest speaker in the Arts Enterprise class I’m co-teaching this semester, and the final public speaker in our Arts Enterprise Forum tonight at 7:00 pm at Overture Center for the Arts (free and open to the […]

Lucy Bernholz at Philanthropy 2173 offers a modest proposal to address a vexing question. The question is this: Are there too many nonprofits? Her proposal is this: Let’s let crowdsourcing help us decide. To frame the proposal, she reframes the question this way: Do we have the right number of nonprofits to provide and distribute […]