The Artful Manager

Arts organizations are in the business of aesthetic experience. I hope this isn’t a radical statement, but an obvious point. Whether the organization is fostering work by artists, connecting that work to audiences, or preserving that work for now and forever, the core of the matter is the aesthetic connection between an observer and an […]

Budgets and balance sheets and audited financials have a tendency to simultaneously over-simplify and over-complicate organizational life. The way they appear on a page suggests a linear, logical, orderly aggregation of resources in clean compartments, even when their categories are deeply inter-related. The right-aligned columns of actual integers can seem rigid and exact, even as […]

Here’s an obvious premise: As we grow from children to adults, we gain proficiency in engaging the world around us. We learn its conventions, assumptions, and physical laws, and we learn to occupy, navigate, and even manipulate those things to our benefit. We learn to dress and feed ourselves, as an example. We operate increasingly […]

I began my professional life as an arts management educator just over 20 years ago, in Fall 1995. My focus, since then, has been rather specific: effective management of (mostly) professional (mostly) nonprofit organizations that produce, preserve, present, and support creative human expression. After so many years, it’s embarrassing to admit that I’ve missed a […]

One of the challenges of connecting aesthetics and “beauty” to arts organizations is that aesthetics and reason work on different terms. We all know the “reasons” to do things as a cultural manager: To attain or optimize a stated goal of the enterprise; to get work made; to connect it with an audience; to do […]

Anyone who took physics or wore a black turtleneck and smoked clove cigarettes will know about ‘entropy’ – the tendency of a system to descend into disorder, to lose working energy over time. Entropy is the reason hot things cool down, and the reason philosophy students are such downers at parties.

One of the attributes we recognize and admire in great artists, curators, and other professionals is how quickly and decisively they assess the world around them. They see almost immediately whether an action, object, or direction is ‘right’ or ‘aligned’ with some larger vision. Or whether an action, object, or direction is ‘good’ by technical […]

I’ve been reading a lot lately about data-informed decision making…more than is likely healthy for me. And so much of what I read begins and ends with the assumption that more data is always better. The texts jump right in to how you collect, analyze, interpret, and report data, as if it’s always a net […]

As a professor of Arts Management, I spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about structure and strategy…all the ways that the tools of our work distort and distract the goals of our work. I learn and teach about understanding how the complexities of work life, wealth, power, and politics can be discovered, diagnosed, and […]

For a long while, my teaching in arts management has emphasized “balance”…the nuanced navigation of opposing forces, the careful and reflective response to instability.