Elizabeth Sobol, President & CEO of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, talks about creating value for the arts ecosystem in small and mid-sized communities.
In this episode, we discuss findings from a UK study about the economic consequences of using arts-based strategies to improve health and well-being. A transcript is available at the Arts Endowment website.
A conversation with Hana S. Sharif, Artistic Director of Arena Stage since August 2023. Sharif discusses her transformative first year at the helm and her inaugural season as Arena’s producing artistic director. She reflects on the vibrant theatrical community in Washington, D.C., and her commitment to amplifying dynamic voices in American theater. With an ambitious 2024/25 season featuring eight new works, including...
It’s been a year since I posted to the Artful Manager, when I reflected on the passing of my dear friend and colleague Diane Ragsdale. Since then, I’ve been focusing my public writing in the ArtsManaged initiative, an effort to create free, online, and evolving resources for Arts Management practitioners. You can subscribe to the weekly newsletter, browse the...
Art that is primarily skill-based -- graphic design, stock music or images, text and marketing, etc -- can be created faster and often better than human artists, and at lower cost. This is particularly true for compound art that requires specialized equipment and/or collaboration of specialists. As for art with high creative quotient, humans will not only be essential, but the automation of skills available to them will likely make them better. Maybe much better. And certainly more prolific.
I’ve used this space before to meditate on the long-term declines in literary reading, as observed by various federal surveys. Occasionally, such data points can provoke a response. Last month, for example, the publisher Hatchette Book Group announced a “Raising Readers” initiative “to help reverse trends showing steep declines in reading for fun among children.”
This call to action reminded me of...
The Digital Twin idea is the notion of looking at something -- an organization, an eco-system, a city -- and measuring and defining it in as many meaningful ways as possible and creating a digital representation in which elements can be changed or manipulated to see how the rest of the model reacts.
Fear of missing out on cultural turning points is a significant New York preoccupation. My own incessant curiosity takes me to small urban churches, inside security zones requiring a QR code (such as the Columbia University campus) and – as of the early hours of 2025 – to a 3 am video stream of the Berlin Philharmonic Ochestra’s New Years...
Some Adam Smith as an appetizer…
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it.
Now to the present....
