Arts management is a vicious circle, writes Rupert Christiansen. Here’s the way it goes: “Some ambitious romantic, out of touch with audience taste and budgetary actuality, leads the accounts to the brink of financial catastrophe and plug-pulling threats from the subsidising bodies. The board panics and appoints someone with experience of the ‘real world’ of business or industry. He or she imports a management consultancy. A lot of paper-pushing, a lot of bellowing, a lot of sacking ensues. Morale among the creators and curators is decimated, and the quality of the art plummets.” It doesn’t have to be this way…