Category: issues

Arts managers tend to burn out quickly, frequently as a direct result of the stress of constant fundraising and the unwieldy nature of many non-profit boards. But does the burnout problem amount to a leadership crisis? A new study in Chicago aims to find out.

“Nearly 75 arts organizations in Baltimore have banded together to present the first free citywide arts festival this fall… Free Fall Baltimore, which runs through November, will showcase the well-known Baltimore institutions, as well as some smaller ones.” Among other goals, the festival is designed to take advantage of the influx of thousands of Washington, D.C. residents who travel to Baltimore every year.

“The State Department has enlisted four national cultural organizations to broaden exchanges between American artists and foreign audiences and share the country’s arts management expertise. … This umbrella effort,” known as the Global Cultural Initiative, “is taking a number of programs that federal cultural agencies and national organizations have underway that are more on-the-ground than marquee. The primary partners in the new program are the Kennedy Center, American Film Institute, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.”

A plaza lid that had covered 65th Street at Lincoln Center has been removed. “Now, with the plaza finally removed, it is a pleasure to see daylight returning to this forlorn street. Suddenly the visions of the architects, which had a pie-in-the-sky quality until a few weeks ago, seem within reach.”

“This is not how people see a work of art; they can take in the whole of it at a glance. I feel I want the same. Perhaps this is a failing in me. Many totally blind people assure me that they can get an enormous amount from this kind of experience, both examining and creating it.”

The heads of medical foundations top executive compensation. In the arts in America in 2005, “highest pay went to Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., who brought home $1,029,691. The survey put Munitz just behind Kaiser with $962,526 in compensation.”

“From all-nighters at the High Museum to martini mixers at the Fernbank Museum and video game-inspired music at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, many arts groups are aggressively courting a younger demographic with hopes they will become not only patrons, but donors.”

“Perhaps the most significant aspect of the 570,000-square-foot center’s design is not the details behind the dramatic interiors — a red-and-gold specially commissioned curtain in the opera house, the prominent use of wood throughout the concert hall. It’s the fact that the center, which occupies two square city blocks, doesn’t have a true front or back.”

There are 25 journalists in this year’s program. The Institute is housed at Columbia University in New York City from October 15-25 and is part of a $1 million NEA initiative to “offer intensive training for arts journalists and editors who work outside the country’s major media markets.”

Minneapolis recently spent millions to build a new central library, designed by architect Cesar Pelli. But the city’s library system as a whole is woefully underfunded, and the board that governs it has presented a stark choice between closing 2/3 of the libraries in the system and drastically reducing open hours. “Those choices ought to make the stewards of Minneapolis blush. A solution that better befits a city reputed to be the most literate in America must be found.”