It looks like all of the initial chatter about Michael Dorf leading the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) was all for naught as news about theater producer Rocco Landesman appointment started popping up in newspapers and online. The 5/12/09 edition of the New York Times published the most comprehensive article about the appointment to date and they offered an intriguing glimpse into one particular quality that might make Landesman the right man for the job…
Year: 2009
Mixed Nuts: A Case Against Mergers
Andrew Taylor, Director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration, an MBA degree program and research center in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, and long time arts blogging colleague posted a fascinating piece on May 7th that examines the potential for mergers in the nonprofit world. It focuses on mergers throughout the broader nonprofit world but when it comes to performing arts organizations, mergers are rarely a good idea…
The Big Five, er, Seven, er, Six
In anticipation of June’s annual Orchestra Compensation Report update, it is always fun to take a look at some of the issues that don’t usually make it into those reports. One item of particular interest is related to the practice of projected base musician salary levels. For those unfamiliar, orchestras negotiate collective bargaining agreements (CBA) with their musicians that determine base wages up to five years in advance. As a result, this allows analyst geeks (like me) to have some prognostic fun…
Happy Anniversary NewMusicBox!
When it comes to online pioneers, the folks over at NewMusicBox (or NMBx if you’re hip) were already ahead of the curve before most even figured out there was something there. This month marks NMBx’s 10 year anniversary, which is the equivalent to at least 50 years in real business time (or 350 years for dog business), and they’ve spent the past decade pushing boundaries and producing fantastic content…
Ning Off Already
On Wednesday, May 6, 2009 the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (SFS) launched a boutique social networking site based on the Ning platform. If you aren’t already familiar with Ning, it is an enterprise solution that allows users to create their own social networking sites, think of it like a do-it-yourself facebook…