Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
Like a lot of music schools, orchestra faculty at the DePaul University have to adjust to the realities of Zoom based education. To that end, Michael Lewanski, Associate Professor of Instrumental Ensembles at DePaul was kind enough to invite me as a guest for one of those Zoom sessions. After some back and forth on the topic, we settled on an updated version of my Realities of an Orchestral Life program. …
The Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields’ PR crisis has turned into full-blown stakeholder collective action. In the morning of 2/16/21, the Indianapolis Star’s Domenica Bongiovanni reported that 85 Newfields employees and board members released a public statement calling for president Charles Venabl’s resignation. One day later, that’s exactly what happened. If that weren’t enough pressure, the 2/17/2021 edition of the New York Times reported in an article by Sarah Bahr …
Astute readers have already written to ask why there wasn’t a new episode of Shop Talk yesterday and I forgot to mention we’re at a mid-season break. All things being equal, the second half will start back up around the second week of March and run through June, but I haven’t decided what exactly might happen over the summer. As I’m getting guests and topics lined up, there are still some …
I don’t even know where to begin with this one so let’s just jump into it. The Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields engaged PR crisis management mode over the weekend after a job description for a new director including a qualification that the candidate would work to attract a more diverse audience while maintaining its “traditional, core, white art audience.” It didn’t take long for that gem to get picked …
Over the years I’ve had some fascinating conversations with development professionals on the pros and cons of donor cultivation tracking software. By and large, those I speak with either swear by them or curse them as a one-size-fits-none time suck. With the explosion of purpose-built apps, there are quite a few dedicated donor management apps, most of which offering some pretty slick cultivation tracking tools. Some are completely self-contained while others …