Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
If you’re the type of person who forms an opinion about an article by reading the headline, you may be disappointed with today’s post. This isn’t going to be a lengthy commentary on how the field is overbuilt, classical music is dying, and the only way to save the future is via wholesale slashing of budgets. Instead, this is a post about the unique period of transition out of a time …
Joe Patti just came back from his vacation to Germany and like most arts administrators, he apparently had a difficult time turning off the arts management gears. But that’s good news for us as Patti used his time originally designed for genealogy research to share some realizations in an article at Butts In The Seats about the way different societies afford cultural relevance as a byproduct of land use policy. In …
On 5/20/2014, Opera America (OA) published a statement about the San Diego Opera and related issues as they apply to the opera field. The statement acknowledges the difficulties opera organizations have been experiencing since the economic downturn but unlike similar efforts (remember Red Alert?) it conveys a meaningful upbeat message that doesn’t fall prey to self-deceiving, Pollyannaish nonsense. For instance, OA doesn’t mince words when it comes to difficulties: But instead …
There’s a fascinating article by Lee Rosenbaum in the 3/27/2014 edition of her CultureGrrl column where she discusses the decision by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) to denounce one of their members for selling off key items from their collection in order to pay for debts and build the endowment. According to Rosenbaum, the decision was prompted because the museum in question, the Delaware Art Museum (DAM), violated an AAM …
Joe Patti published a fascinating post on 12/2/213 at Butts In The Seats titled Thanks For The Virtual Relationship which examines an experiment Patti conducted on whether or not relationships outside the traditional face-to-face workplace structure can influence something as fundamental as finding employment. Setting aside my unconscious role in Patti’s experiment, he acknowledges some genuinely useful points about the evolving nature of professional relationships. Do you really want to hire …