The MFA in Arts Management

Arts administration/management (AA/M) has evolved to the point of emerging as a mature academic field, increasingly institutionalized within higher education and demanding a larger and more highly credentialed faculty. Examining Master of Fine Arts (MFA) AA/M programs in North America, this brief study asks whether the MFA can serve as the viable credential for academically trained arts managers. The analysis suggests that no consensus about which advanced degree best reflects academic expertise relevant to all components of the field has been reached and that standards remain too unclear for the MFA to serve as a viable credential across artistic disciplines.     

A Survey of Arts Management Educators' Teaching on Diversity Issues

This study answered two research questions: (1) do arts management educators teach about diversity issues in their courses? If so, how and why? If not, why? (2) Do demographic characteristics impact if an arts management educator teaches about diversity issues in their courses? Most respondents (eighty-six percent) teach about diversity issues in their courses, primarily through discussion (ninety-one percent), and most (ninety-nine percent) believe arts management students should receive education on diversity issues in the arts. This study is significant because no known inquiry into the teaching practices of arts management educators relative to diversity issues in the arts previously existed.     

Economic Discussion of Conflict between Public Education Policies and Common Good Arts in the United States

Arts education in the United States, especially in public schools, has been neglected and its public funding has decreased. This is partly due to the difference in the conception of public education policies and the arts. The theory of economic goods and an analysis of two current education policies demonstrate that public education is treated as a public good that is needed by all people, and therefore funded with tax dollars. Because the arts are common goods that different people value in their own terms, education in the arts is treated as nonessential and funded sporadically in public school settings. Based on the theory of the commons, the author suggests that nonprofit arts organizations are equipped to deal with the common good and diverse nature of the arts and can provide sustainable arts education that fills the gap of arts education in public schools.     

Core Consensus,Strategic Variations: Mapping Arts Management Graduate Education in the United States

This study is the first comprehensive curricular comparison of graduate arts management programs in the United States. Its principal finding is that there exists considerable curricular convergence among arts management programs and that their differences may be exploited strategically. Through extensive curricular analysis and in-depth conversations with faculty, this study makes both conceptual and methodological contributions to the field—conceptual because it provides an empirical basis for the definition of arts management as a formal academic discipline in its own right and methodological because it proposes a framework to effect a systematic comparison of arts management program curricula.     

Adapting Techniques of Studio Critique for Arts Management Pedagogy

Many students in the field of arts management have a background as practicing artists. In that light, it seems promising to explore fine arts pedagogies for the delivery of elements of arts management curricula. Studio critiques are a central pedagogic tool in arts education, allowing for systemic self-reflexivity that emerges from a shared interest in the terms of the conversation itself—critique as a creative technique. Since 2009, the Department of Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has integrated critique. Feedback from the first generations of students is assessed in this article.     

Managing Autonomy: Analyzing Arts Management and Artistic Autonomy through the Theory of Justification

Arts management has commonly been analyzed as a microcosm of the art field, in which struggles between artistic, economic, administrative, and societal considerations are constantly being fought. Using the field theory of Bourdieu, scholars have attempted to uncover levels of functional differentiation within arts organizations, and interpreted differentiation between artistic considerations and economic and administrative considerations as a core element in defining the artistic autonomy of such organizations. In this article, I present an alternative approach to the interpretation of artistic autonomy in arts management. Through the stories of three artistic directors and the way in which they run their theatres, I aim to show the theory of justification (developed by Boltanski and Thévenot) and shed new light on the interpretation of arts management, as well as on the understanding of artistic autonomy more generally.     

Strategic Decision Making in Arts Organizations

Despite the growing economic and cultural importance of artistic institutions, relatively little is known about how aesthetic concerns and the demands of artistic production influence administrative roles. In this article, we investigate the strategic decision-making process in a varied sample of Canadian arts organizations, concentrating on the issues that emerge as crucial for the organization and the individuals and groups that participate in the decision-making process.     

Public Higher Education Institutions' Investment in Performing Arts Centers

Although commonplace in academic settings, performing arts centers are multifaceted and remain unexplored. Framed by resource dependency theory, this research sheds light on the motivations of higher education institutions in a resource-scarce environment. Specifically, why do these institutions—with limited resources—prioritize the co-curricular arts? This study employs process research to understand the origination, funding sources, and purposes of performing arts centers at higher education institutions in Virginia. Evidence suggests that these institutions invest in the co-curricular arts to not only fulfill their public service missions, but also to capitalize on and acquire resources.     

The Media Monopoly Myth

This article discusses the results of a nationwide survey of decision makers at theater organizations. The study was conducted to begin to understand the hiring needs of those decision makers and to interpret their understanding of what education and experience graduate students are receiving in both an MBA program and an MFA in theater management program. The study reveals confusion about what is being taught in these programs and shows that decision makers are seeking graduates who have education and experience in the field of leadership.     

The Romanticization of Charismatic Leadership in the Arts

ABSTRACT

This inter-disciplinary article focuses on the role, significance, and impact of charisma in cultural leadership. It brings together fresh empirical data with a critical review of the literature to investigate the role of charisma in the operation, reputation, and strategic success of arts organizations. For the first time, this article synthesizes a diverse range of literature from sociology, psychology, political science, management, and leadership studies and applies it critically to the context of the arts. This comprehensive review is compared against interviews with key stakeholders in the arts, which challenge the neo-charismatic literature on leadership and support a return to aspects of the original formulation of charisma, as envisaged by Max Weber. The article finds that charismatic leaders are seen as extraordinary individuals and are excessively romanticized by arts managers, policymakers, and audiences. It questions this normative bias and concludes that charismatic leaders should be treated with a degree of skepticism, even caution, to temper any negative impacts on "followers" and organizations.     

东盟跨境医疗服务法律制度研究

东盟成员国通过一系列区域性贸易协定和安排扩大了医疗服务贸易。但是,医疗服务贸易的扩大也给成员国的国内医疗服务市场带来了复杂的影响。从某种程度上讲,东盟成员国的经济社会发展水平与中国类似。东盟的区域性立法和成员国的实践可以为中国的医疗服务制度的完善提供一些借鉴。     

The Public University's Performance in State Arts Policy: Lessons from Virginia

This article investigates the extent to which public higher education institutions participate in state-level arts policy through a history of selected budgets and a textual analysis of performing arts presenting centers at public higher education institutions in Virginia. Evidence from this research suggests that the arts policy field is altered by the emergence of public higher education institutions as policy actors. The findings have financial and decision-making implications for arts policy makers, university administrators, and arts agencies as the participation of public higher education institutions affords new opportunities and challenges for the state encouragement of the arts.     

Ethical Implications of Methodological Settings in Arts Management Research: The Case of Performance Evaluation

In this article, we analyze research on the evaluation of the artistic outcome of arts organizations. Inspired by Wicks and Freeman's new pragmatic approach to organization studies, we give an ethical question a central role in our analysis: to what extent is current research able to serve the needs of individual arts organizations and their communities? Our results highlight the influence of research traditions on the ethical implications of performance evaluation research. To serve the arts world, further research should aim at in-depth understanding of the specific complexity of different contexts rather than at decontextualized generalization of simplified universal principles.     

Cultural Policy and Subjective Well-Being in Mexico

This article compares the notions of subjective well-being—which has been underscored as an aim for public policy—and optimism, studied by Oliver Bennett as an implicit cultural policy. It will give an overview of the high level of subjective well-being in Mexico according to several recent surveys and consider the relation that culture and arts have with subjective well-being in different countries. This will help to frame the proposal that happiness and life satisfaction could be promoted in Mexico through arts management and cultural policy.     

高师文科生科学文化素质的调查报告

该调查报告,以国际公认的公众科学素养的标准,调查江苏高师文科生科学文化素质的现状,发现文科生科技知识贫乏,科学素养低下。高师对在文科生中开展科学文化教育不重视;已开设综合性科技知识课程的,又存在教学内容上的缺陷,忽略科学方法、科学思想、科学精神的教育。报告探讨了在高师文科生中开展科学文化教育的必要性,提出了选择科学文化教育内容的原则,以及开展科学文化教育的方式与关键     

The Value of Art and Culture in Everyday Life: Towards an Expressive Cultural Democracy

ABSTRACT

Ever since the earliest forms of mass media, the dichotomy of mass culture/high culture has been a topic of debate. The concept of cultural democracy has developed as a way to acknowledge a variety of cultural activities. Despite attempts to develop a broader understanding of culture, cultural policy still seems to reproduce the dichotomies, and to value one over the other. In this article, we would argue for an expanded understanding of cultural democracy, which may serve as a starting point for a turn of perspective of arts advocacy and cultural policy—the perspective we call an expressive cultural democracy.     

Performance Evaluation in the Arts and Cultural Sector: A Story of Accounting at Its Margins

In this article, I present a review of financial and management accounting literature on the arts and cultural sector. My objective is to understand to what extent this literature is able to offer a critical perspective on the study of performance evaluation practices in arts and cultural organizations, as it is currently missing in the arts management literature. Adopting a critical perspective means shifting the focus of research from the technicalities of evaluation rules and procedures to their embodiment by the different organizational and societal actors of the arts and cultural sector.     

Means and Ends: A Theory Framework for Understanding Entrepreneurship in the US Arts and Culture Sector

This article provides a framework for the conceptualization of arts entrepreneurship in the US by first examining a range of perspectives on the boundaries of the “arts and culture sector” in the US and then exploring in some depth four theories of entrepreneurship and how such theories may be realized within the arts and culture sector. Theories of firm formation are considered both generally and as potentially applied to the arts and culture sector, with examples of firm formation drawn both from existing literature and the author's direct observation of entrepreneurial activity. Finally, the essay connects these theories in a means and ends framework to provide a context for understanding arts entrepreneurial activity, especially in the US arts and culture sector. The theory that emerges from the examples provided to illustrate the framework is a simple one: artists form firms or otherwise undertake entrepreneurial action toward the end of creating art sustainably and they do so by discovering or creating new connections between their means and that desirable end.     

The Effect of NEA Grants on the Contributions to Nonprofit Dance Companies

Affirmative action and diversity can serve as a powerful framework for helping arts management educators address the challenge of diversity in the arts. This article encourages arts management educators to use affirmative action and diversity to proactively recruit diverse students into academic degree programs.     

论公共危机管理中的行政指导

本文结合公共危机管理的实践,探讨了行政指导在公共危机管理中运用的必要性,阐述了在公共危机管理中采用行政指导措施的法理基础是行政应急性原则,并对我国公共危机管理系统的建立和完善提出了相关的对策建议。