Artists in an Iron Cage? Artists’ Work in Performing Arts Institutions

This article discusses artists’ work in performing arts institutions in Norway. Many scholars describe Nordic performing arts institutions as slow-moving and heavy “art factories,” where artistic creativity is almost suffocated within bureaucratic “prisons.” The general problem that we raise in the article is whether this pessimistic picture of the relation between state control, market influence, and artistic work is relevant for studying the performing arts today. The study is primarily based upon twenty-seven qualitative interviews with informants in an institutional theatre and a symphony orchestra. We conclude that the actors in the Theatre are trapped—not so much within “a bureaucratic iron cage”—but rather within “an iron cage of charismatic leadership,” while the musicians in the Orchestra enjoy the relative freedom and democratic power of a rather soft bureaucratic organization.     

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.     

Performing Arts Review: Statement of Scope and Purposes

Recent research on arts and cultural audiences has attempted to go beyond the traditional social science surveys that assess attitudes or attendance to capture an understanding of how audiences actually experience the arts and what benefits or impacts those experiences provide. The study reported here contributes to this growing body of research by presenting in-depth case studies of four individuals and their chosen cultural experiences at various times through their lives. The authors used Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology to guide the informants through highly structured but open-ended interviews designed to prompt self-reflection and elaboration of what each experience meant to them. Informants were selected from a larger database because of the richness of their interviews and the insight these interviews offer to the understanding of people's engagements with culture. By considering multiple cultural experiences for each informant, it was possible to gain a clearer sense of the context in which these experiences took place and how informants were impacted personally. In addition, the case studies showed how informants' respective struggles with personal and identity issues moved with them across their cultural experiences.     

Nonprofit Entrepreneurship: The Astoria Motion Picture and Television Center

The author investigates social change in Vietnam in the late 1980s-2000s, a transition from a subsidized economy to a market-oriented economy. The author discusses the influences of socioeconomic changes on the operation of the performing arts sector through analyzing changes in cultural policies, opportunities, and challenges confronted by performing arts organizations. The new cultural policy allows arts organizations, arts managers, and artists more opportunities to develop a greater degree of autonomy and more freedom in performing, programming and other artistic activities. The author believes that open policies will motivate Vietnam to develop its own national identity and to participate in cultural exchange with other parts of the world. However, under the impact of global culture, global economics, cuts in state funding, and rapid technological development, the performing arts sector has faced challenges in terms of financial viability, audience development, and balance between commercialization and artistic creativity. The author suggests that privatization should be implemented depending on the art form. Consideration should be given by the Vietnamese government to implementing appropriate funding policies and schemes, as state funding still forms a significant part of public companies' incomes.     

Production,Distribution and Educational Media

From 1970 to 1990, Yugoslav culture was signed by the tight net of Self-Governed Interest Associations (Samoupravne interesne zajednice, SIZ). Understood as one of ex-Yugoslavia's transient eras, when political control over cultural life was given to the boards of professionals and experts, “SIZ time” provided an ideal base for future development of arts management. This article explores the possibilities of applying the positive experience of the SIZ model, modified by contemporary NGO models, as the possible solution for arts management transition problems in Serbia and the region. I conclude that South European state funding and institutional systems cannot provide adequate support for arts management development, thus projects in this field should be undertaken through NGOs, with additional financial support and coordination from the international community. NGOs and the ex-SIZ system give examples of a positive experience in conducting projects in the field of arts management.     

Public Opinion and the Helms Amendment

This article questions existing performing arts market segmentation practices in the United States, probing for examples of unintended exclusion and discrimination. The author critiques specific performing arts marketing scholarship and the segmentation practices that stem from it. Future growth of the performing arts industry's audiences may rest on the ability to define their composition more broadly, to be more inclusive rather than exclusive. At the same time, marketing theory, research, and practice may need to be specifically developed to meet the needs of both the performing arts industries and their audiences.     

Infected by Arts Festivals: Festival Policy and Audience Experiences in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area

In current policy debates, cities are often seen as “experience machines” in which the quantity and variety of experience possibilities are vital. The Finnish capital, Helsinki, has chosen arts festivals and other events as tools to achieve this aim. This article focuses on the way in which Helsinki's festival policy has developed and analyzes the response of metropolitan residents to the proliferation of arts festivals. The article highlights the importance of artistic quality as something both cultural policy-makers and arts audiences are looking for. Artistic excellence can thus be seen as a major contributor to the success of festivals.     

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.     

Making the Case: Using a Living and Historic Cultural Universe Big Data System as a Knowledge-Based Foundation for Sustaining and Recapitalizing the Cultural Sector

The cultural sector needs information to support recapitalization efforts. However the majority of existing studies all point to a knowledge gap within the sector: how to evaluate the amount of capital that can be raised. Through big data, we now have the ability to understand the “universe” of support to the cultural sector. In a test employing over two million data cells from 2007 onward for cultural organizations in Charlotte, North Carolina, the author has found evident patterns and predictors for sector support as a foundation for recapitalization, making the case for big data.     

Nonprofit Organizations,Community, and Shared Urgency: Lessons from the Arts and Culture Sector

Mainstream arts management and stakeholder research highlights the relationships between nonprofit organizations and community, yet empirical research on how those interactions result in outcomes is limited. This article looks at the stakeholder attribute “urgency” and the impact on and by the stakeholder group “community.” Building on a comparative case study of five cultural organizations and their capital intensive facility projects, our research finds that both new and existing organizations embrace a community-wide process whereby internal and external stakeholders are identified, relationships nurtured, social and emotional bonds strengthened, and shared urgency between community and organization is created towards specific outcomes.