All posts tagged Arts Management

On My Mind: What Press Is Good Press?

My most recent blog posts have been about homebuying and affordability. It’s a topic I find deeply interesting, but it also provides a change of pace from the in-depth—and often intense—conversations about art and activism happening daily over at SOMArts. Writing requires time for reflection, and this fall instead of reflecting on and writing about art I chose to spend my post-work hours running, learning guitar and seeing art in other spaces. No regrets!

This week, however, I am back to writing about art as part of the inaugural Animating Democracy Blog Salon of Americans for the Arts. It’s an impressive cohort and I am learning a lot. A particular favorite is Every Museum Needs A Community Organizer by Damon Rich, an artist who transformed several galleries of the Queens Museum of Art into a place to explore how our society pays for housing, how the system has broken down, and the arguments over fixing it.

Last week I had lunch with a friend who asked me “what type of publicity do you hope for at SOMArts?” CONTINUE READING ]

On Platform Programming And Static Arts Presenting Models

This week I was talking about an upcoming performance collaboration and a board member asked me “are we presenting or producing?” In that moment, I realized that I wasn’t 100% sure how to answer. My notion of producing comes from the world of theater where producers negotiate with the director to choose designers, actors, venue, technicians. That’s fine if you are investing in one or two projects a year. But what if your goal is to produce 10 or 20 or 50 projects, in order to help cultural communities achieve creative and financial success? Would you want to manage every detail, or would you want to empower those artists and producers by providing a platform that would help them succeed?

Platform programming. This framework—a combination of artist honoraria, subsidized rental rates and lots of hands-on technical, production and marketing support —is a highly customizable and scalable model for collaboration that gives communities and artists creative control. CONTINUE READING ]

Dance, Dance, Evolution …

Back in 2006  when I worked at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, the CFA co-commissioned Liz Lerman’s Ferocious Beauty: Genomea work created with, by and for scientists and students of science that was a cross-disciplinary catalyst for discussions about reproductive technologies, women’s health and social justice; stem cell research, religion and politics; genetics and race; and many other topics.

These days it is de riguer for arts organizations to have some sort of  socially relevant talk accompanying a performance or exhibition. Liz Lerman and the CFA take it up a notch (or five) because they are masters at combining multilevel arts participation and community collaboration with economies of scale, the more deeply you look at this partnership, the more there is to see. The premiere of Ferocious Beauty sparked another idea for collaboration, and last week the Wesleyan Hughes Program in Life Sciences and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange launched Science Choreography, an online toolkit for the embodied exploration of science through dance. CONTINUE READING ]

Inspiration vs Imitation: Who’s Your Winklevoss?

“If you had invented Facebook, you would have invented Facebook.”

In the movie The Social Network, the character Mark Zuckerberg says this to two competitors who had an idea similar to Facebook—very similar, but not as successful. Zuckerberg comes across as a total jerk. A rich, successful jerk who created something that millions of people participate in. That thousands of businesses cooperate with. That continues to succeed in its mission of “making the world more open and connected,” even as the little people continue to learn the price in terms of real dollars and intellectual property rights.

In the tech industry, money is made by convincing investors to fund micro-variations on a basic premise such as a social network (myspace/ning/facebook) or image sharing (mopho/instagram/mlkshk). Leaders accept that ideas will be co-opted and they address this with elaborate techniques involving unmapped buildings and non-disclosure agreements.

Lately I’ve been wondering how this approach to innovation translates to the arts sector, particularly regarding programming and fundraising. Once upon a time someone (I think it was arts impresario Courtney Fink) decided to have a Monster Drawing Rally and there are now at least four by that exact name around the country. There are at least ten printmaking Monothons. Live, radio and ebay auctions are nothing new.

However, as we look at more recent innovations: mixed-reality events, socially networked programming, crowdsourced fundraising, etc.—imitators are easier to spot. What are the ethics, and where’s the rulebook? Where do we draw the line at adopting a similar infrastructure—is it Geography? Sector? Artistic genre? Demographics served?

Many nonprofit organizations would serve their missions best by imitation rather than innovation—perfecting, NOT re-inventing the wheel. We have a moral responsibility to serve our mission in a thoughtful, focused way. How do arts workers and funders approach this conundrum in a sector that is less secretive but … to put it plainly … hella territorial?

 

 

Geeking Out About Technology

 

This site has been dark for a few weeks, largely because my five-year-old laptop finally died, sparking a major purge of old files and an early birthday present from Dan. I’ll admit it—I’m an information hoarder. An app-hoarder. A function-hoarder. My old computer had way more expensive software and ports and files than I needed, and even though it was a laptop, it was bulky enough that I didn’t take it anywhere except my couch.

My new computer reminds me a little bit of the arts-organization-du-jour in that it is designed to be a “hub” or “platform”.* It has one USB port, and doesn’t even have a disc drive! Instead I share the drive on Dan’s computer when I need to install new software. I save ALL my documents to the cloud (via Dropbox), so that I can access them whenever and wherever I need to. Same goes for passwords, 1Password syncs my 200+ passwords and software license data for work and home via Dropbox so that if I change a password at home, it’s up-to-date on my phone and at work.

Enough narrative. Here are some tips & tricks I’m loving right now:

Caffeine. Keeps screen on full brightness for movies (and powerpoint presentations) but clicking a tiny coffee cup in upper right corner of screen. Fast, simple, easy.

Chax. Combines chat contacts from different accounts, makes instant messaging for work a little more user-friendly.

Instapaper + Pinboard. saves web pages for reading later. Used for everything from furniture to poems to arts management policy articles to great fundraising ideas. I like that Instapaper downloads articles so you can read them on the Muni. p.s. Does anyone else get frustrated that when you use ArtsJournal via google reader it takes 5 minutes and three layers to access an interesting article from your phone? Is there a workaround?

+ Folder. I don’t know why I never did this before, but now I have a + folder in my bookmarks toolbar for all those “read later” “buy later” “add to rss feed” buttons. Very handy.

Keyboard shortcuts. If you don’t use keyboard shortcuts for your favorite apps, you are wasting a lot of time. I wasted a lot of time.

Rdio. Has cool graphics that show me what my actual music listening behavior is. Plays actual songs you want on demand for $9.99/month, allows you to create and share music. Great for me since Dan owns every song I’d ever want and there’s no need for us to have two files stored away for the rare moment we are on a road trip with no wireless access.

I wish there was an Rdio for the arts—a way I could find people in SF who saw a couple of the same plays I did and see what’s on their “top charts” these days. Also, I had no idea I listened to so much Kanye West.

 

*I love platforms, just sayin’ … it’s a trendy word these days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doing It Right: Chapter Three on Project Management

I stumbled upon this fantastic article by Chapter Three‘s Creative Director Nica Lorber, How To Run A Creative Design Process For A Big Project. The guidelines are common sense for anyone with a little experience, but the “deliverables” and the “tools of the trade” make this article worth reading. It is tailored to Drupal and web design, but could be applied to any number of creative design projects.

Turning the Corner: Life, Love & Art

view from my old office at The O'Neill - nice!

As many of you tens of readers already know, three weeks ago Dan and I got married. It was a joyous occasion for all the obvious reasons, and also some less obvious ones. I was never one of those girls who dreamed of a big wedding, but the first and only place I imagined having a big wedding was at The O’Neill. The combination of art, barn and beach was undeniably romantic, even when I worked there every day. When Dan and I started looking for a place to get hitched, we found the Headlands Center for the Arts—or, as I like to think of it, “the O’Neill of the West”—big views, big love, and a place where our rental fees will support artist residencies and other community programming.

Getting married, and particularly getting married where we live, feels like turning a corner in all the right ways. When I accepted the job as director of SOMArts, it was a great leap into the unknown. Leading an organization that supported art and artists deeply rooted in community was a dream I had been working toward for ten years. And no place celebrates community-based arts as boldly and beautifully as San Francisco. We could guess at, but couldn’t predict exactly, the challenges and opportunities ahead of us, which have included:

-the highs and lows of leading change in an organization with a rich history and multifaceted identity

-the weight of important decisions surrounding Dan’s career and how to best navigate his move to San Francisco in an uncertain economy

-the shifting balance of learning, mentoring, creating and curating in my own career.

When I drove cross-country, I stopped in Salt Lake City to visit my cousins Sue and Phil, who like me have a history of working in the arts. Phil, who runs several arts venues for Salt Lake County, told me that it would take at least two years for my vision to begin to take any sort of visible shape. It seemed like an unbearably long time to wait, when so much can be done so quickly. But of course the arts veteran was right in this case. One of the most important things for any kind of leader to develop is the very hard-to-define, hard-to-explain sense of when things can bend, and when they will break. It’s like a chef’s palate—critical. Also, learning how to read the signs of who will change and who won’t, and how to live with the sometimes irreconcilable contexts of my personal feelings for an individual, and my professional obligation to serve the mission of SOMArts and the greater good. In some instances, “learning” is a euphemism for saying “mistakes were made.” After two years, what makes me happiest in my work life is to see a growing circle of staff members, board members, volunteers and artists surrounding SOMArts who complement each other in strength and ability, care deeply about the value of community-based art and cultural equity, hold themselves and others accountable, respect differences, and bring creativity and enthusiasm to their daily work.

What makes me happiest in my home life is to celebrate the moments when good fortune smiles upon us, as we did in early September, surrounded by friends, family and love at our wedding. And in the middle of all this activity came the wonderful news that starting in October, Dan will become the new Art Director for SFMoMA.

So now, we turn the corner. We start our lives together as husband and wife, Dan begins a new job, and SOMArts has already started a season that will include the launch of Feast of Words, a literary potluck and collaboration between Irina Zadov and myself (October), the first Commons Curatorial Residency, featuring Julie Michele’s I Live Here: SF (November), the first-ever touring exhibition (December) and too many exciting collaborations to mention.