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Oct 24, 2023Liked by E. Andrew Taylor

I'm puzzled by your final sentences. Are you endorsing this situation? Sighing and saying this is "just the way it is and will be"? Bringing it to our attention so we can consider alternatives?

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Oct 24, 2023·edited Oct 24, 2023Author

Fair questions. I'm conflicted. The tradition has been to blame the arts managers and their boards for not following reasonable, evidence-based, and incremental strategies in facility planning and development. But the ecology of funding and policy discourages such things.

So, no, I'm not endorsing the situation. Yes, I'm saying the distorted ecology selects for the behaviors described in the bullet points, so low-context, free-fall decision-making is actually a good fit (at least for the fundraising and construction phases…thereafter, it's a mess). And mostly, I'm naming the interplay of the rapids and the rafting team that constitutes arts management as a general rule.

That said, I didn't say any of that clearly in the post. Let's call it a work in progress.

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