What is Arts Management?

The practice of aggregating and animating people, stuff, and money toward expressive ends.

We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
Robert Lowell, from “Epilogue”

This weekly resource focuses on Arts Management. So it’s worth a post to clarify exactly what that is. Over three decades of teaching, research, and consulting, I’ve developed the following definition:

Arts Management is the practice of aggregating and animating people, stuff, and money toward expressive ends.

You will find other definitions (and other names for the practice including Arts Administration, Cultural Administration, Arts Leadership, and Arts Entrepreneurship). The job site Indeed.com, for example, defines Arts Management as “the process of using business and organization principles to lead in an artistic setting.” But the practice isn’t bound or defined by business and organizational principles alone, or by any particular tax status, artistic discipline, or policy domain.

My definition, therefore, focuses on what Arts Management professionals do, so we can explore ways to do it better. Arts Management is a practice, after all – a craft defined and refined by action. So what to Arts Management professionals do?

They aggregate (draw together, attract, secure) and animate (align, activate, coordinate) people, stuff, and money. And they do this, primarily, to achieve expressive ends (producing, presenting, preserving, and promoting creative human expression and experience). Sure, they use business and organizational principles along the way, but also community organizing, urban planning, public policy, aesthetic judgment, and self reflection.

Arts managers curate and orchestrate human activity (people), materials and the built environment (stuff), and financial resources (money). And that’s an endlessly interesting and complex thing to do.

Let’s keep digging.

Andrew

p.s. For a short (nine minute) video on this topic, check out "What’s Arts Management?" on the ArtsManaged YouTube Channel. Or, visit the What is Arts Management page in the ArtsManaged Field Guide.

Photo by Romain Vignes on Unsplash