I hope your summer is going well and opportunities to enjoy all kinds of creative activities are presenting themselves. I have tried to find four recent articles or postings that can serve as conversation starters about managing the arts.
First up is an interesting article about the cost of free when it comes to opening and running an art museum. Continuing on the free theme, I thought the article discussing two recent books on the music industry offered some valuable perspective about the dramatic changes that have occurred in the last 20 years. The Guardian article about the habits of theatergoes resonated with me, especially after having attended a session at the recent TCG National Conference (June 18-20) where the focus was on building and enhancing loyalty programs at regional theatres in America. Lastly, there is a book review of Curtains! which offers a good overview of the key arguments Michael Kaiser put forth about challenges facing performing arts organizations over the next two decades.
Enjoy and feel free to comment on these and related arts management topics. Cheers.
Bill Byrnes
Art museums find going free comes with a cost
Museums find they’re scrambling to adapt their business models — with mixed results.
by Amy Langfield JUNE 1, 2015, 7:32 AM EDT, Fortune
When The Broad contemporary art museum opens its doors this fall in Los Angeles, it will join the ranks of America’s big free museums, reviving a frequent refrain: Why aren’t they all free?
In the case of The Broad, it’s almost entirely philanthropy supporting the bottom line.
http://fortune.com/2015/06/01/free-museums/
Music is free now – and the industry only has itself to blame
Bob Stanley unpicks the recording industry’s tangled history of takeovers, piracy and changing technology.
BY BOB STANLEY PUBLISHED 11 JUNE, 2015 – NewStatesman
If you had attended the Audio Engineering Society’s Paris trade fair in February 1995, you would have encountered debates on architectural acoustics, audio signal processing and psychoacoustics. You would also have found a booth, unhailed and unloved in a corner, belonging to a German state-funded research team run by Karlheinz Brandenburg. His team of six scientists was seated at a small desk that presented a three-way vision for the future of music distribution: an encoder on a floppy disk for creating sound files, a home computer for playback and a hand-held player for portable listening.
Brandenburg’s team had come up with the idea for the MP3 nine years earlier and was now ready to market it to the music industry. Synthetic German funk came out of its home computer speakers. Delegates walked on by. One executive from Philips, the company that had created the then industry-standard compact disc, told it straight: “There will never be a commercial MP3 player.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/06/music-free-now-and-industry-only-has-itself-blame
Resource:
How Music Got Free: What Happens When an Entire Generation Commits the Same Crime?
Stephen Witt, Bodley Head, 296pp, £20 [US $31.50]
Cowboys and Indies: the Epic History of the Record Industry
Gareth Murphy, Serpent’s Tail, 400pp, £14.99 [US $23.60]
Do we need disloyalty cards for theatre?
We all know that theatregoing is a habit – the more you see, the more you want to see. But how do you encourage audiences to try new venues?
Lyn Gardner, June 19, 2015, Stage Theatre blog, The Guardian
Recent British Theatre Consortium research found that 2013 marked the first time that more new work was staged in UK theatres than revivals and classics. One of the lesser reported aspects of the research was the finding that 36 long-running shows, representing 2% of all performances, accounted for 45% of the total number of seats sold.
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2015/jun/19/do-we-need-disloyalty-cards-for-theatre
The Performing Arts: Headed for a Perfect Storm?
In his new book, former Kennedy Center impresario Michael Kaiser argues that the future of the arts lies with quality, subsidy, and daring—all of which are in dangerously short supply.
BY MICHAEL BLOOM, June 18, 2015, American Theatre
There may be no one better suited to predicting the future of the arts in America than Michael Kaiser. Not only does he boast an extraordinary track record as the field’s foremost turnaround artist; with the exception of his 13-year tenure at Kennedy Center, he has worked his magic in absurdly short bursts of time at institutions that present every major performing art form. So when Michael Kaiser speaks or writes, attention should be paid.
Curtains? is his forecast for a climate change every bit as alarming, in its own right, as Mother Earth’s. In this monograph-long book, whose title announces the gravity of his project, Kaiser conjures a Darwinian future of haves and have-nots, winners—and mostly losers. For Kaiser, today’s storm clouds are the harbinger of a sharply divided cosmos and a great industry reset.
http://www.americantheatre.org/2015/06/18/the-performing-arts-headed-for-a-perfect-storm/