From Last Month
The labor strife I posted about last month at the Fort Worth Symphony continues. The Pittsburgh Symphony is also several weeks into dealing with its own labor challenges. A resolution of the labor disputes remains elusive. Maybe there will be more to report in my November posting. In any event, I hope there were a few interesting discussions in your classes about how each side in a labor negotiation develops it talking points and stakes out its territory.
Engagement and Aesthetic Value
For this month I thought I’d share two different perspectives about audience engagement. The first link is to an article that appeared in HowlAround about the heightened experience of patrons watching a technical rehearsal. This article could drive a discussion about how we develop authentic engagement experiences for our patrons, audiences, and other community stakeholders. Generally, we tend to assume people who interact with our organizations know more about us than they really do. Loud applause or a standing ovation doesn’t necessarily equate to a deeper understanding of the play or the processes used to bring it to the public.
The second link is to a piece that was in Arts Professional about unpacking what goes on when people view and experience art in a museum space. I thought this article could be a launching point for a discussion about what we think is going on when people engage with our organizations. From an arts management perspective, the aesthetic experiences of our audiences and patrons should connect to what we say we are trying to accomplish through our mission. It might be nice to test that assumption. I can also see how the marketing and development staff of an arts organization could benefit from having a better grasp of how to describe the range of experiences audiences have when they engage with the artistic product of an organization.
October 10th, 2016
By Neena Arndt, howlround.com
…. Every theatre I know aims to “engage” their audiences, and every professional I know who is involved in that engagement has a different idea of what it entails. As a dramaturg, I aim to provide the audience with experiences and information that deepen their understanding of the play and the theatre-making process, and to provide forums for them to respond and opine. For my colleagues in the marketing department, “engagement” involves all these things, but also has the end goal of selling more tickets. For those who work in development, engagement also aims to turn patrons to donors…. For more, go to:
October 13, 2016
Arts Professional
By Sual Albert
How do the public make value judgements about works of art? To find out, Saul Albert did some eavesdropping at Tate Modern.
The difficulty of coming up with standards for evaluating artworks that balance subjective and objective measures of aesthetic value has worried some of the world’s greatest philosophers since the Enlightenment. It’s hardly surprising, then, that this problem still haunts curators, artists, and arts professionals struggling to justify decisions about cultural funding.
Although both quantitative and qualitative methods for measuring aesthetic value may have developed a great deal ̶ from narrative interviews and systematic surveys to neuroaesthetic studies using fMRI scanners ̶ my research shows that it’s useful to revisit some long-standing philosophical issues to work out how to use these evaluation methods in practical and aesthetically sensitive ways. For more, go to:
