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APRIL 16, 2010

Welcome to On Our Minds Twice a month we enjoy sharing what WolfBrown consultants are reading, thinking, and talking about -- what's On Our Minds. It's our way of staying in touch with valued friends and colleagues, and passing along some worthwhile ideas.

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Shall We Dance?
by: Joseph H. Kluger

There were two recent announcements of unusual organizational collaborations that caught my attention. First, an article in Crains New York reported that the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is in final negotiations to merge with Dance Theater Workshop. If the deal is consummated, the two groups will combine their boards and staff into one entity with a new name and mission. The Columbus Symphony also announced that it has outsourced its administrative functions to the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA). CAPA also handles administrative duties for Contemporary American Theatre Company, the Franklin Park Conservatory, and the Phoenix Theatre for Children, in addition to its primary mission as a performing arts presenter and facility manager. Both of these appear borne out of financial necessity, as is too often the case with organizational collaborations in the non-profit arts and culture sector. There is a growing sentiment among enlightened arts leaders, however, that organizational collaborations can produce positive institutional benefits - such as demonstrating efficiency to donors and generating more resources for programs and services - that may justify the effort to set them up and the resulting shared control of decisions. The "carrot" of additional funding opportunities - such as the Collaboration Prize offered by the Lodestar Foundation - is also helping to turn organizational collaborations from a sign of failure to avoid into an innovative strategy and a "best practice" to emulate. A variety of resources are available from the Nonprofit Collaboration Database.

Remaking Museums
by: Dennie Wolf

Imagine a museum exhibition about how the Normandy coast inspired Impressionist painters - but one where the paintings come with photographs of those coastal landscapes and an immersive sound-scape. Or imagine an exploratory gallery where you can grab a giant lens and move it slowly over a Corot painting of a storm at sea in order to explore that turbulent surface in a way no self-respecting guard or docent would ever allow.  Both of these exist at the Dallas Museum of Art where five years of intensive visitor studies are reorganizing the way the museum and its curators engage with audiences.  This summer will see the publication of these studies and their implications as Ignite the Power of Art  by DMA Director, Bonnie Pitman and Ellen Hirzy.  The volume details how the research has yielded a new understanding of museum visitors which has been used to double attendance, re-think exhibitions, and develop new programs such as the Center for Creative Connections, the online Arts Network, and insomniac museum tours.  Prepare to rethink nearly everything that comes to mind when you hear the phrase "art museum."  More than that, prepare for a volume that could perturb your thinking about any and all cultural institutions from libraries and concert halls to aquariums.


Renewed Community Engagement?
by: Tom Wolf
 
It seems that many of WolfBrown's clients are helping answer the question of what it means to be a productive and successful musician in the 21st century, and discovering that one of the more important components of being a complete musician now is about engaging in your community in a deep and personal way.  Recently, I've been inspired by programs that promote and support community engagement, including:
  • Community MusicWorks in Providence, Rhode Island supports a professional string quartet and other musicians using music to help build and transform community.
  • Weill Music Institute and Carnegie Hall's joint program called Musical Connections takes music out of the concert hall and directly to people who don't readily have access to live music (e.g., hospital patients, prisoners, seniors). The program also supports participating artists through its Professional Development program.
  • Carnegie Hall and Weill are also partnering with the Juilliard School and the New York City Department of Education on The Academy, a two-year fellowship program for up and coming professional musicians which helps them to develop community engagement and leadership skills along with artistic excellence.
  • The New England Conservatory (NEC) has a number of programs that focus on community, including musical entrepreneurship that WolfBrown helped design and the American version of Venezuela's El Sistema, a voluntary musical education program.
Tony Woodcock, President of the NEC, in a recent talk at the Salzburg Seminars last month discussing NEC's programs and innovations around professional musicians, quoted Dr. Jose Antonio Abreu, the founder of the El Sistema program in Venezuela: "It is not enough for them (musicians) to love their instruments; they must also learn to love their responsibilities as citizens. They need to be apostles to the community."  I think this pretty much sums up the importance of artists' activity within their community - agents of social change.
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