2003-04-09
AAAE 2001 Conference, Brisbane, Australia
CONFERENCE SUMMARY AND OPENING REMARKS
Queensland University of Technology - June/July 1, 2001
The Brisbane Conference accomplished several goals: it brought forty arts administration educators together from all over the world, with particularly good representation from Asia; it allowed these colleagues to spend time in working meetings discussing the pressing issues of outcomes and standards for the field and of international chapters for the AAAE; it facilitated sessions where small groups shared best practices in internships and practical experience, technology and the curriculum, relationships with the cultural community and teaching problem-solving and creative thinking. The international representation at the conference made these colleagial sessions very rich.
In addition, a panel; of Australian arts management alumni including David MacAlister, dancer turned new manager of the Australian Ballet, spoke of their training and post-education experiences. A stellar panel of Australian arts managers included the managers of the Sydney Opera House, Michael Lynch, and of the Queensland Theatre Company as well as a tax expert discussing the new GST as it affects Australian arts and culture. David Fischer spoke about philanthropy in Australia and our host, Scott Trow, manager of the Powerhouse where the conference was held, spoke passionately about presenting cutting edge art.
Members interested in international chapters will spend the next year honing their own networks and articulating future membership needs. The results of the Outcomes and Standards discussion will be presented to the Board of Directors who plan to form a committee to spend the next year reviewing appropriate models in other fields, examining recourses and making recommendations to the membership.
Queensland University of Technology - June/July 1, 2001
The Brisbane Conference accomplished several goals: it brought forty arts administration educators together from all over the world, with particularly good representation from Asia; it allowed these colleagues to spend time in working meetings discussing the pressing issues of outcomes and standards for the field and of international chapters for the AAAE; it facilitated sessions where small groups shared best practices in internships and practical experience, technology and the curriculum, relationships with the cultural community and teaching problem-solving and creative thinking. The international representation at the conference made these colleagial sessions very rich.
In addition, a panel; of Australian arts management alumni including David MacAlister, dancer turned new manager of the Australian Ballet, spoke of their training and post-education experiences. A stellar panel of Australian arts managers included the managers of the Sydney Opera House, Michael Lynch, and of the Queensland Theatre Company as well as a tax expert discussing the new GST as it affects Australian arts and culture. David Fischer spoke about philanthropy in Australia and our host, Scott Trow, manager of the Powerhouse where the conference was held, spoke passionately about presenting cutting edge art.
Members interested in international chapters will spend the next year honing their own networks and articulating future membership needs. The results of the Outcomes and Standards discussion will be presented to the Board of Directors who plan to form a committee to spend the next year reviewing appropriate models in other fields, examining recourses and making recommendations to the membership.
On Sunday, July 1, the AAAE hosted a first-time seminar for Emerging Scholars to present their work. Two doctoral students gave informal presentations and received input and advice from a dozen experts in the field. This session's goal was to nurture research and scholarship and was very well received.
OPENING REMARKS by Joan Jeffri, President, AAAE
First, my deep thanks to host Jennifer Radbourne and the Queensland University of Technology, especially Professor Harding, for hosting both this conference and the AIMAC Conference which follows this. My thanks to so many of you for coming from around the world to help us build the AAAE. As you may know, the format of the conference is such that you will have a chance to contribute and participate, as well as to hear some exciting Australian arts managers, some prized alumni, and a keynote speaker with an international perspective.
In addition to updating you on the progress of the Association of Arts Administration Educators - and there is substantial progress - I feel it is important, at this World Congress of our organization, to bring some perspective to the field of educating arts managers. Especially since our organization is now expanding to embrace undergraduate programs, international programs, to discuss international chapters and to encourage research among emerging scholars in the field, I thought we might spend a few minutes reflecting on some of the core capacities we, as educators around the world, wish to transmit.
These are not the usual core competencies of accounting, marketing, finance, and technology. These are those core competencies that ground the arts in experience, in the transmission of values, self-expression and community. They include the constant education of the public about art, not in a condescending way, but in the dictionary definition, to develop the faculties and powers of learning by teaching. I would venture to say that many of us ended up in the arts and in teaching for some of the same reasons--to share the arts and to provide for their sustenance in very personal ways.
There have been some stellar examples over the last decade of teaching in our field and of transmitting core values. One of the most publicized was the now legion U.S. lawsuit against the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center over seven photographs by American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe that were claimed to be obscene. Without rehashing First Amendment and other legal arguments, this cause celebre represented a tremendous opportunity. The experts called to testify for the Arts Center carefully explained to a jury of regular people?not art experts at all, how seven photographs depicting physical and sometimes sexual acts were defined as art. They spoke about composition, about light, about angle, they gave a mini-lesson in art education. The result was that a jury of 12 American citizens, previously untutored in any special way in the arts, decided that, although they may have abhorred the content of the photographs, they had to admit they were works of art, had artistic value, and therefore were not obscene. This was one of the paramount art education lessons of the 20th century. And while we celebrated Cincinnati's and our collective success, the art community was so depleted by constant rebuffing of the religious right and countering personal attacks that we did not turn the lesson into a national campaign. At the same time, in many states in the U.S., we watched the educational system across the country remove art, music, dance and theatre from the school curriculum.
Another and related core value has to do with what I call the re-empowerment of the experts. Perhaps stemming from the time of the United States? Abstract Expressionists when a common comment about an abstract painting was "My kid can do better than this?, there has been an erosion of the experts, especially when those experts are the artists themselves. Played out in the lawsuits against the U.S. government for requiring - decency language - in order for organizations to receive grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bella Lewitsky, artists Karen Finlay et al known as the NEA Four, demanded the right to define work as art because they are informed, because they have mastered the skills to make distinctions. Soon after this the National Endowment for the Arts virtually eliminated grants to individual artists, directing its funds instead almost totally to institutions.
The effects of this new age of censorship are underlined by the force with which these events crashed so directly up against public sensibility. This publicness, which was so much a part of our art in ancient times, which continued to make Shakespeare a "popular - playwright well into the 19th century when our models of institutions of high art developed and de-popularized him, has been pushed further and further from the centrality of our art experience. Our boards of directors in the nonprofit sector, then, and our managing and artistic directors, are dealing with the vestiges of a heritage from the 19th century in the United States, and from long before that in European countries, with all the accompanying attributes - status, prestige, patronage, noblesse oblige - as we enter the 21st. Suddenly placed in the spotlight, board members found themselves defending their institutions, and sometimes as the recipients of community ostracism, loss of business and, in the case of Cincinnati, death threats.
While we were defending Cincinnati, countries in Eastern and Central Europe became emerging democracies grappling with concepts of a marketplace economy and a civil society. Nelson Mandela was released from prison, became the first black president of South Africa and shared the Nobel Peace prize. Revolt occurred in Tainenman Square in China where a model of the U.S. Statue of Liberty (given us by the French with the inscription a poem by an immigrant Jew) set the tone for rebellion. Riots tore South Central Los Angeles after an acquittal in the Rodney King beating. Christo wrapped the Reichstag.
In Australia, the Mapplethrope show ran in Sydney with little noise, but there was an end to the short-lived Keating Awards. In the United Kingdom, the arts council went under. In Hungary, the nascent philanthropic process was thwarted by the fact that the country still did not have adequate banking procedures. In the former Soviet Union understanding of foreign models is so fragile that one Russian arts manager told me that existentially his organization was "nonprofit".
Our arts managers are called upon to balance economic stability with cutting-edge work, to court donors, solicit board members, initiate grants and balance the budget. They must get the doors open, the show on the road, the staff paid. They must cultivate communication and a good work environment, create sufficient health and pension benefits and strategic plans. They must cultivate audiences, encourage artists, deal with critics, engage school children and make sure the champagne is chilled for the opening. And I am suggesting that all this is about education (except for the champagne), and the public. And our job is educating the managers to educate everyone else?the board members, the donors, the audiences, the school children, in essence, the public. A huge responsibility.
This organization, then, the AAAE, should be a place where the educators rely on each other - for feedback, for collaboration, for leadership, vision and ideas. Here, the international and the interdisciplinary, can only help us by providing models, communication and colleagues. Over the last year with a committed and involved board we have accomplished a number of things in support of this, many of which will be featured at this conference:
- a statement on research ethics which has been added to our website and serves as a guide to educators, researchers, students and professionals
- a statement of the Core Values and Outcome Standards we think programs should aspire to, along with a plan to help those members reach those standards to be discussed here and developed over the next year outreach to some of the major arts service organizations to discuss joint marketing efforts to raise the awareness of arts management as a career
- a listing of dissertations related to arts administration
- the prospect of International Chapters for the organization
- an international conference in 2003 with the European Network, ENCATC, that represents European arts administration programs
- sharing of best practices so we can learn from each other
- a survey on promotion and tenure within member institutions
- a master's thesis on arts administration training using AAAE member programs
- an up-to-date Guide to AAAE university training and education programs on the web, especially important since so many of our program inquiries are coming through the web, with continued listing of master's theses and projects, and a new section on publications, presentations and consultancies of program directors
- the first salary survey of graduates of four U.S. arts administration programs which takes into account both the profit and non-profit sectors
Too, we have some challenges: how to encourage emerging researchers from our and related fields, discussion of peer evaluation, of a broader and more regular salary survey, of a better global understanding of programs in the field and of many issues which I hope will surface at this conference.
Most important to all this is those of you here - we expect to listen to you - long-standing members, new members, affiliates, associate members, students, non-members trying to learn from us; we expect to work together over these 2 days to expand our understanding of issues in the field internationally, and we expect us to do well while doing good together.
OPENING REMARKS by Joan Jeffri, President, AAAE
First, my deep thanks to host Jennifer Radbourne and the Queensland University of Technology, especially Professor Harding, for hosting both this conference and the AIMAC Conference which follows this. My thanks to so many of you for coming from around the world to help us build the AAAE. As you may know, the format of the conference is such that you will have a chance to contribute and participate, as well as to hear some exciting Australian arts managers, some prized alumni, and a keynote speaker with an international perspective.
In addition to updating you on the progress of the Association of Arts Administration Educators - and there is substantial progress - I feel it is important, at this World Congress of our organization, to bring some perspective to the field of educating arts managers. Especially since our organization is now expanding to embrace undergraduate programs, international programs, to discuss international chapters and to encourage research among emerging scholars in the field, I thought we might spend a few minutes reflecting on some of the core capacities we, as educators around the world, wish to transmit.
These are not the usual core competencies of accounting, marketing, finance, and technology. These are those core competencies that ground the arts in experience, in the transmission of values, self-expression and community. They include the constant education of the public about art, not in a condescending way, but in the dictionary definition, to develop the faculties and powers of learning by teaching. I would venture to say that many of us ended up in the arts and in teaching for some of the same reasons--to share the arts and to provide for their sustenance in very personal ways.
There have been some stellar examples over the last decade of teaching in our field and of transmitting core values. One of the most publicized was the now legion U.S. lawsuit against the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center over seven photographs by American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe that were claimed to be obscene. Without rehashing First Amendment and other legal arguments, this cause celebre represented a tremendous opportunity. The experts called to testify for the Arts Center carefully explained to a jury of regular people?not art experts at all, how seven photographs depicting physical and sometimes sexual acts were defined as art. They spoke about composition, about light, about angle, they gave a mini-lesson in art education. The result was that a jury of 12 American citizens, previously untutored in any special way in the arts, decided that, although they may have abhorred the content of the photographs, they had to admit they were works of art, had artistic value, and therefore were not obscene. This was one of the paramount art education lessons of the 20th century. And while we celebrated Cincinnati's and our collective success, the art community was so depleted by constant rebuffing of the religious right and countering personal attacks that we did not turn the lesson into a national campaign. At the same time, in many states in the U.S., we watched the educational system across the country remove art, music, dance and theatre from the school curriculum.
Another and related core value has to do with what I call the re-empowerment of the experts. Perhaps stemming from the time of the United States? Abstract Expressionists when a common comment about an abstract painting was "My kid can do better than this?, there has been an erosion of the experts, especially when those experts are the artists themselves. Played out in the lawsuits against the U.S. government for requiring - decency language - in order for organizations to receive grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bella Lewitsky, artists Karen Finlay et al known as the NEA Four, demanded the right to define work as art because they are informed, because they have mastered the skills to make distinctions. Soon after this the National Endowment for the Arts virtually eliminated grants to individual artists, directing its funds instead almost totally to institutions.
The effects of this new age of censorship are underlined by the force with which these events crashed so directly up against public sensibility. This publicness, which was so much a part of our art in ancient times, which continued to make Shakespeare a "popular - playwright well into the 19th century when our models of institutions of high art developed and de-popularized him, has been pushed further and further from the centrality of our art experience. Our boards of directors in the nonprofit sector, then, and our managing and artistic directors, are dealing with the vestiges of a heritage from the 19th century in the United States, and from long before that in European countries, with all the accompanying attributes - status, prestige, patronage, noblesse oblige - as we enter the 21st. Suddenly placed in the spotlight, board members found themselves defending their institutions, and sometimes as the recipients of community ostracism, loss of business and, in the case of Cincinnati, death threats.
While we were defending Cincinnati, countries in Eastern and Central Europe became emerging democracies grappling with concepts of a marketplace economy and a civil society. Nelson Mandela was released from prison, became the first black president of South Africa and shared the Nobel Peace prize. Revolt occurred in Tainenman Square in China where a model of the U.S. Statue of Liberty (given us by the French with the inscription a poem by an immigrant Jew) set the tone for rebellion. Riots tore South Central Los Angeles after an acquittal in the Rodney King beating. Christo wrapped the Reichstag.
In Australia, the Mapplethrope show ran in Sydney with little noise, but there was an end to the short-lived Keating Awards. In the United Kingdom, the arts council went under. In Hungary, the nascent philanthropic process was thwarted by the fact that the country still did not have adequate banking procedures. In the former Soviet Union understanding of foreign models is so fragile that one Russian arts manager told me that existentially his organization was "nonprofit".
Our arts managers are called upon to balance economic stability with cutting-edge work, to court donors, solicit board members, initiate grants and balance the budget. They must get the doors open, the show on the road, the staff paid. They must cultivate communication and a good work environment, create sufficient health and pension benefits and strategic plans. They must cultivate audiences, encourage artists, deal with critics, engage school children and make sure the champagne is chilled for the opening. And I am suggesting that all this is about education (except for the champagne), and the public. And our job is educating the managers to educate everyone else?the board members, the donors, the audiences, the school children, in essence, the public. A huge responsibility.
This organization, then, the AAAE, should be a place where the educators rely on each other - for feedback, for collaboration, for leadership, vision and ideas. Here, the international and the interdisciplinary, can only help us by providing models, communication and colleagues. Over the last year with a committed and involved board we have accomplished a number of things in support of this, many of which will be featured at this conference:
- a statement on research ethics which has been added to our website and serves as a guide to educators, researchers, students and professionals
- a statement of the Core Values and Outcome Standards we think programs should aspire to, along with a plan to help those members reach those standards to be discussed here and developed over the next year outreach to some of the major arts service organizations to discuss joint marketing efforts to raise the awareness of arts management as a career
- a listing of dissertations related to arts administration
- the prospect of International Chapters for the organization
- an international conference in 2003 with the European Network, ENCATC, that represents European arts administration programs
- sharing of best practices so we can learn from each other
- a survey on promotion and tenure within member institutions
- a master's thesis on arts administration training using AAAE member programs
- an up-to-date Guide to AAAE university training and education programs on the web, especially important since so many of our program inquiries are coming through the web, with continued listing of master's theses and projects, and a new section on publications, presentations and consultancies of program directors
- the first salary survey of graduates of four U.S. arts administration programs which takes into account both the profit and non-profit sectors
Too, we have some challenges: how to encourage emerging researchers from our and related fields, discussion of peer evaluation, of a broader and more regular salary survey, of a better global understanding of programs in the field and of many issues which I hope will surface at this conference.
Most important to all this is those of you here - we expect to listen to you - long-standing members, new members, affiliates, associate members, students, non-members trying to learn from us; we expect to work together over these 2 days to expand our understanding of issues in the field internationally, and we expect us to do well while doing good together.
There are no comments for this content yet.
similar content
