Barry's Blog

Hello everyone.


“And the beat goes on..............”


Welcome to BARRY’S BLOG on the new platform.


Here are just a few of the Blog Posts I am working on for the coming year - Don’t miss out on these 2010 BARRY’S BLOG entries:

1. A late January major interview with Rocco Landesman, Chair of the NEA.

2. An in-depth focus on the new Americans for the Arts potential game changing research: The Arts Index.

3. The Annual Top 25 Most Powerful & Influential Leaders in the Nonprofit Arts Sector.

4. The Annual Year End Predictions of trends in the field.

5. A multi-week online Forum with national leaders on one of two subjects:

• Arts education, or

• Technology in both the creation and presentation of art.

6. At least three major in-depth interviews.

7. Several Roundtable Discussions

• The BLOGGER’S ROUNDTABLE - featuring a half dozen or more of the sector’s principal bloggers discussing why they blog, what they hope to accomplish, the ups & downs of blogging and the role blogs play in arts & cultural administration and policy formulation.

• ARTS ACADEMIC ROUNDTABLE – featuring directors of major arts administration degree programs on the future of professional development and training for new (and existing) leadership.

• The MILLENNIALS ROUNDTABLE – a candid discussion with young Millennial arts leaders from around the country about their workplace experiences, role in policy making and the ups and downs of trying to carve out a career in a down economy and a boomer generation world.


Here are just some of the topics I hope to focus on in future blogs in 2010:

1. Multicultural Arts Provision in America at the end of the first decade of the century - Short shift or fair shake? - an exploration of the economic and other challenges facing the nonprofit multicultural arts communities and how they are faring in addressing those challenges. Are they getting support or are they on their own.

2. Some consideration on the CompARTmentalization of the nonprofit arts sector. How and why do we let others define us?

3. The arts and the business relationship re-examined. When will we figure out that it's a waste of time to ask for business support and cooperation until we figure out what they want and how to deliver it? How do we even get past the business world's gatekeepers?

4. Arts Administrators as Sisyphus: Does anybody (beside us) really care about arts & culture in America anymore. Why or why not? Confessions of burnt out arts administrators. Ten reasons why NOT to quit.

5. Spinning Wheels Got to Go Round. Making the case for NOT making the case. We don't need to justify ourselves, we need political and media power.

6. "Destigmatizing the arts as a charity case” – How do we change the perception of support for the arts as an investment, not a hand-out?

7. Cha, Cha, Cha Changes: The new Demographics profiles revisited. What are the results, if any, of awareness of the new data? What are the likely impacts and implications for us of the 2010 Census and what do we need to know and do now.

8. Chicken Feed to Living Wages. How do we move towards paying both artists and arts administrators living wages? Not competitive wages, but just minimal living wages?

9. What about Me? Notes from the small, rural, suburban, newer, diverse and underfunded, undervalued and underappreciated arts organizations in America. All but forgotten?

10. Five things I wish someone had told me about arts administration – advice from seasoned veterans from around the country.

11. Job or Profession? Consideration of why arts administration is (in certain quarters) not considered a profession. Where is the authoritative, credentialed, academically rigorous National Nonprofit Arts Journal? Where are the White Papers on policy issues? Where is the certification for professional administrators mechanism? Where is the ongoing continuing education of the field? Where is the relationship between the university academic degree in arts administration program and the working administrator field? Where are the unions or trade associations?

12. Organizational Crisis Intervention -- when arts organizations face meltdowns (financial, audience collapse, board of director infighting, artistic director passing) what kind of crisis intervention resources are available, and who is providing those services?



And here are five of the more theoretical questions facing us as a sector that I hope to address in future blogs this year:

a. How the high tech companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook and ones not yet in existence will co-opt and soon takeover -- if not the role of the nonprofit performing arts in America, then at least the public face and distribution of the art forms (e.g. the Goggle Youth Orchestra). What are the implications of such a scenario for arts in America.

b. Will the future of corporate philanthropy in the arts move towards exclusive sponsorship of specific cultural institutions (e.g. - Pepsi's SF Opera) and what are the implications of such a development?

c. Is word of mouth replacing all other advertising for audience development - at least among Millennials?

d. Data mining revisited -- why are the arts so slow to get on the bandwagon? Aren’t we missing the boat given the valuable information just waiting for us to develop and exploit?

e. The consequences of a failure to address the needs of the arts organization infrastructure. Real life problems and costs of the sin of complacency and omission.


That’s just a small sampling of what I hope to provide in blog posts on BARRY’S BLOG this year. I can promise you some surprises in form and content and in the expansion of this platform and its’ role in arts & culture public policy formulation.
Thank you very much.

Have a great week.

Don’t Quit


Barry