Arts and Cultural Management ─ Sense and Sensibilities in the State of the Field

This book is addressed to those who operate as researchers, scholars, and practitioners of arts and cultural management. Driven by concerns about quality of life, globalization, development of economies, education of youth, the increasing mobility of cultural groups, and many other significant issues of the twenty-first century, governments and individuals have increasingly turned to arts and culture as means of mitigating or resolving tough policy issues. For their growth, arts and culture sectors depend on people in positions of leadership and management who play a significant role in the creation, production, exhibition, dissemination, interpretation, and evaluation of arts and culture experiences for publics and policies.

Less than a century old as a formal field of inquiry, however, arts and cultural management has been in flux since its inception. What is arts and cultural management? remains an open question. A comprehensive literature on the discipline, as an object of study, is still developing. Uneven agreement among those who affiliate with the discipline regarding methods, theories, pedagogical priorities, or the foundational questions to be addressed is a widespread concern and a growing topic of conversation.

This State of the Discipline volume takes up the conversation, offering a benchmark for those interested in the evolution and development of arts and cultural management as a branch of knowledge alongside more established disciplines of research and scholarship.

Arts and Cultural Management: Sense and Sensibilities in the State of the Field opens a conversation that is much needed for anyone identifying this discipline as a primary area of research, teaching, or practice. In the evolution of any field arises the need for scrutiny, reflection, and critique, as well as to display the advancements and diversity in approaches and thinking that contribute to a discipline’s forward progression.

Prof Constance DeVereaux, is the Director of the LEAP Institute for the Arts at Colorado State University, USA