The ‘Turn-Around King’ on Arts Management

GWSB hosts a conversation with Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser.

April 22, 2013

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GWSB Dean Doug Guthrie with Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser.

Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, offered tips on sustaining arts organizations at the academic year’s final Conversations on Creative Leadership on Wednesday. The series is hosted by the George Washington School of Business.

Financial strain, poor direction and insincere marketing tactics are just a few of the issues faced by arts institutions, Mr. Kaiser told the crowd during a conversation with GWSB Dean Doug Guthrie, but these issues can be overcome with the proper approach.

“Good arts managers are able to crystallize their mission and are clear about how they measure success,” he said.

An expert in the field and author of a weekly column on management for “The Huffington Post,” Mr. Kaiser knows a thing or two about arts management.

He has been hailed as the “turn-around king,” due, in part, to his books on arts management theory, most famously,  “The Art of the Turn-Around: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Arts Organizations,” published in 2008.

During his career he has guided the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the American Ballet Theatre from near bankruptcy to thriving institutions, and since becoming president in 2001, he has established the Kennedy Center as a leading arts organization worldwide.

Mr. Kaiser also founded the Kennedy Center Arts Management Institute, an instructional organization that has worked in 70 countries on six continents. In 2010, it was renamed the DeVos Arts Management Institute after Dick and Betsey DeVos pledged $22.5 million to its programs.

“We look for problems in the arts ecology and try to address those problems,” Mr. Kaiser said.

Among those efforts are the Any Given Child initiative, a $25 million endeavor providing arts education to a million children in 11 cities in a “systematic and cost-effective” way and the Arts in Crisis initiative, which matched 650 arts organizations with 150 experienced arts managers to find financial solutions during the economic recession.

Mr. Kaiser credits an early desire to be an opera singer with his interest in the arts, but he said it was his mentor Barney Simon, founder of The Market Theater in South Africa, who expanded the scope of his approach to management.

“I really learned the difference between producing a play and producing change,” he said, citing Mr. Simon’s dedication to using theater to educate people worldwide about apartheid in South Africa.

Mr. Kaiser advocated for the mentorship process, saying that arts management is a practical field that is often taught too academically. According to Mr. Kaiser, tasks such as fundraising require hands-on experience.

“Fundraising is a transaction, you get something but you also have to give something,” he said, but later added that great art is the biggest draw for donors. “The hardest part is finding that exciting project,” he said.

Private funding relationships have become increasingly vital for the arts worldwide, particularly because of cuts to major federal resources such as National Endowment for the Humanities, which awards $150 million annually.

He reiterated the importance of training managers to create an embracive community that attracts donors, especially for leaders of smaller, avant-garde and minority-focused organization. These organizations currently receive only 6 percent of their funding from private sources and will feel the effect of these cuts the most.

Despite the difficulty, there are benefits to private funding, according to Mr. Kaiser. “It forces us to be relevant to our community as it changes,” he said.

Mr. Kaiser, who has a new book on arts management in the works, will step down as Kennedy Center president in 2014 but will stay on at the DeVos Institute for three more years.

“I’ll do this work until I die,” he said with a smile. “In my own little corner of the earth, it’s important.”

GWSB’s Conversations on Creative Leadership series features leading executives, directors and officials. The 2012-13 season featured Marin Alsop, conductor and music director of the Baltimore Symphony; Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, mayor of the city of Baltimore; and Paull Young, director of digital engagement at Charity:Water.