Perspectives on Arts Entrepreneurship, Part 1

Authors

  • E. Andrew Taylor American University
  • Paul Bonin-Rodriguez The University of Texas at Austin
  • Linda Essig California State University, Los Angeles

Abstract

As the first peer reviewed research journal in the field of arts entrepreneurship, Artivate: A Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship takes its role as a framer of the discourse in and around arts entrepreneurship seriously. To advance that discourse, in addition to the articles and book reviews that have been regular features of Artivate, we have invited members of our editorial board and staff to contribute short think pieces. For these pieces we asked contributors to consider open-ended questions to which they could respond in whole or in part: what is their position in relation to arts entrepreneurship; how is arts entrepreneurship situated in relation to other disciplines or fields; what are the problems we are grappling with as scholars, practitioners, teachers, and artists; and what are the research questions we are attempting to answer individually or as a field? Following, you will find responses from: Andrew Taylor, Associate Professor of arts management at American University; Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Assistant Professor of performance as public practice at UT-Austin and author of Performing Policy (reviewed in this issue); and Artivate's publisher and co-editor, Linda Essig, Evelyn Smith Professor and director of the Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University.

Author Biographies

E. Andrew Taylor, American University

E. Andrew Taylor is an Associate Professor in the Arts Management Program, and Chair of the Department of Performing Arts, exploring the intersection of arts, culture, and business. An author, lecturer, and researcher on a broad range of arts management issues, Andrew has also served as a consultant to arts organizations and cultural initiatives throughout the U.S. and Canada, including the William Penn Foundation, Overture Center for the Arts, American Ballet Theatre, Create Austin, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, among others. Prior to joining the AU faculty, Andrew served as Director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration in the Wisconsin School of Business for over a decade. Andrew is past president of the Association of Arts Administration Educators, current board member of the innovative arts support organization Fractured Atlas, and consulting editor both for The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society and for Artivate, a journal for arts entrepreneurship. Since July 2003, he has written a popular weblog on the business of arts and culture, ''The Artful Manager,'' hosted by ArtsJournal.com (www.artfulmanager.com).

Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Paul Bonin-Rodriguez is a writer-performer and dancer from San Antonio who has toured extensively throughout the United States. His book, Performing Policy: How Politics and Cultural Programs Redefined U.S. Artists for the Twenty-first Century (Palgrave, 2014), assesses how research and development initiatives since the late 1990s have radically reshaped artistic practices nationwide. Chronicling both historical, paradigm-setting moments and contemporary artist-driven initiatives, Performing Policy demonstrates how "creatives" regularly negotiate market-based and value-based concerns and shows how they may more effectively and ethically pursue opportunities in communities where they work.

His articles appear in Artivate: a Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, Theatre Topics and a forthcoming anthology on New WORLD Theater. His plays have been published in The Color of Theatre: Race, Culture, and Contemporary Performance (Continuum, 2002), Jump-Start Playworks (Wings Press, 2004) and Text and Performance Quarterly.

Currently, he serves as the head of Undergraduate Studies in Theatre and Dance, as well as the director of the Minor in Arts Management and Administration for the College of Fine Arts.

Linda Essig, California State University, Los Angeles

Linda Essig is Dean of the College of Arts & Letters at California State University, Los Angeles. She previously was director of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Programs for the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, including the Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship. She was the founding director of the School of Theatre and Film at ASU where she also served as Artistic Director of the school’s MainStage Season from 2004–2010. She previously served as Director of University Theatre and chair of Theatre & Drama at University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2012, she launched Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, the first-ever research journal in the field. Her articles have been published there as well as in Cultural Trends, Entrepreneurship Research Journal, Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, Theatre Topics, Stage Directions, Theatre Design and Technology, and elsewhere. Formerly a professional lighting designer, Essig’s design for Suzan–Lori Parks’s “Venus” was part of the USA National Exhibit of Scenography at the Prague Quadrennial in 2007. She has designed for theatres throughout the country including Cleveland Playhouse, Milwaukee Rep, Missouri Rep, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Skylight Opera, La Mama ETC, Pioneer Theatre, and others. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on both arts entrepreneurship and lighting design, and three books: Lighting and the Design Idea, The Speed of Light: Dialogues on Lighting Design and Technological Change, and The Arizona Arts Entrepreneur Toolkit. At ASU, Essig taught courses in Arts Entrepreneurship, Arts Management, and Arts Policy. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Association of Arts Administration Educators.

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Published

2015-01-01

How to Cite

Taylor, E. A., Bonin-Rodriguez, P., & Essig, L. (2015). Perspectives on Arts Entrepreneurship, Part 1. Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, 4(1), 3–7. Retrieved from https://artivate.org/index.php/artivate/article/view/36

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2015): Winter

Section

Editorials