Managers of the Arts
 
Managers 

theAl s 

Careers and opinions of senior administrators 

of U.S. art museums, symphony orchestras, 

resident theaters, and local arts agencies. 

Paul DiMaggio 

Research Division Report #20 ~ National Endowment for the Arts 

seven ~ocks press
 

Publishers 

Washington, D.C./Cabin John, Md. 
 

Managers of the Arts is Report # 20 in a series on matters of interest to 

the arts community commissioned by the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

DiMaggio, Paul.
 

Managers of the arts.
 

(Research Division report; no. 20)
 

"Published for the National Endowment for the Arts."
 

Includes index.
 

1. Arts administrators--United States. 2. Arts surveys--United States. 

I. National Endowment for the Arts. II. Title. III. Series: Research Division 

report (National Endowment for the Arts. Research Division); 20. 

NX765.D56 1987 700’ .92’2 87-9719 

ISBN 0-932020-50-X (pbk.) 

Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Research Division, 

under Grant NEA-02-4050-001. 

Edited by Jane Gold 

Designed by Dan Thomas 

Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc., Dexter, Michigan 

Manufactured in the United States of America 

First edition, September 1987 

Seven Locks Press 

Publishers 

P.O. Box 27 

Cabin John, Maryland 20818 

301-320-2130 

Books of Seven Locks Press are distributed to the trade by 

National Book Network Inc. 

4720A Boston Way 

Lanham, MD 20706 
Contents
 

I ntrod uctio n vii
 

Executive Summary 1
 

1. Backgrounds, Recruitment, and Careers	 11
 

2. Rewards and Expectations	 25
 

3. Training	 41
 

4. Professional Participation and Attitudes Toward
 

Professionalism 52
 

5.	 Attitudes Toward Organizational Missions 69
 

Index 83
 
Introduction
 

America’s first arts organizations were founded in simpler times. When 

Henry Lee Higginson established the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 188 l, 

its business affairs could be handled by a single paid manager, amply advised by Higginson himself. Approximately one mile from the orchestra’s 

offices, the new Boston Museum of Fine Arts was also managed by a skeleton 

crew, with trustees doing most of the work. Even in the 1950s, when the 

resident theater movement began to grow, most theaters were administered 

by their charismatic founders during moments stolen from artistic duties. 

In all these settings, the key personnel were experts in the artistic work 

at the core of their organizations’ missions. For many years, conductors, 

curators, and artistic directors were undisputedly the most visible and most 

important members of the institutional art world. 

During the last two decades, however, full-time administrative roles 

have become more prominent in America’s arts organizations, and their 

functions have become more formalized. Two factors have led to this 

development: the internal growth of the organization and the increased complexity of its external environment. 

It is a staple of management literature that growth leads to differentiation, and differentiation increases the demands on administrators.~ As 

organizations grow, they assume more tasks and need more employees to 

perform the tasks they already have. As the numbers of tasks and employees 

increase, functions that had been carried out by a single person are delegated 

to additional personnel, who may eventually be designated as a discrete 

department. (In theaters, for example, artistic directors begat managing directors who begat marketing, development, and public relations staffs.) The 

more employees and departments, the harder to coordinate their activities. 

(The artistic director of the 1950s may have had a difficult time handling 

his theater’s administrative chores, but at least his right hand knew what 

his left hand was doing.) Consequently, management becomes more 

essential. 

vii 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

In addition, as the external environments of many arts organizations 

become more complex, the amount and importance of managerial work also 

increase.2 The museum director of the 1930s had only to manage his 

curators and volunteers, pursue collectors, and, if the museum benefited 

from municipal funds, court an occasional politician. The museum director of the 1980s seeks support not just from private patrons, but from corporations, private foundations, and the state and federal governments as 

well. To maintain legitimacy in their eyes, the director must be more concerned than ever before both with the museum’s public image and success 

in attracting visitors, and with its ability to produce reasonably complete 

and auditable accounts that meet the requirements public and private agencies impose. Consequently, museums today are more likely than those in 

the past to have an assistant or associate director for administration, a controller, and departments like marketing, public relations, development, and 

government relations that concern themselves with the museum’s relationships with its environment; and museum directors today devote more time 

to administration and public relations and less time to scholarship than did 

their predecessors. 

These changes have been widely acknowledged. Interviews with the 

chief executive and operating officers of arts organizations suggest that most 

arts organizations’ boards have become increasingly concerned with the 

quality of administration. Service organizations have established intemships, 

workshops, and other training programs to prepare and assist administrators. 

The National Endowment for the Arts, through its "Services to the Field" 

funding categories, has aided many efforts to improve administration, and 

many state arts agencies sponsor extensive technical assistance programs. 

Private foundations have supported workshops, conferences, and arts administration degree programs, as well. 

But despite this activity, we have known little about the individuals 

who occupy the top administrative posts in our nation’s arts organizations. 

Until now, research in this area has been restricted primarily to salary studies. 

Such research is valuable, of course, but it tells us little about either executive labor markets in the arts or the executives themselves--their 

backgrounds and training, their careers, and their attitudes on management 

and policy issues. 

Methodology and Design 

The research presented in this report was conducted to provide practitioners, 

donors, and policymakers with information on the administrators of four 

kinds of arts organizations: resident theaters, art museums, symphony orchestras, and community arts agencies (CAAs).3 

.oo 
I NTRODUCTION 

In 1981, survey instruments were mailed to the chief operating officers 

(identified by initial phone calls to the target organizations) of four populations of arts organizations, with requests that they be completed and returned. 

These were followed by a second mailing, also including a survey form, 

and, where necessary, by a follow-up postcard and by one or more telephone 

calls. Each survey instrument was reviewed by at least one National Endowment for the Arts program staff member and at least one staff person 

at the appropriate service organization. 

Although we sought to survey top managers of the major organizations 

in each of the fields studied, the population definition differed somewhat 

among the four. The resident theater population consisted of managing directors of the 165 member resident theaters listed in Theatre Profiles 4 of the 

Theatre Communications Group. Wherever a resident theater had both an 

"executive producer" and a "general manager," the producer was 

surveyed,’ as were several artistic directors who also acted as managing 

directors for their theaters. In one case in which a theater was managed 

collectively by its artistic personnel, no survey was administered. 

The 165 theaters surveyed included all or almost all of the largest resident theaters in the United States, as well as most of the artistically prominent ones, the membership of the League of Resident Theaters, and all 29 

theaters listed as having staff on the National Endowment for the Arts’ 

Theater Policy and Grants panels from 1977 through 1979. In addition, 

these theaters received approximately 80 percent of all Endowment grants 

to theaters in 1979. Although one study of the nonprofit theater universe 

counted 620 nonprofit theaters in the United States in 1980, only some were 

resident theaters.5 Of those, the group surveyed was less likely to include 

very new, very small, or very poor theaters, or theaters devoted largely 

to social rather than to conventionally defined aesthetic goals. 

In the case of orchestras, we surveyed all managers of U.S. member 

organizations in the major, regional, and metropolitan categories of the 

American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL). Interviews indicated that 

all orchestras in the "major" and "regional" categories and 95 of approximately 105 orchestras in its "metropolitan" budget range were ASOL 

members. (These three categories accounted for 156 organizations in 

1979.)6 

Because the American Association of Museums (AAM) does not publish 

lists of art (as distinct from other) museums, identifying the largest art 

museums was more complicated than identifying major resident theaters 

and orchestras. From the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) 

1978 Museum Universe Survey7 we drew up an initial list of 137 art 

museums with operating budgets of $120,000 or more, to which we added 

art museums reporting either attendance of 60,000 or more, or a total budget 

ix 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

of $220,000 or more.8 This list was then checked against the Museum 

Directory 1980 to screen out museums incorrectly classified as art 

museums,9 and to the remaining 175 institutions we added 17 that were 

not included in the NCES list: 13 art museums that reported budgets of 

$500,000 or more in the 1978 American Art Directory, and 4 whose directors were members of the Association of Art Museum Directors 

(AAMD).~° The total population of large art museums thus derived 

numbered 192. 

To develop a list of CAAs, we began with a survey made by the National 

Assembly of Community Arts Agencies (NACAA)(now the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies) of their own membership. NACAA estimated 

the universe of CAAs to number approximately 2000. Directors of all agencies reporting a full-time professional administrator in response to the 

NACAA inquiry were included in our study’s population. Although we cannot assess rigorously the extent to which the agencies in our population differed from those that were not NACAA members and/or those without fulltime paid administrators, our agencies were probably larger or wealthier 

than most (because they could afford to employ full-time directors) and were 

relatively cosmopolitan (because they participated in a national organization). Nonetheless, our f’mdings regarding CAA directors should be interpreted with caution since we know so little about the universe of agencies. 

After we eliminated organizations that were defunct or that did not, 

at the time of the survey, have full-time executives, we were left with 

responses from 102 theater managing directors (a response rate of 68.67 

.percent), 113 orchestra managers (72.67 percent), 132 art museum directors (67.20 percent), and 171 CAA directors (86.54 percent). 

Merging our data with information from Theatre Profiles 4 permitted 

us to test the sample of resident theater managing directors on a variety 

of factors for response bias. These tests revealed that respondents’ and 

nonrespondents’ theaters were similar across a wide range of variables, including region, house capacity and percentage of seats filled, percentage 

of income earned, and mean income. 

Among art museum directors, only museum region could be used to 

test for response bias. Response was somewhat higher for directors from 

the Great Lakes, Mid-South, and Gulf regions (74.19 percent) than for directors from the Pacific, Northwest, Southwest, North Plains, and South Plains 

regions (60.00), with the response rate of directors from New England, 

the Middle Atlantic states, and New York close to the population mean. 

Response rates of orchestra managers varied not by region but by ASOL 

budget classification. Almost all of the regional managers responded to the 

survey, compared with just under two thirds of the metropolitan managers. 

Response from major managers was close to the population mean. 
I NTRODUCTION 

Lastly, for CAA directors, our survey was merged with data from 

NACAA’s 1980 survey (from which our sample was derived), providing 

several tests of sample bias. Response rates were very similar by region, 

degree of urbanization of community served, and budget size; however, 

directors of private, undesignated nonprofit agencies were less likely to respond (78.13 percent) than were directors of either publicly designated nonprofit agencies or public CAAs (90.32 percent and 92.11 percent, 

respectively). 

Because none of the surveys, then, appears to be flawed by dramatic 

response bias, given the qualifications cited and the relatively high response 

rates, analyses can, for the most part, be generalized to the populations 

surveyed. 

Still, certain caveats should be observed in interpreting the data presented 

in the following chapters. First, the findings cannot be generalized beyond 

the populations surveyed: in the case of the theaters, orchestras, and art 

museums, they apply only to executives of the 150 to 200 major institutions in each field; and, in the case of the CAAs, they apply only to those 

NACAA members who indicated they had a full-time paid director. This 

is not a major disability, however, because the organizations surveyed account for the great bulk of expenditures in their fields, and many smaller 

organizations do not have full-time paid managers. 

In a few cases, particularly in the survey of theater managing directors, substantial item nonresponse rendered interpretation of specific results 

difficult. All tables indicate the number of respondents on which results 

are based, and the most striking instances of item nonresponse are mentioned in text or notes. Other caveats apply only to specific chapters and 

are described at length in the text. 

The Report 

This report first examines the backgrounds, schooling, and career experiences of the senior administrators surveyed; the preparation they had 

for their positions and their evaluations of it; and the rewards and satisfactions they receive from their jobs and their expectations for future employment. It then addresses the extent of the administrators’ participation in professional activities outside their organizations, and lastly it reviews their 

attitudes toward a range of policy and management issues, many of which 

relate to their organizations’ missions. In each chapter, we first compare 

the responses of administrators from each field; and then, based on factors 

such as cohort, organization size, and career experience, we look at notable 

variation in responses within each field. 

The material in this report represents the major findings of this study. 

xi 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

For the sake of brevity, reports of many analyses have been omitted. A 

much longer, more exhaustive report of our findings, including copies of 

the survey instruments and of all tables for which statistics are cited, is 

available for study at the offices of the National Endowment for the Arts’ 

Research Division. This report has been distributed by the Educational 

Research Information Center (ERIC) to libraries and to "on-line" commercial information services under the title The Careers and Opinions of 

Administrators of U.S. Art Museums, Resident Theatres, Orchestras, and 

Local Arts Agencies (ERIC No. ED 257 696). 

The author is obliged to many people and organizations for help in 

undertaking and completing this study. In addition to the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Yale University Program 

on Non-Profit Organizations provided financial backing and a supportive 

environment for this research, and data analyses were supported by Yale 

University through the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, School of 

Organization and Management, and Department of Sociology. I am particularly grateful to Prof. John G. Simon for his confidence in this work. 

Time to revise the report for publication was provided by a sabbatical from 

Yale, which was supported by grants from the Carnegie Corporation of 

New York and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to the Yale Program on Non-Profit Organizations; and by a grant to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Center for Advanced Study provided expert clerical and com­

.puter assistance and a nurturant atmosphere without parallel. 

The largest debt of appreciation is owed to the many administrators 

who took time from their usually oversaturated schedules, often with extraordinary good humor, to complete the surveys. Many arts administrators, 

service organization staff, and staff of public arts agencies, some of whom 

would prefer to remain unnamed, provided invaluable critical reviews of 

draft survey instruments. I am grateful for the help and cooperation of the 

NACAA, and in particular, of its directors, Chick Dombach and Gretchen 

Weist, who kindly made available to me results of their own survey of 

NACAA’s membership. The good counsel and patience of Tom Bradshaw, 

Harold Horowitz, and John Shaffer of the National Endowment for the Arts’ 

Research Division, is much appreciated, as is advice on survey drafting 

from several present and former Yale colleagues, especially John Kimberly, 

Walter Powell, and Janet Weiss. Mitchell Smith of the New York State 

Council on the Arts offered helpful tips on surveying arts administrators. 

Ella Sandor of the Yale Program on Non-Profit Organizations facilitated 

the administration of the study throughout, and Barbara Mulligan and 

Marilyn Mandell provided outstanding clerical (and, at time, more than 

clerical) assistance during the survey phase. Thanks is due Caroline Watts, 

xii 
INTRODUCTION 

Elizabeth Huntley, and Naomi Rutenberg for dedicated research assistance 

in undertaking the survey; Frank P. Romo, for advice on data analysis; 

and, especially, Kristen Stenberg, for superb assistance in data analysis and 

for extraordinary feats of diligence, patience, and creativity in data 

management. 

Notes 

1. Peter M. Blau and Richard A. Schoenherr, The Structure of Organizations (New York:
 

Basic Books, 1971).
 

2. This argument is made most lucidly by Richard A. Peterson in "From Impresario 

to Arts Administrator: Formal Accountability in Nonprofit Cultural Organizations," 

in Nonprofit Enterprise in the Arts: Studies in Mission and Constraint, ed. Paul 

DiMaggio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 

3. When this research was undertaken, "community arts agencies" was the term commonly used for organizations that now refer to themselves as "local arts agencies." 

The service organization for this field, the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies (NALAA), was then named the National Assembly of Community Arts Agencies (NACAA). Throughout this report, the term "community arts agency" (CAA) 

is used to refer to the agencies at the time of the survey, while "local arts agency" 

is used as the generic or contemporary reference. 

4. David J. Skal, ed., Theatre Profiles 4 (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 

1979). 

5. Mathtech, Inc., Conditions and Needs of the Professional American Theatre 

(Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Arts, Research Division, 1980). 

6. Resource Guide (Vienna, Va.: American Symphony Orchestra League, 1979). 

7. See Macro Systems, Inc., Contractor’s Report: Museum Program Survey, 1979
 

(Washington, D.C.: National Center for Educational Statistics, 1981).
 

8. Some responding museums provided only "total budget" figures rather than "operating 

budget" information. Where attendance reports appeared inflated--i.e., where they 

were inconsistent with data on budget and hours--museums were dropped. 

9. American Association of Museums, The Official Museum Directory 1980 (Skokie,
 

111.: National Register Publishing Co., Inc., 1979).
 

10. Jacques Cattell Press, American Art Directory (New York: Bowker 1980). 
Executive Summary
 

This survey report examines the backgrounds and careers of senior administrators of resident theaters, art museums, symphony orchestras, and 

community arts agencies (CAAs); the rewards they receive from their work 

and their expectations about future employment; the training they have had 

and their evaluation of it; and their professional participation and attitudes 

on a range of management and policy issues. Highlights of the study’s findings are summarized under three headings, each a topic of importance to 

arts administrators and policymakers: recruitment and reward, training, and 

professionalism. 

Recruitment and Reward 

The 1960s and 1970s were a time of expansion for the arts in two senses: 

first, many arts organizations grew significantly in size during that period; 

and second, the number of organizations in many fields grew substantially 

as well. Growth of both kinds increased employment opportunities, attracted 

potential managers into the labor market, and provided rapid advancement 

for many of the people thus drawn in. But if growth slows down in the 

years to come, arts organizations may find it more difficult to recruit 

managers; and managers, once recruited, may fred fewer opportunities for 

career development than did their predecessors. 

Indeed, in 1981, when these data were collected, the years in which 

the managers surveyed had entered their fields tended to cluster for all 

disciplines but orchestras. The greatest period of influx among art museum 

directors was between 1966 and 1970; among theater managing directors, 

between 1971 and 1975; and among CAA directors, between 1975 and 1979. 

These periods occurred either during or immediately after expansionary eras. 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

Most administrators came from relatively--but not extremely-­

privileged social backgrounds. Their parents had more years of schooling 

and better jobs than most Americans of their age. However, except perhaps 

for those of the art museum directors, administrators’ parents were not 

predominantly college educated, professional, or upper managerial. Cohort 

comparisons indicate that, among art museum and, to a lesser extent, theater 

administrators, family backgrounds have become less high-status over time. 

By contrast, the administrators themselves were notably well educated. 

In every field, all but a few had college degrees and more than half pursued their formal education beyond college. Greater educational attainment 

over time was found among theater managing directors and art museum 

directors, the latter of whom increasingly had earned Ph.D. s in art history; 

and substantial percentages within both groups with college degrees had 

earned them at very selective colleges and universities. 

At the same time, women in all fields tended to have received fewer 

years of education. They also managed smaller organizations. But although 

all fields except the art museums had greater percentages of women among 

more recent cohorts of administrators, we cannot assume their greater 

representation indicates a long-term expansion of opportunities for women 

administrators since the attrition of women managers may possibly be higher 

than that of their male counterparts. 

Administrators were initially recruited into their fields from various 

sources. About 40 percent of the art museum directors and orchestra 

managers entered their fields immediately after completing their formal 

.education. This proportion declined among theater managing directors and 

was even smaller among CAA directors. However, only in the symphony 

orchestra field were administrators frequently recruited from business 

enterprises. 

The first jobs many respondents held in their fields (as many as 80 percent of CAA directors) were top administratorships. Smaller proportions 

in each field entered into aesthetic positions first, from theater managing 

directors and orchestra managers who began as actors or musicians, respectively, to art museum directors who started in curatorial, registration, or 

exhibition positions. 

Nonetheless, many administrators did have firsthand familiarity with 

the arts they managed. Approximately 20 percent of the orchestra 

respondents had worked at some time as musicians; a similar percentage 

of the CAA directors reported working as visual or performing artists; two 

fifths of the theater managing directors had been actors or artistic directors 

(not necessarily full time); and more than two fifths of the art museum directors had been curators. What is more, substantial percentages of top managers 

in each field majored in a relevant artistic discipline in college. 

2 
 

EXECUTIVE gUMMARY 

In the performing arts, however, our 1981 data show that the percentage of administrators with artistic experience appears to have declined over 

time: the most recent entrants into these fields were more likely to have 

administrative experience and/or management degrees, and were less likely 

to report artistic experience, than were more senior administrators. Similarly, 

the percentage of art museum directors who had been curators declined with 

time as the percentage of new recruits moving to directorships from academic 

teaching jobs increased. ~ 

Arts administration careers lack the formal structure that educational 

and internship requirements impose on the traditional professions and that 

managers of the largest corporations receive from internal labor markets. 

There are no formal ranks or systematic evaluations as there are in government service to provide individuals with guides to their own progress. Indeed, only in the art museums, where one career pattern (from curator to 

director) was being preempted by another (from art history professor to 

director) were there one or two modal career progressions. In the other 

fields, and particularly in the community arts, careers were neither routinized 

nor predictable. 

Such unpredictable career structures are often stressful, and where 

careers are sufficiently chaotic, retention of personnel may be difficult. To 

some extent, expansion of members and size of organizations may have 

softened the effects of a lack of routinization between 1960 and 1980, during which time administrators in all four fields rose quickly to commanding positions. Median years to first top managership range from zero among 

the community arts respondents (where most directors were hired into top 

positions from outside the field) to about six years in the art museum field. 

Most administrators attained their first chief executive positions while still 

in their thirties. Contrary to popular belief, however, arts administrators 

who remain in their fields do not appear to be job-hoppers: more than half 

of those surveyed had worked for one or two organizations in their fields, 

and only a small percentage had held jobs at more than four. 

To the extent that the rate of growth of the field~-eovered in the study 

(and with it opportunities for career advancement) has declined during the 

1980s, arts organizations may have trouble recruiting and, in particular, 

keeping talented administrators. It is thus all the more important to understand the rewards that keep administrators at their jobs. 

Organizational budgets and salaries were highest for the art museums 

and orchestras, and lowest for the resident theaters and CAAs. Art museum 

directors and orchestra managers also reported somewhat higher levels of 

satisfaction than did other administrators. By contrast, more CAA directors than other respondents considered it likely that they would accept a 

job outside the arts, that they would work for public arts agencies other 

3 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

than CAAs, or that they would manage some other kind of arts organization. These findings suggest that the lack of both resources and other more 

subjective rewards may lead to attrition among CAA directors and perhaps 

among administrators in other fields as well. 

Holding other factors constant, seniority was related to the size of 

organizational budget in all fields but the art museums; it also influenced 

salaries in all fields but art museums. Thus women, who managed smaller 

organizations, received lower pay than comparable male administrators in 

every field. Finally, attendance at a private school or a prestigious college 

was associated with organizational budget as well. Among art museum directors, the best predictor of the resources a director commanded was possession of a degree from a specific prestigious American university. 

Factors that influenced expectations of leaving administrative positions 

in the arts differed among the four fields. Women theater managing directors, for example, were more likely than their male counterparts to expect 

to take jobs outside of the arts, as were art museum directors if, controlling 

for other factors, they had a lot of museum experience for their age and 

had worked as curators. Orchestra managers with business degrees were 

less likely, other things equal, to anticipate working outside of the arts than 

were those without them. And among CAA directors, intention to leave 

the field was negatively associated with college selectivity and years of experience~ and positively associated with parental education. Finally, for all 

groups but art museum directors, administrators in the middle cohort were 

.most likely to consider their taking a job outside the arts, which perhaps 

indicates frustration over career blockage among midcareer managers. It 

is among these midcareer managers and, for the theaters, among female 

administrators, that the dangers of significant attrition would appear greatest. 

These fmdings suggest the importance of both rewards and relatively 

stable career paths in recruiting and keeping talented administrators. Of 

course, some administrators will always be attracted to the arts; those 

surveyed reported deriving satisfaction from many aspects of their work. 

Yet it will probably remain difficult--and, to the extent expansion slows, 

become more difficult--to attract and retain committed and talented administrators in all the fields discussed here, except perhaps art museums. 

The danger of attrition appears greatest in community arts agencies, where 

careers are most chaotic and salaries are lowest; conversely, it is least pressing among art museum directors, whose salaries are highest and whose career 

patterns are most predictable. The data reported suggest that a program aimed 

at attracting and keeping managers would have to accomplish three things: 

1. Raise salaries in fields in which administrators are least well paid. 

2. Establish somewhat more predictable career paths that offer the prom4 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
 

ise of further opportunities to administrators who reach the top of large 

or medium-sized organizations relatively early in life. 

Offer more equal opportunities to women managers who pursue careers 

in these fields. 

Training 

As the number and complexity of arts organizations have grown, so has 

their need for skilled managers. Yet strikingly few of the administrators 

surveyed reported being well prepared for managerial positions. CAA directors (who, on average, first became administrators at an older age than other 

managers) were somewhat more likely to be prepared and art museum directors somewhat less likely--to assume many administrative duties at the time 

they were appointed to their first top managership. In each field, as many 

reported being poorly prepared for each function as being well prepared. 

In short, administrators in all four fields believed their preparation, particularly in financial management and labor relations, could have been much 

better. Additionally, theater managing directors felt they had been poorly 

prepared for board relations while art museum directors specifically faulted 

their preparation for government relations, marketing and public relations. 

According to their responses in the survey, only the younger theater 

managing directors had become better prepared for their positions than the 

more senior managing directors. The more junior cohort among them were 

more likely than any others to consider themselves well prepared at the start 

for all functions but labor relations, and less likely to consider themselves 

poorly prepared for every function but personnel management. By contrast, 

the senior art museum directors and orchestra managers were more likely 

to report themselves poorly prepared for everything but personnel management than were directors in the middle cohorts of their fields. 

Administrators in all fields responded that on-the-job training was the 

principal means by which they had tried to master each of the management 

functions about which they were questioned in the study. Many had used 

professional workshops and seminars, and art museum and theater managing directors in particular had used consultants. A smaller minority of administrators in each field had taken university arts administration and general 

management courses--especially theater managing directors and orchestra 

managers--most notably in the area of f’mancial management; and attendance at these courses, particularly among these groups, seemed to be rising. 

General reputations of different training formats were surprisingly consistent from field to field. Respondents in all fields ranked on-the-job training above all other forms, and internships were highly valued as well. By 

contrast, management consultants were ranked very low in every field. 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

Respondents were most polarized around university arts administration and 

general management courses, and change in reputation by cohort appeared 

only among the theater managing directors, where relative newcomers 

favored university courses over workshops and seminars more than their 

more senior colleagues did. 

Yet when the question specified the management function for which 

each training format was used and only those respondents who had actually 

used the respective formats were asked to evaluate them, the responses were 

quite different. Although the reputation of consultants among all administrators was quite low, managers who had used them reported high 

levels of satisfaction. Conversely, respondents who had used arts administration programs found them relatively unhelpful for most purposes, even 

though their generalized reputation was rather high. 

These f’mdings reflect subjective appraisals and not objective measures 

of the quality either of the preparation arts administrators received or of 

the different kinds of training formats. They do, however, suggest several 

points policymakers should bear in mind: 

Administrators in all these fields perceive their preparation for executive 

positions to be inadequate. 

On-the-job training is still the most common and best appreciated kind 

of training in every field for administrative skills. 

People who actually used different training methods for specific purposes rated them differently than those who had not used them. To 

the extent that the former’s evaluations have a sounder basis, program 

administrators should be cautious of making decisions about training 

alternatives on those methods’ general reputations. Agencies and foundations that have supported the development of specific kinds of management training should consider rigorously evaluating the effectiveness 

of the programs they have aided before expending more funds for this 

purpose. 

Professionalism 

The term professionalism is often used to connote competence, and a "professional manager" is often seen as one who is knowledgeable and capable. 

This usage, however, does not tell us how occupations that are regarded 

as professions differ from those that are not. (There are, for example, 

bricklayers, train conductors, and automotive mechanics who are both well 

and poorly trained, both competent and incompetent; yet few people talk 

about professionalism in those fields, and those who do are not taken very 

seriously.) 

6 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

Instead, this report adheres to a definition of professionalism that is 

based on a tradition of studies of professionals and professionalizing occupations. In this tradition, professions are described as occupations with 

some or all of the following characteristics: a monopoly of at least somewhat 

esoteric knowledge; a body of professional ethics or standards; professional 

associations that enforce these standards, accredit training institutions, and 

license practitioners; extensive collegial interaction among practitioners 

employed in different organizations; a commitment to professional standards even when they conflict with organizational goals; and a claim to 

altruism and disinterestedness in professional practice. Professionalism, as 

used here, refers to the presence or absence of these factors, and not to 

the competence or lack thereof of practitioners. 

Administrators in all four fields participated in an extensive web of 

local, state, and national professional activities, ranging from explicitly professional societies like the Association of Art Museum Directors, to service organizations that function in some ways like professional associations, 

to peer review panels in state and federal arts and cultural agencies. Speeches 

at association meetings and articles in field publications often refer to professionalism as a goal or a reality. 

Yet in none of these fields were managers regarded as professionals 

as the term is used here. In no case, for example, were practitioners required to hold degrees in a particular management curriculum, nor were 

they licensed by professional panels. Moreover, allegiance to values 

associated with professionalism (mastery of a formal body of expertise, support for professional over organizational standards, licensing for practitioners) was far from universal among the respondents. 

Possibly these findings reflect processes of professionalization that are 

still incomplete. Indeed, professionalism seems least advanced among the 

CAA administrators, the newest managerial group, and most advanced 

(although in its art-historical rather than administrative sense) among the 

art museum directors, the arts’ oldest administrative cadre. Our survey 

reveals some evidence of managerial professionalization in the resident 

theater, where younger managing directors were more likely to have formal training beyond college, management degrees and management experience prior to assuming their first top administrative position, and inservice training in university management programs. Attitudes of the more 

recent theater administrators were also more akin, in some respects, to traditional professional values than were those of their more senior colleagues. 

Nonetheless, even the most junior cohort of managing theater directors 

showed divergence from the professional model, and experiences and attitudes of administrators in the other fields were even less typical of 

professionalism. 

7 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

Managerial professionalization in the arts is a movement fraught with 

paradox. One paradox has to do with the nature of professional management in any field. A tension exists between the emphasis in professional 

ideology on peer control and the emphasis in management on the pursuit 

of the organization’s best interests. If theprofessional--by definition--must 

evade organizational control to live up to the standards of the profession, 

the manager--again, by definition--must exert control for the benefit of 

the organization. If the professional’s legitimacy comes from the impossibility of routinizing his or her work, the manager’s derives from his or her 

expertise at making organizational processes more routine. Managerial and 

professional warrants for occupational authority are different and, to some 

extent, inconsistent. 

A second paradox has to do with tensions between managerial and 

aesthetic orientation. Within the arts, even among administrators, there is 

little consensus as to the kind of expertise that should be expected of 

managers. In some organizations, the manager must master techniques of 

budgeting, marketing, and public relations. In others, subordinates execute 

these functions, and the manager is a catalyst and integrator of the work 

of others. In still others, the administrator deals primarily with the organization’s environment, specializing in fund-raising and public relations. In the 

absence of uniformity in arts organizations’ needs, and thus of consensus 

about what the expert manager should be expert at doing, it is difficult to 

design a formal curriculum, much less to expect that arts organizations will 

demand that administrative candidates hold a specific credential. Uncertainty about the nature of managerial work is reflected in the emphasis on 

hands-on experience that emerged in respondents’ criteria for selecting directors and in their evaluation of training approaches. 

This uncertainty is compounded by the belief of many (particularly older) 

administrators in arts organizations that the chief executive should be someone with aesthetic as well as administrative expertise. Among the administrators surveyed here, this was a minority view in all fields but the 

art museums. Ironically, however, it is the art museum directorship that 

has professionalized at a faster pace than any of the others. More than half 

of the most recent cohort of art museum directors held a specialized advanced degree (the Ph.D. in art history)--education appears to have become 

a more important determinant of success while family background has declined in importance--and they were more likely than other respondents 

to stress the importance of professional codes of ethics and even to entertain the idea that professional associations should play a role in enforcing 

such codes. Yet these directors were least likely to have management training 

or to value a management background. Theirs is a professionalism in which 

administrative expertise plays only a minor role. 

8 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

The third paradox involves the underlying structure of managerial 

careers and the absence of a basis in the labor market for an arts management profession. The labor markets for the fields investigated here (with 

the important exception of the community arts organizations) appear highly 

segmented. Few respondents in any field but the community arts had ever 

been administrators in any other field or anticipated ever managing a different kind of arts organization. Very few art museum directors had ever 

worked for any other kind of museum, and nearly as few expected ever 

to work for one, much less to administer some other kind of arts organization. Although many CAA directors had experience in the performing or 

visual arts, the backgrounds of other administrators suggest that the road 

from disciplinary organizations to the community arts organizations is a 

one-way street. What is more, few administrators had degrees in arts administration, and such degrees were not valued as highly as many other 

kinds of preparation. Thus, it appears that arts administration is a term that 

describes not a single profession but a family of occupations, each with 

its own labor market. 

The issue of professionalism should not, however, obscure the real need 

of arts organizations for strong management in an increasingly complex 

environment. Arts organizations in the fields studied here face challenges 

in recruiting and retaining talented administrators, and in providing the training they need to do their jobs well. The growth in the arts during the 1960s 

and 1970s may have softened the challenges of getting and keeping competent administrators at the same time that it made their jobs more complicated 

than they had once been. Slower growth in the years to come could make 

those challenges even more pressing and could jeopardize the gains in administrative performance that have been achieved. 

Policymakers concerned with the need in the future for strong arts 

management should work toward a better resolution of three paradoxes: 

1. Managerial and professional warrants for occupational authority are 

different and, to some extent, inconsistent. 

There is little consensus, even among administrators, as to the kind 

of expertise that should be expected of arts managers. 

o The underlying structure of managerial careers in the four fields studied 

indicates a family of occupations, each with its own labor market, rather 

than a single profession. 

9 
1
 

Backgrounds, Recruitment,
 

And Careers
 

Many of the most critical managerial problems facing American arts institutions concern the careers of the individuals who manage them. An artistic 

discipline must induce capable managers to enter career paths that lead to 

executive positions. It must provide these individuals with the experience 

and knowledge they need to perform effectively as top executives. And it 

must reward talented executives sufficiently so they will remain in the field. 

In short, for a field to attract and retain talented managers, it must provide careers--sequences of jobs that lead to desired end points--to motivate 

people to participate. Orderly careers allow individuals to compare their 

progress with that of their peers, to seek proximate goals with some certainty that they will lead to valued long-range outcomes, and to work from 

day to day with some confidence that competent performance will be rewarded. In fields where careers are chaotic (the paths to higher positions 

being irregular and unpredictable) or where opportunities are few, it is difficult to attract talented managers or to persuade those who are attracted 

to stay. 

Individuals and service organizations in all artistic disciplines are concerned about administrative recruitment.1 But, as yet, we have known little about who art managers are: their background, their education, their 

preparation, and their success (or lack of success) in their chosen fields? 

Where concern is great and information meager, stereotypes abound. 

Managerial careers in the arts are said to be characterized by instability 

and job-hopping. Arts managers are sometimes portrayed as failed artists, 

frustratedly accepting executive positions for which they are unqualified 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

as substitutes for artistic roles they would rather play. Or, alternatively, 

arts administrators are alleged to be "just" managers, knowledgeable about 

accounting and marketing but insensitive to the particular needs and demands 

of their artistic disciplines. The results of our research, however, suggest 

that these stereotypes are not well-founded. 

Educational and Social Backgrounds 

Managers in each field were predominantly from upper middle-class 

backgrounds. Museum and theater managing directors ranked slightly higher 

on most measures of family status, followed by orchestra managers and 

then CAA directors; more than one sixth of the CAA directors grew up 

in blue-collar families, while fewer than one tenth of museum or orchestra 

top executives did. Accordingly, museum directors were somewhat more 

likely and CAA directors somewhat less likely than managers in the other 

two fields to have college-educated fathers and to have attended private 

schools. 

Based on the Astin Index of "College Quality," which measures selectivity as much as it does quality and is used widely by researchers in higher 

education, museum directors attended more selective colleges and CAA 

directors less selective colleges than did theater and orchestra managers. 

Nonetheless, the vast majority of all managers earned a college degree, and 

more than half in each field (and almost all art museum directors) sought 

graduate degrees. 

While in college, managers majored in artistic fields related to their 

later employment (e.g., theater studies, art history, music, or visual arts) 

to a striking extent (from 39 percent of CAA directors to 58 percent of 

art museum directors), and over one quarter of those who did not chose 

the humanities--including English literature, history, or foreign languages. 

Although relatively few managers in any field majored in education, management, or arts administration as undergraduates, a small minority did pursue advanced degrees in management or arts administration. However, many 

even in that minority hold B.A.s in their field’s art form. These facts tend 

to refute assertions that arts organizations have been taken over by artistically 

unsophisticated professional managers, at least insofar as we define professional in terms of academic credentials. 

Differences Between Male and Female Managers 

Across the four disciplines, the proportion of top managers who were men 

varied widely, ranging from 45 percent in CAAs to 85 percent in art 

museums, with about two thirds in theaters and orchestras. In every field 

except art museums, however, women disproportionately had less senior12 
BACKGROUNDS, RECRUITMENT, AND CAREERS 

ity (measured by the year in which they began their first full-time job in 

the field), even though they were not necessarily younger. For example, 

although male theater managers were more likely than their female counterparts to be over 40, the opposite was true in CAAs and art museums. 

In all fields but theater, female managers tended to come from a higherstatus social background than did their male counterparts. Thus, they were 

more likely to have had college-educated parents--especially mothers-­

and fathers who were businessmen or professionals, and less likely to have 

come from blue-collar homes. By contrast, again in every field but theater 

(where there was little difference), male managers were more highly educated 

than females, as evidenced by their much greater likelihood of having received graduate training and/or degrees. 

While in college, women orchestra and theater managers were from 

two to four times as likely as men to have majored in the humanities; far 

fewer women orchestra and CAA managers majored in the performing arts. 

While female CAA managers who majored in education or the social sciences 

outnumbered the males, no female theater managers majored in business 

or arts management, whereas one in seven males did. Within each field, 

the most striking difference was that women managers tended to administer 

smaller organizations. For example, more than half of all women art museum 

directors were in the smallest quarter of museums while just 18 percent 

directed the largest, and 46 percent of female orchestra managers administered the lowest budget quartile of orchestras while just 5 percent 

managed the largest. 

Differences by Budget Size 

Each set of administrators was divided into four quartiles based on the dollar 

operating budget of their institutions (see table 1-1). Not surprisingly, 

managers of the largest institutions by and large had spent more years in 

their fields than administrators of small organizations, which suggests that 

Table 1-1 

Budget Ranges by Category and Discipline 

(in thousands of dollars) 

Discipline Lowest quartile 2nd quartile 3rd quartile Top quartile 

Theaters less than 260 260-500 501-1200 more than 1200 

Orchestras less than 320 320-700 701-170O more than 1700 

Art Museums less than 500 500-1000 1001-2000 more than 2000 

CAAs less than 50 50-100 101- 300 more than 300 

13 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

the latter group tends either to move to larger organizations or to leave the 

field. Managers of wealthy institutions also tended to be slightly older than 

managers of small organizations, especially in the case of the resident 

theaters. Directors of the largest art museums were more likely than other 

directors to have attended private secondary schools and colleges in the northeast, and to have earned Ph.D.s; most striking was the finding that almost 

40 percent of art museum directors from the largest museums and more 

than 25 percent of those from the next largest hold undergraduate or graduate 

degrees awarded by a specific American university, compared with just 5 

percent of those from smaller museums. 

Differences by Cohort 

Assertions that administrators have changed in recent years can be evaluated 

by looking at the differences between cohorts--that is, between managers 

who began their careers in different eras. After dividing each managerial 

population into three cohorts based on the year in which they took their 

first full-time jobs in their fields (see table 1-2), we compared their experiences to look at change over time. 

For three reasons, however, such cohort data must be interpreted with 

caution? First, we know that some individuals who entered the field along 

with the oldest cohorts have now left it, and that some members of our 

youngest cohorts will soon be gone. But our data cannot tell us whether 

membership characteristics between cohorts differ because different sets 

of managers were recruited at different times or because different kinds 

of managers experience different rates of attrition. 

Second, when we compare cohorts we cannot always distinguish period 

effects (effects of the era in which a person entered the field) from aging 

effects. For example, we have seen that, in all four fields, top executives 

of wealthy institutions were older than top executives of small ones. A visitor 

Table 1-2 

Cohort Categories for Each Discipline,

By First Year of First Job in Field 

Discipline Cohort 1 Cohort 2 Cohort 3 

Theaters Before 1967 1967-1974 After 1974 

Orchestras Before 1964 1964-1973 After 1973 

Art Museums Before 1963 1963-1968 After 1968 

CAAs* Before 1976 1976-1978 After 1978 

* First full-time job in the arts. 

14 
BACKGROUNDS, RECRUITMENT, AND CAREERS
 

from outer space might logically attribute this finding to a period effect, 

concluding that people who went into the arts 20 years ago entered major 

institutions while those entering arts management today prefer smaller ones. 

But we are more likely to believe it reflects an aging effect: when managers 

leave their mark on a field, they are offered jobs at larger and more 

prestigious institutions that will not hire inexperienced managers. In 

distinguishing true cohort effects from the effects of differential attrition 

or aging, then, we must go beyond the data and draw on experience, intuition, and common sense. 

Finally, the reader should note that the years that define cohorts differ 

from discipline to discipline, depending on the distribution of entry years 

in each managerial group. Thus, a member of the most senior cohort of 

CAA directors may have had fewer years of experience than a member of 

the least senior cohort of art museum directors. In general, the brief time 

span of most CAA directors’ careers created a paucity of notable differences 

among cohorts in that field. 

Despite these caveats, some striking findings emerge from the analysis 

of cohort variation among the four arts administrator populations. Not surprisingly, managers with seniority were more likely to command the 

largest--and less likely to command the smallest--organizations in each field 

than were recent entrants. More notably, in each discipline, the percentage 

of female administrators grew with each successive cohort. For example, 

48 percent of orchestra managers entering the field since 1973 were women, 

over three times as many as those taking their first orchestra job before 

1964. Similarly, the percentage of women among senior resident theater 

managers more than doubled among the "newcomer" cohort. But while 

these f’mdings are consistent with increased opportunities for women in arts 

organization management, they are also consistent with greater attrition of 

women managers over time. That is, the data would look the same whether 

women were doing better (a cohort effect) or were simply dropping out 

of these fields as they got older (an attrition effect). 

Except in the orchestra field, the educational attainment of top managers 

appeared to increase over time. While more than 25 percent of senior CAA 

directors lacked the B.A., under 10 percent of the most recent entrants did. 

And fewer than half of the most senior theater managers pursued their education beyond the B.A., compared with approximately 60 percent of each 

subsequent cohort. Finally, 55 percent of the newest art museum directors 

earned Ph.D.s, over three times the proportion as in the most senior cohort. 

Surprisingly, the dramatic increase in formal education among art 

museum managers has been accompanied by a decline in measures of parental social status. Among those in the most recent cQhort, fewer had parents who were professionals or who owned or ran large businesses, and 

15 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

more came from blue-collar and middle-class business families. Moreover, 

fewer had grandparents born in North America, and even fewer attended 

private secondary schools. Thus, entry into the art museum field (and, to 

a lesser extent, into the theater field as well) seems to have become less 

strongly related to family background and more directly a product of educational accomplishment. (Note that these findings could have resulted from 

attrition if directors from higher-status backgrounds stayed in the field longer 

than those from more modest homes, but there is nothing to suggest this 

was the case.) 

Recruitment into Arts Administration 

A crucial concept in thinking about careers is that of "entry portal.’" To 

develop a career in a field, a person must first enter a career track. The 

opportunities for entry will determine the kinds of individuals who build 

careers there. Fields with many entry portals will recruit diverse men and 

women into top positions, thus accumulating talent from a wide range of 

sources. Fields with only one entry portal will tend to recruit persons with 

similar backgrounds, socialization, and values into important jobs, thus insuring that such individuals will probably fit easily into the roles available 

to them. 

Each of our four artistic fields offered multiple entry portals and lacked 

fixed credential requirements for employment. Before reviewing the different paths leading up to top administrative posts in each field, we should 

first note that almost half of the art museum directors and orchestra managers 

began their careers before 1965, whereas over half of the theater managing 

directors entered theatrical work after 1971, and almost three quarters of 

the CAA directors entered their field after 1975 (although many had worked 

in the arts before then). Thus, the orchestra and art museum fields had a 

larger core of veterans than did the other two. 

Resident Theater Administrators 

Almost half of all theater managing directors entered theater work directly 

from formal schooling (usually college). This was more often true of older 

rather than younger cohorts, however, the latter being almost three times 

as likely to have apprenticed in other arts or communications fields (e.g., 

journalism or art-festival management). (Although this suggests that it may 

have become more difficult to enter theatrical work directly from school, 

it is also possible that staff entering from school were likely to stay in the 

field longer than those with other backgrounds, in which case the data would 

reflect differential attrition.) The third largest group of theater managers 

(14 percent) first taught in primary or secondary schools before taking a 

16 
BACKGROUNDS, RECRUITMENT, AND CAREERS
 

theater job, and about one in ten theater managers worked in business. 

More than one third of all managing directors were hired directly into 

top administrative positions, and almost half were promoted to such positions while still with their first employers. Almost half entered the field 

in subordinate administrative posts (e.g., assistant managing director, 

marketing director, public relations staff). Fewer than 10 percent, however, 

began their careers as artistic directors or actors, while a similar proportion entered in technical positions such as stage manager or set designer. 

Those who did get their start in artistic or technical work were three times 

more likely to be men (women tending more to be recruited into top management as interns, administrative assistants, or other management staff), and 

were less likely to manage the largest quartile of resident theaters. 

Orchestra Managers 

Orchestra managers were twice as likely as theater managing directors to 

have entered their field from other artistic or communications fields (primarily media or press, elementary or secondary music teaching, and other performing arts management) or from a business career. Although overall they 

were less likely than theater managing directors to have entered their field 

directly from school, the opposite was true for members of the youngest 

cohort of orchestra managers, a third of whom--in contrast to the youngest 

cohort of theater managers--entered as soon as they completed their formal education. 

.Almost half of all orchestra managers began as top managers, with 17 

percent more attaining that position with their first employers; over a third 

entered the field as interns or assistants, as marketing or developing directors, or in other managerial posts. Women were seven times more likely 

than men to have entered as secretaries or special project staff. Orchestra 

managers were less likely than theater managing directors to have entered 

their field in artistic or technical positions (just 11 percent began as musicians or conductors). Finally, managers of the largest two quartiles were 

almost twice as likely as managers of smaller orchestras to have started 

in the field as top managers. 

Art Museum Directors 

Of all the managers surveyed, art museum directors had the most regular 

entry patterns, entering museum work through schooling (43 percent) or 

after teaching art history in college (25 percent). Almost half of those 

recruited from school went into curatorial positions (the starting point for 

almost one third of the directors), whereas more than half of those recruited 

from professorial positions were first hired as directors. Overall, almost 

one quarter started off as directors, and almost one fifth began in such other 

17 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

administrative positions as assistant or associate director. Those recruited 

from sources other than school or university teaching entered into a mix 

of directorships, curatorial positions, educational jobs, and other administrative posts. 

Recruitment backgrounds of male and female art museum directors were 

very similar, as they were for directors across the four budget quartiles, 

except that directors of the smallest museums were far less likely to have 

gone directly from school into the art museum field. 

Cohort data revealed that patterns of recruitment to the art museum 

field changed over time. Recent entrants were less likely to have entered 

museum work directly from school than were members of other cohorts, 

the proportion declining over time from 61 percent of the most senior cohort 

to 21 percent of the most junior. On the other hand, newcomers were more
 

likely to have been hired straight off as directors and were less likely to
 

have first served as curators.
 

These findings must be interpreted with caution. We would expect the 

observed proportion of recent cohort members moving directly into directorial jobs to be higher than the "true" percentage (i.e., the percentage 

of all persons entering the field during the most recent period who will ever 

be directors), because individuals who entered recently as curators have 

had less time to move into the management ranks. Similarly, the apparent 

change in recruitment patterns might be explained if persons entering 

museum work directly from school take longer to become directors than 

persons with professorial experience. 

Still, two factors suggest that these findings were not entirely artifactual. First, the trends toward both greater previous work experience and 

a greater likelihood of entering the field as a director appeared between 

the first and second cohorts as well as between the second and third. Second, 

more directors in the current cohort have Ph.D.s and teaching experience 

at the university level (53 percent compared with 31 percent in earlier 

cohorts). Thus, it seems likely that, along with the trend toward higher educational attainments among museum directors, we are also witnessing a trend 

toward more university teaching experience and shorter periods in the field 

before appointment to a first directorship. 

CAA Directors 

Compared with those in other fields, preentry positions and entry portals 

were most diverse among the CAA directors, with no evidence of routine 

recruitment patterns. About one third of the CAA directors entered artistic 

or arts administrative work directly from school; the only other source of
 

recruitment accounting for more than 10 percent of the respondents was
 

nonprofit management.
 

18 
BACKGROUNDS, RECRUITMENT, AND CAREERS 

The first arts jobs of almost half the directors were in the community 

arts fields, while just over 40 percent entered the field from other arts or 

media organizations. The rest were scattered among a wide range of pursuits. Only 10 percent of the CAA directors, far fewer than the top managers 

in other fields, went directly from school into their current field. Yet for 

over 80 percent, their first job in the community arts was a directorship, 

and nearly all became directors while still with their first community arts 

employers. 

Male directors were more likely than their female counterparts to have 

entered the field directly after graduation and were almost twice as likely 

to have been recruited from theater management. Women, on the other hand, 

were about twice as likely to have worked in the press or media or to have 

taught, and were about five times as likely to have held secretarial or clerical 

jobs or to have served as volunteers. 

Finally, managerial backgrounds differed neither by budget category 

nor by cohort. 

Thus, the artistic fields studied here tend to reflect the benefits of diverse 

backgrounds rather than of consistent preparation and socialization. Each 

field attracted many eventual managers directly from school and drew few 

from business management. There is little evidence that arts managers are 

either failed artists or, as a group, artistically naive. Although most administrators went into management at an early stage of their careers, some 

had brief artistic experience. Furthermore, substantial proportions in each 

field had earned undergraduate degrees in the art forms they managed, and 

those who had not were more likely to hold college degrees in the humanities 

than in arts administration or general management. 

Managerial Careers 

In some fields (e.g., medicine, government service, university teaching) 

recruits are aware of a number of conventional, sometimes mandatory, steps 

that can lead to positions of power and prestige. In other fields, the paths 

of achievement are less apparent. The career paths taken by arts administrators once in their fields are as varied as those taken prior to 

recruitment. 

In each of the four fields, approximately 10 percent of the top executives 

had worked for more than four employers during their careers (not counting unrelated positions prior to entry); between one half and two thirds had 

worked for only one or two. Art museun~. and theater managing directors 

tended to have the longest spells of employment: 30 percent of the former 

and more than one fifth of the latter had been with their current employers 

for over 10 years. Orchestra managers were comparable to theater ad19 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

ministrators in their tenure, while just 5 percent of CAA directors had worked 

for more than 10 years for their current employers. 

Most respondents were hired into their current administrative positions 

from outside: only about one quarter of the theater, orchestra, and art 

museum executives, and just 14 percent of the CAA directors, had been 

promoted from within. Careers culminated in top managerial positions most 

quickly among CAA directors, 82 percent of whom served no prior apprenticeship in the field (although they tended to have longer work experience 

outside the field), whereas almost half of the orchestra managers waited 

longer than 5 years before reaching their positions, and almost one quarter 

waited for more than 10 years. 

Theater managing directors were promoted youngest, with 43 percent 

becoming executives before age 30, and all but 10 percent in managerial 

posts before turning 40. By contrast, orchestra managers and museum directors were far more likely to become executives after age 40. 

Few managers in any field had held more than two executive positions, 

suggesting that job-hopping is uncommon among those who have attained 

top managerships. However, prior work experience among managers before 

they attained their positions varied among and even within fields. 

In theaters, for example, substantial minorities had worked as actors, 

artistic directors, "techies," commercial theater or summer stock administrators, teachers or professors, or public arts agency employees. But 

none of these categories included even one third of all managing directors 

surveyed. Similarly, relatively few managing directors had direct experience 

in theater marketing, development, and public relations, nor had many 

managed other performing arts organizations or worked in non-arts 

businesses. 

Female managing directors had much more experience than their male 

counterparts working in theater public relations, marketing or audience 

development, and fund-raising or development; further, they were twice 

as likely to have taught in primary or secondary school or to have worked 

in commercial theater. By contrast, men were three times more likely to 

have worked in a public arts agency. 

Experience in theater public relations, marketing, or development was 

far more prevalent among managing directors of the smallest quartile 

organizations, who were also much more likely than managers of larger 

ones to have worked as actors, directors, or technicians. On the other hand, 

managers in the largest budget quartile were notably more likely than their 

peers to have worked in public arts agencies and summer stock. 

Analysis of intercohort variation suggests that managerial work experience changed strikingly over time. The percentage of managing directors with experience in public relations, development, or marketing--three 

20 
BACKGROUNDS, RECRUITMENT, AND CAREERS
 

key management functions involving the theater’s external environment-­

increased steadily with each cohort (from 7 percent among the most senior 

directors to 33 percent among the most junior). At the same time, the percentage of those involved in artistic or production work declined modestly but 

just as steadily, as did the percentage of those with backgrounds in commercial theater, summer stock, and college teaching. It is possible, however, 

that the latter declines represent age effects, since managing directors may 

gain experience in these fields after they have already become involved with 

the resident stage (whereas they are unlikely to become actors or development directors after they have been managing directors). 

The same diversity in experience is apparent among orchestra managers. 

Although more than one fifth (mostly males) had worked as musicians, 

almost the same number had experience in non-arts businesses. Still others 

had worked as elementary or secondary school teachers, for artists’ agencies, or in other performing-arts management positions. Managers of the 

largest budget quartile were only one third as likely as others to have taught 

in elementary or secondary schools, and it was also rarer for them to have 

worked as orchestra musicians. By contrast, the percentage of managers 

having worked in opera, dance, or theater management--as well as of those 

with experience in orchestra development, public relations, or marketing-­

ascended with size, in both cases from 4 percent among managers of the 

smallest orchestras to 22 percent among managers of the largest. 

As with resident theater managers but to a less-marked degree, the trend 

among orchestra managers, from the most senior cohort to the most junior, 

appeared to lead away from prior artistic experience and toward business 

and managerial experience. While the percentage of managers who had been 

either orchestra musicians or music teachers has been gradually declining, 

the percentage of those reporting experience in non-arts businesses, orchestra 

public relations, development, or marketing has been on the increase. 

Compared with theater and orchestra careers, those of art museum directors were relatively routine; yet even here, no kind of premanagerial work 

experience was shared by even half the respondents. The most common 

prior experience was curatorship, reported by nearly half the directors, while 

almost as many had taught art at the college or university level. Smaller 

groups had worked as associate or assistant directors, in art museum education departments, or as elementary or secondary school teachers. Surprisingly, fully 20 percent (mostly male) reported being employed at some point 

during their work careers in a business unrelated to the arts. 

The relatively few women art museum directors were only half as likely 

as men to have worked in non-arts businesses, and they were more likely 

to have worked for nonprofit organizations outside the arts, in clerical museum positions, or as elementary or high school teachers. Among directors 

21 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

of the smallest museums, prior teaching experience was quite prevalent; 

these persons were far more likely than directors of larger museums to have 

served as professors before entering museum work, to have taught in elementary or secondary schools, or to have worked as museum educators. 

University-level teaching was significantly more common in the prior 

careers of the most junior cohort as compared with those of the most senior 

(48 percent to 6 percent, respectively). Also notable was the decline in the 

percentage of directors with curatorial experience (from 58 to 35 percent), 

suggesting that a Ph.D. may be replacing curatorial service as preparation 

for art museum directorships. Finally, in contrast with the findings for the 

performing arts, the percentage of directors with business experience outside the arts appears to have declined. 

The experiences of CAA directors were the most diverse of all. Because 

most CAA directors took on directorships upon entry into the field, no internal position prepared them for their work. Nor, as we have seen, were 

there regular recruitment channels. Prior experience included teaching (in 

primary and secondary schools as well as in schools for the arts), university arts management, arts service organization and secretarial/clerical 

employment, theater or orchestra management, performing, employment 

in a commercial venture, experience as a visual artist, work in an arts center, 

or work in a non-arts business. Finally, no major differences based on 

gender, budget category, or cohort were visible. 

Conclusions 

Although the careers described in this chapter were relatively unroutinized 

and idiosyncratic, some general conclusions can be drawn. To begin with, 

the managers of larger arts organizations were, as a group, men and women 

from families of relatively high social status. Women were a significant 

presence in every field but the art museums, but they were always more 

likely than men to be directing smaller, less prestigious institutions. 

Moreover, educational levels of these managers were high--more than 

half have pursued their formal educations past college--and seemed to be 

rising, dramatically among art museum directors and more gradually among 

others. If formal educational credentials and prior work experience are a 

guide, the managers’ arts backgrounds were rather strong while their 

management experience was meager. Nonetheless, there were numerous 

exceptions to these assertions, along with some evidence that management 

training and experience were becoming more common and artistic experience 

somewhat rarer among performing arts managers, especially those in resident theaters. 

Cohort analysis suggests that each field has been changing in distinc22 
BACKGROUNDS, RECRUITMENT, AND CAREERS
 

tive ways, with the exception of CAAs, the directors of which were usually 

such recent entrants into the field that few conclusions could be drawn about 

change. 

Art museums have undergone professionalization, in the sense that their 

directors--especially those of the largest institutions--have increasingly impressive educational credentials and increasingly commonplace social 

backgrounds. University teaching experience is more common in the recent cohort than among previous entrants to the field, while curatorship 

seems to have undergone a concomitant decline as a stepping-stone to the 

directorship. 

Among resident theaters (and orchestras, to a lesser extent), artistic 

expertise has become somewhat less common and managerial-training more 

widespread. 

Data from this study reveal that careers--i.e., ordered sequences of 

jobs leading from conventional entry portals to predictable destinations-­

did not exist in these fields. (Indeed, other research has demonstrated that 

orderly careers are, in general, far less common than most people 

believe.)~ Arts managers were recruited from many sources and brought 

with them a panoply of experiences, and many entrants in all the fields moved 

directly into top executive positions. Further, mobility within organizations 

is limited by size: relatively few arts institutions have enough levels of 

management to promote routinely all competent personnel. And movement 

among organizations at the executive level appears to be less common than 

widespread perceptions of job-hopping would suggest. 

The disorderly nature of managerial careers in these artistic fields may 

provide opportunities for organizations to hire talented individuals from 

unusual backgrounds and for individuals willing to take risks to build successful careers. But many people find it stressful to work in environments 

in which promotion opportunities are few and career strategies obscure and 

poorly understood. Such individuals, if they face career stagnation or uncertainty, may choose to leave arts administration for other pursuits. 

Notes 

See, e.g., Judith Kurz, "Meeting the Challenge: Management Fellows Train for the 

Eighties and Beyond," Symphony (August/September 1982): 39-44; Theatre Communications Group, "Institutionalization: Bane or Blessing to the Art of Theatre?" 

in Report of the 1980 National Conference (New York: Theatre Communications 

Group, 1980), 51-52; Alan Shestack, "The Director: Scholar and Businessman, 

Educator and Lobbyist," Museum News 57 (November/December 1978): 27-31 ff.; 

and Ralph Burgard, "The Elaborate Minuet and Other Hard Lessons," American Arts 

(March 1980): 18-19. 

23
 
BACKGROUNDS, RECRUITMENT, AND CAREERS 

2. For a notable exception, see Susan Stitt and Linda Stein, The Museum Labor Market: 

A Survey of American Historical Agency Placement Opportunities (Sturbridge, Mass.: 

Old Sturbridge Village, 1976). 

3. For a useful introduction, see Norman Ryder, "The Cohort as a Concept in the Study 

of Social Change," American Sociological Review 30, 6 (1965): 843-861. 

4. See Seymour Spilerman, "Careers, Labor Market Structure, and Socioeconomic 

Achievement," American Journal of Sociology 83, 3 (1977): 551-593. 

5. Spilerman, "Careers, Labor Market Structure, and Socioeconomic Achievement." 

24 
2
 

Rewards and Expectations
 

An artistic discipline not only must induce capable managers to pursue 

careers within the field and provide them with the needed experience and 

knowledge to ensure that they will succeed. It must also compensate and 

reward them sufficiently to ensure that they will remain. 

While many of the rewards arts administrators receive from their jobs 

are predictably economic ones, including salary and control over resources 

(as measured by organizational budget), there is also a range of noneconomic 

satisfactions. Such factors greatly influence administrators’ expectations as 

to whether they will continue to work in the arts. 

Salary and Resources 

Salary was related to the employing organization’s operating budget in every 

field, very highly in the performing arts and more modestly in art museums 

and CAAs. The lower correlation of salary with budget size among art 

museums was partly an artifact of the restricted upper category of the salary 

scale on the survey (respondents were asked to check the range in which 

their salary fell). It may also have resulted from the inclusion of university 

art museum directors, some of whose salaries were tied to university teaching 

scales. Similarly, the salaries of municipal CAA directors may have been 

constrained by municipal salary scales. 

Generally speaking, however, administrators of larger organizations 

earned more generous salaries. Over half of the orchestra managers and 

86 percent of the art museum directors earned more than $27,500, com25 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

pared with fewer than one third of the theater managing directors and just 

21 percent of the CAA directors (see table 2-1). At the same time, art 

museum and orchestra administrators commanded more resources (mean

budgets of $1.9 and $1.8 million, respectively) than did .theater managing 

and CAA directors (mean budgets of $954,000 and $354,000, respectively). 

(In all cases, means are inflated by the presence of a few atypical organizations with exceptionally high budgets.) Similarly, male managers, who administered larger organizations in every field, were better paid than women 

managers. Among the resident theater respondents, for example, 45 percent of the men but just 3 percent of the women earned more than $27,500 

annually; and distributions were analogous, although less extreme, in other 

fields. Finally, managers in more senior cohorts directed larger organizations and so earned more than did more recent entrants in every field. 

In addition, theater managing directors with degrees in management 

and without experience in theater marketing, development, or public relations departments; art museum directors with Ph.D.s in art history and any 

degree from one specific major American university; and CAA directors 

with arts degrees and prior arts experience were also all better paid than 

were their counterparts without these attributes. 

Note that these observations describe associations, not causal relationships, and they tell us nothing about how these associations might be altered. 

Take, for example, the finding that women earned less money than men. 

If this was because women managers were less well educated than men, 

it could be changed by training female arts administrators. If it was because 

women were less experienced, the difference would be expected to moderate 

with time, at least if male and female recruits were equally likely to remain 

in their fields. If the difference existed because women worked for 

Table 2-1
 

Salary by Field
 

(percent)
 

Art Museums CAAs Theaters Orchestras 

1.63 4.58 12.74 2.78 $0-$10,000 0.81 18.32 18.63 9.26 $10,001-$15,000 2.44 29.77 14.71 10.19 $15,001-$20,000 8.94 25.95 22.55 25.93 $20,001-$27,500 14.63 12.98 10.78 19.44 $27,501-$35,000 45.53 7.63 13.73 14.82 $35,001-$50,000 26.02 0.76 6.87 17.59 over $50,000 (123) (131) (102) (1o8) (Respondents) 

26
 
REWARDS AND EXPECTATIONS
 

smaller employers than did men, the problem would rest both in the 

nature of women’s careers and in large organizations’ hiring patterns. If 

similar organizations paid women less than they would have paid men with 

the same talents and credentials, women would have recourse to legal 

remedies. 

To distinguish the causes of this observed variation, we used a statistical 

technique known as multiple regression analysis. This technique allows one 

to investigate the effects of each independent variable on an outcome while 

simultaneously controlling for each one. For example, a multiple regression analysis of the impact of rainfall, sunshine, and fertilizer on the height 

of tomato plants would permit us to estimate the effect of each factor alone, 

irrespective of the others. Note that the term effect refers to statistical effect rather than to causality. Although such findings are consistent with the 

existence of real effects, they do not in themselves prove that those effects 

exist. For the sake of brevity, the phrases "other things equal," "net effects," and "controlling for other factors" will not be included in every 

sentence in the report of regression results. The reader should note, however, 

that unless otherwise indicated, descriptions of results all refer to net 

associations--that is, controlling for the influences of other measured factors. 

Let us first consider predictors of budget size. The budget a manager 

commands is an important source of reward in its own right and is related 

as well to salary, especially in the performing arts. In all but the art museum 

field, and especially among resident theaters, being a woman was negatively 

associated with budget size, even after controlling for family background, 

education, and career experience. 

The effects of family background were small in all fields, although 

parents’ educational attainment exerted a modest positive effect on budget 

size for orchestra managers and a modest but surprising negative effect on 

budgets commanded by art museum directors. Managers in all fields who 

attended private secondary schools (a measure of family social status), as 

well as orchestra managers who attended more selective colleges, administered larger budgets, other things equal. By contrast, years of education had a surprisingly negative impact on the budgets commanded by CAA 

directors, even after controlling for years in the field. Notably, the major 

influence on the budget size of art museum directors was attendance at a 

specific major American university. 

Aspects of age and seniority had strong positive net effects on budget 

size in every field except the art museums. Years worked before entering 

the field substantially influenced budgets administered by CAA directors, 

as did years of work experience in the field, which was also a powerful 

net predictor of organization budget for orchestra and theater administrators. 

In our regression analyses of managerial salaries, budget size was by 

27 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

far the most important predictor of salary among the theater and orchestra 

managers; additionally, it exerted an important influence on the salaries 

of CAA directors and a more modest, but still notable, net effect on those 

of art museum directors. 

Salaries were also influenced by experience. Years of work experience 

was a very powerful predictor of salary in the performing arts and, to a 

slightly lesser degree, among the CAA directors, while a closely related 

measure, years of experience in the arts, was an important predictor of art 

museum directors’ salaries. Surprisingly, holding experience constant, 

managers of orchestras who reported long tenures with their current 

employers earned substantially less than managers with briefer tenures. This 

was not the case, however, in other fields. 

The impact of educational experience on salary varied in importance 

from the art museum field, where it was crucial, to the orchestra field, where 

it was negligible. The salary of art museum directors was notably influenced 

by attendance at a specific American university, although not as much as 

it was by years of educational attainment. In the museum field, then, the 

income determination process appeared to have components of both 

meritocracy and old school ties. 

Among CAA directors, educational attainment was as strong a predictor of salary as was budget size and years of experience. Thus, its effects 

for this group were mixed, given that its direct positive impact on salary 

was countered by an indirect negative impact through its negative influence 

on operating budget. 

Finally, private secondary school attendance bore a moderately strong 

relationship to the salaries of theater managing directors. Graduates of private 

schools were doubly advantaged here: they were more likely to administer 

large theaters (and thus to benefit from the strong effect of budget size on 

earnings), and, holding budget constant, they still earned more money than 

similar men and women who attended public schools. 

Unless private school attendance is seen as a measure of social status, 

family background had no direct effect on the incomes of theater managing 

directors. Parental education, on the other hand, was negatively associated 

with income among the orchestra managers, an impact that was balanced 

by its positive influence on organizational size. And after controlling for 

educational experiences, parental social class had a similarly negative impact on income in the art museum field. These negative associations were 

puzzling; perhaps individuals from humble backgrounds who attained advanced degrees, attended major universities, and became art museum directors or orchestra managers had unmeasured qualities that enabled them not 

only to obtain what traditionally had been elite jobs but also to earn higher 

salaries once they got them. Finally, CAA directors from top business or 

28 
REWARDS AND EXPECTATIONS
 

professional families earned higher salaries than comparable directors from 

more modest backgrounds. 

One of the most striking similarities among the four fields was the influence of gender on managerial salaries. Although controlling for family 

background, educational and career experience, and organizational budget 

size reduced the negative impact of being female by one third for art museum 

directors, one half for CAA chiefs, and almost two thirds for theater and 

orchestra managing directors, the effects that remained were notable. 

Because women also tended, other things equal, to direct smaller organizations, they were doubly disadvantaged. Unless male and female managers 

in these fields differed on some unmeasured traits that were uncorrelated 

with the other variables (a possibility that seems unlikely), it is difficult 

to escape the conclusion that women managers in these fields earned less 

money than did comparable men. 

Intrinsic Rewards: Work Satisfaction 

If salary and command over resources were all that motivated people, we 

would expect resident theaters and local arts agencies to have a harder time 

attracting and retaining capable managers than orchestras and art museums. 

But if managers compare their organizations and salaries chiefly to those 

of peers in their fields rather than to those in the arts more generally, these 

factors may be offset by other satisfactions intrinsic to the work of managing the arts. 

To pursue this notion, we asked respondents to rate the satisfaction 

they derived from various aspects of their work, including their salaries. 

These ratings were made on a five-point scale, on which "5" represented 

"a source of great satisfaction," "1" represented "a source of great 

dissatisfaction," and "3" represented those factors that aroused apathy or 

ambivalence. For each set of managers and each satisfaction they received, 

table 2-2 indicates the mean, the rank of this mean (in parentheses) among 

all factors for the group, the percentage indicating satisfaction ("4" or "5"), 

the percentage indicating dissatisfaction ("1" or "2’ ’), and the number of 

respondents. Finally, the satisfactions themselves are ranked according to 

average mean across all four fields, although this does not reflect the order 

in which they were presented to respondents. 

Overall, the four groups of administrators found more sources of 

satisfaction than of dissatisfaction on the. list. If we consider a mean of 3.51 

or higher to indicate satisfaction and 2.49 or lower to indicate dissatisfaction, none of the factors was, on balance, a source of real dissatisfaction, 

and only contacts with donors (for CAA and theater managing directors), 

salary (for all but art museum directors), and contact with government agen29 
Table 2-2 Job Satisfactions, by Field (percent) 

Factors Theaters Orchestras Art Museums CAAs 

Contacts with works of art 

Mean (rank) 

Satisfied 

Dissatisfied 

(Respondents) 

4.29 (1)

80.00 

4.00 

(100) 

4.38 (1) 

85.05 

0.00 

(107) 

4.46 (1)

83.20 

7.20 

(125) 

3.92 (6) 

60.00 

7.69 

(130) 

Autonomy and authority 

Mean (rank)

Satisfied 

Dissatisfied 

(Respondents) 

4.14 (4)

79.21 

8.91 

(101 ) 

4.14 (4)

85.18 

5.56 

(108) 

4.29 (2) 

84.80 

6.40 

(125) 

4.27 (2)

81.06 

6.06 

(132) 

Relations with colleagues

at other institutions 

Mean (rank) 

Satisfied 

Dissatisfied 

(Respondents) 

4.07 (5)

75.25 

4.95 

(101 ) 

4.22 (2) 

80.37 

0.00 

(107) 

4.16 (3)

82.93 

2.44 

(123) 

4.16 (3)

79.54 

4.55 

(132) 

Role in community 

Mean (rank)

S atisfi ed 

Dissatisfied 

3.88 (7)

78.69 

7.07 

4.17 (3) 

81.31 

2.80 

4.09 (4)

78.25 

2.42 

4.38 (1)

84.09 " 

4.55 

(Respondents) (99) (107) (124) (132) 

Relations with subordinates 

Mean (rank)

Satisfied 

Dissatisfied 

(Respondents) 

4.15 (2)

84.00 

6.00 

(100) 

4.08 (6)

72.64 

2.83 

(106) 

4.08 (5)

78.22 

5.65 

(124) 

4.14 (4)

81.53 

7.69 

(130) 

Contacts with artists 

Mean (rank)

Satisfied 

Dissatisfied 

(Respondents) 

4.15 (3)

77.23 

2.97 

(101 ) 

4.12 (5)

77.78 

0.93 

(108) 

3.80 (9)

59.66 

8.40 

(119) 

3.98 (5)

69.47 

7.63 

(131 ) 

Potential for career growth 

Mean (rank)

Satisfied 

Dissatisfied 

3.96 (6) 

68.63 

7.84 

4.00 (7)

74.04 

5.77 

3.85 (6)

66.67 

7.69 

3.58 (8) 

57.58 

18.18 

(Respondents) (102) (104) (117) (132) 

Contacts with board members 

Mean (rank)

Satisfied 

Dissatisfied 

3.68 (8)

59.00 

14.00 

3.85 (8)

68.52 

7.41 

3.81 (8)

66.39 

9.24 

3.82 (7)

67.69 

10.77 

(Respondents) (100) (108) (119) (130) 

Contacts with private donors 

Mean (rank) 

Satisfied 

Dissatisfied 

(Respondents) 

Salary 

3.09 (10)

32.00 

29.00 

(100) 

3.55 (9)

49.53 

7.48 

(107) 

3.85 (7)

64.23 

4.88 

(123) 

3.47 (9)

46.09 

12.50 

(128) 

Mean (rank) 

Satisfied 

Dissatisfied 

(Respondents) 

Contacts with govt. agencies 

3.00 (11)

31.37 

28.43 

(102) 

3.46 (10) 

50.93 

11.11 

(108) 

3.62 (10) 

56.20 

7.44 

(121 ) 

3.20 (10)

37.12 

19.70 

(132) 

Mean (rank)

Satisfied 

Dissatisfied 

(Respondents) 

3.16 (9) 

36.63 

19.80 

(101 ) 

3.11 (11)

34.26 

28.70 

(108) 

3.08 (11)

28.10 

26.45 

(121 ) 

3.20 (10)

40.15 

24.24 

(132) 

NOTE: Factors are ranked from those yielding the greatest satisfaction to those yielding the least 

satisfaction according to the average mean across all four fields. 
REWARDS AND EXPECTATIONS
 

cies (for all) were not cited as sources of satisfaction. Administrators in 

all fields reported much satisfaction in their contact with works .of art, their 

autonomy and authority, their relationships with colleagues, and their relationships with subordinates; they reported relatively less satisfaction with 

their salaries and with contacts with trustees, donors, and especially government agencies. And although most felt relatively positive about oppoffunities 

for career development, none included this factor among the top half of 

all satisfactions. Thus, the satisfactions that keep managers in their fields 

and the dissatisfactions that make their work less rewarding seem similar 

for all disciplines. 

A few differences were nevertheless apparent. Not surprisingly, the 

better-paid orchestra and art museum administrators were more likely to 

be satisfied with their salaries than were their counterparts in resident theaters 

and CAAs. Further, managers in the performing arts found more satisfaction in contacts with artists than those in museums and CAAs, probably 

because they had more regular contact with them; by the same token, CAA 

directors were less likely to report satisfaction in contacts with works of 

art, probably because they had less contact. 

One might consider troublesome those job " " attributes noted as sources 

of dissatisfaction by 10 percent or more of the respondents in a field. While 

all but art museum directors fell into this range in citing salary as a source 

of dissatisfaction, more than one quarter of the theater managing directors 

responded to that effect, and almost 30 percent of them rated contacts with 

donors negatively. Contacts with government agencies and with board 

members were also considered irritants in the resident theater field. 

A similar pattern emerged from the responses of the CAA directors, 

almost one quarter of whom voiced dissatisfaction with contacts with government agencies.~ And although some also viewed contacts with board 

members and with donors as irritants, perhaps more significant were the 

relatively high percentages dissatisfied with both their salaries and their 

opportunities for career growth. Possibly the absence of conventional career 

sequences in the community arts was, as suggested in chapter 1, a source 

of anxiety to administrators in this field. 

By comparison with the theater and CAA administrators, orchestra and 

art museum directors appeared well satisfied. Their only frequent expressions of dissatisfaction referred to their contacts with government agencies. 

Variation Between Men and Women 

Male and female theater managing directors responded similarly; however, 

men were much more satisfied with their (higher) salaries and slightly more 

satisfied with their community roles, while women were slightly more 

satisfied with their opportunities for career development and more dissatisfied 

31 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

with their autonomy and authority. On the other hand, male and female 

orchestra managers diverged in their responses: men reported more satisfaction from their salaries, their autonomy and authority, their community roles, 

and their contacts with works of art; women expressed more satisfaction 

with their relationships with colleagues, their contacts with board members, 

and their opportunities for career development. 

Male and female art museum directors also had different responses to 

these questions, although the small number of women in this field makes 

generalization hazardous. Nevertheless, men were more likely to express 

satisfaction with their salaries, while women reported greater satisfaction 

with their contacts with artists, board members, donors, and government 

agencies, and with their roles in the community. Women were less likely 

than men to express dissatisfaction with their opportunities for career 

development. 

Finally, women CAA directors reported more satisfaction than their 

male colleagues in each area in which differences emerged--namely, their 

relations with colleagues in other institutions, their contacts with board 

members, their community roles, and their contacts with works of art. 

Similarly, they were less likely to find dissatisfaction in their contacts with 

government agencies. 

Variation by Cohort 

Interpretation of cohort differences in attitudes is treacherous for several 

reasons. For one thing, members of the most senior cohort in each field  ̄ 

are survivors; less-satisfied managers who entered their fields along with 

them may have dropped out before reaching their level of seniority. Second, 

some attitudes change with age and experience. If we were to survey individuals in the junior cohort in 15 years, those who remained might provide responses more similar to those of today’s most experienced cohort. 

Differences among cohorts, then, may result from the recruitment of individuals with stable attitudes into the field at different times; from differences in age and experience that will moderate with time; or from the 

winnowing out’of less-satisfied members of more senior cohorts who have 

left the field. 

In general, newer entrants to all four fields expressed less satisfaction 

than did the more senior cohorts. Where this lack of satisfaction was expressed with some frequency, we may expect that a substantial minority 

of this younger cohort will not remain in the field until retirement. Where 

contacts outside the employing organization were found to be more satisfying than those within, as seemed to be the case (relatively speaking) for 

the most recent cohort of art museum directors and the middle cohort of 

CAA directors, some administrators may begin to focus more on activities 

32 
REWARDS AND EXPECTATIONS 

in the profession than on local organizational dilemmas. Although satisfaction with career development opportunities was never so low among 

newcomers as to lead us to predict a mass exodus, the combination of 

satisfactions and dissatisfactions in each field seemed likely to cause a minority of younger managers eventually to leave. 

Variation by Organization Size 

Organization budget size was positively associated with the expressed 

satisfaction among theater managing directors, but this was not so for other 

respondents. In the art museum field, dl’rectors of small institutions tended 

to report the highest degree of satisfaction overall. Among orchestra 

managers and CAA directors, the relationship between size and satisfaction varied, depending upon the specific aspect of the job. In all fields but 

the resident stage, managers of the largest institutions derived the least 

satisfaction from contacts with artists. And in all fields but theater, but 

especially in orchestras and the community arts, managers of the largest 

organizations tended to be less satisfied than others with their opportunities 

for career advancement. This last finding suggests that some managers who 

had been very successful may have become frustrated once they reached 

the top of their professions. These fields may thus find it difficult to retain 

able administrators who attain top positions early in their careers. 

Taken together, the results suggest that, outside of the theater at least, 

intrinsic rewards may have compensated for income among managers in 

the smaller organizations, while relatively high salaries may have induced 

other individuals to manage the largest organizations, even though they found 

the intrinsic qualities of these jobs to be less rewarding than did their smaller 

budget peers. 

Career Expectations 

If arts organizations are to be well administered, it is not enough for them 

to recruit talented individuals into administrative positions. The field as a 

whole must retain these individuals as they become more experienced and 

develop greater skills. 

In our survey we queried managers about their expectations regarding 

future career movement. Although people do not always do what they expect to do (unforeseen opportunities arise, attitudes change, plans undergo 

sudden shifts), such questions provide a more direct measure than do satisfaction reports of the directions in which administrators thought they were 

heading. 

Each set of managers was asked to indicate their likelihood of taking 

each of several kinds of jobs in the future. They did this by circling one 

33 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

number on a four-point scale in which "4" equaled "very likely" and" 1" 

equaled "very unlikely."2 The job alternatives varied for administrators 

in each discipline, based on the nature of their work and experience. Table 

2-3 shows the mean response in each field to each alternative posed (not 

all alternatives were applicable to all fields), the percentage of administrators 

who considered the alternative either "very likely" or "somewhat likely," and the number of respondents. In analyzing the resultant data, we 

paid particular attention to respondents’ evaluations of the likelihood that 

they would, first, take a job in a larger or more prestigious organization 

in their field and, second, move to a position unrelated to the arts. The 

former expectation was most consistent with both a commitment to one’s 

discipline and an optimistic view of one’s opportunities in it. The latter was 

most directly related to our concern about retention of managers in the arts. 

Managers in all fields were remarkably similar in their future expectations. Just over half in each field expected to move to a similar organization, and approximately two thirds expected to command a larger or more 

prestigious organization in their field. 

There was more variation, however, in the percentages of managers 

who expected to leave the arts: half of the CAA directors considered this 

to be likely, compared with approximately one third of the administrators 

of theaters, orchestras, and art museums. There are several reasons why 

the local arts agencies seemed more at risk than other fields of losing many 

of their managers. First, CAA directors were newer to their fields than were 

other arts administrators, and so they had had less time to build commitment to the field. Second, careers in the community arts were even less 

structured, and thus more uncertain, than those in the other fields considered 

here. Third, CAA directors commanded smaller organizations than other 

managers and earned relatively low salaries, as well. In the long run, the 

development of a larger cadre of experienced managers and the routinization of careers should moderate the difference between local arts agencies 

and other kinds of arts organizations. In the short run, however, loss of 

administrative talent promises to be a vexing problem for local arts agencies. 

Managers can leave administrative positions in their fields without leaving the arts altogether. Respondents were asked to estimate the probabilities 

that they would administer other kinds of arts organizations, take jobs either 

with public agencies concerned with the arts or with arts service organizations, assume positions in the commercial media, or work in the commercial stage. Responses reflected the vulnerability of CAAs, whose directors 

were considerably more likely than others to consider it probable that they 

would pursue such alternatives. These jobs were much less attractive to 

art museum directors and orchestra managers, whereas the responses of 

managing directors of resident theaters formed an intermediate pattern. 

34 
Table 2-3
 

Likelihood of Future Job Alternatives, by Field (percent)
 

Alternatives Theaters Orchestras Art Museums CAAs 

Same/similar position 

as now at similar organization 

Mean 2.64 2.49 2.68 2.53 

L ikely 58.00 52.78 62.09 55.38 

(Respondents) (100) (108) (124) (130) 

Same position as now at 

larger or more prestigious

organization in same field 

Mean 2.81 2.84 2.85 2.73 

Likely 67.00 67.59 65.04 64.82 

(Respondents) (100) (108) (123) (131 ) 

Artistic positiona 

Mean 

Likely 

(Respondents) 

2.27 

29.41 

(102) 

1.25 

6.60 

(106) 

1.75 

22,76 

(123) 

1,45 

13.85 

(130) 

Director or staff of a public

agency concerned with art form~ 

Mean 2.23 2.02 1.79 2.73 

Likely 40.20 31.48 22.76 68.18 

(Respondents) (102) (108) (123) (132) 

Director or staff of an arts 

service organization 

Mean 2.21 1.54 

Likely

(Respondents) 

39.22 

(102) 

NA 16.13 

(124) 

NA 

Art administration 

in another fieldc 

Mean 

Likely

(Respondents) 

1.94 

22.55 

(102) 

NA 

1,48 

12.10 

(124) 

2.44 

50.00 

(132) 

Administrator or staff in a 

commercial media concernd 

Mean 2.19 1.90 1.41 2.06 

Likely 32.00 29.91 9.68 33.59 

(Respondents) (100) (107) (124) (131 ) 

Producer or administrator 

in commercial stage 

Mean 2.57 

Likely

(Respondents) 

52.94 

(102) 

NA NA NA 

Director of a social 

service agency 

Mean 1.61 

Likely NA NA NA 16.79 

(Respondents) (131 ) 

Job unrelated to art forme 

Mean 2.23 1.97 1.86 2.47 

Likely

(Respondents) 

33.33 

(102) 

35.18 

(108) 

29.27 

(123) 

50.38 

(131 ) 

NOTES: NA = not asked/not applicable. a For theaters, ’artistic director of a resident theater’; for orchestra, ’professional musician’; 

for museums, ’curator’; for CAAs, ’visual or performing artist.’ b For theaters and orchestras, ’concerned with the performing arts’; for museums, ’concerned with museums’; for CAAs, ’concerned with the arts (other than a CAA).’ 

c For theaters, ’orchestra, opera, or dance company’; for museums, ’a museum that is not 

an art museum’; for CAAs ’a performing arts organization or a museum.’ 

For art museums, ’director of a commercial gallery’; for other fields, as it reads. e For theaters and orchestras, ’unrelated to the performing arts’; for museums, ’unrelated 

to museums or the visual arts’; for CAAs, ’unrelated to the arts.’ 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

Variation Between Men and Women 

Women in all fields were somewhat less likely to anticipate moving to larger 

or more prestigious organizations than were their male colleagues. For example, among theater managing directors, three times as many men as 

women (39 percent versus 13 percent) expected such a career move. 

Moreover, 52 percent of the women--more than twice as many as the men-­

expected to take jobs outside of the performing arts. Women theater managing directors were also much more likely to anticipate working in public 

agencies concerned with the performing arts, arts service organizations, 

and the commercial media. These findings suggest that the resident stage 

may lose many women participants through attrition. 

In the other fields, however, women appeared no more likely to leave 

than men; in fact, the relatively few women art museum directors were 50 

percent more likely than their male colleagues to report it "very unlikely" 

that they would ever work outside of museums or the visual arts. And among 

CAA directors, proportionately twice as many men as women anticipated 

moving to an arts administrative position outside the community arts. 

We should recall here that the more recent cohorts of managers in all 

fields contain more women than do more senior cohorts. If expectations 

are good guides to behavior, these gains by women should hold up in orchestras, art museums, and local arts agencies; they may be severely eroded, 

however, by attrition of female managing directors in the resident stage. 

Variation by Cohort 

Members of the most junior cohorts in all fields had greater expectations 

of managing larger or more prestigious organizations in their fields. The 

middle cohorts were almost as optimistic among the orchestras and art 

museums but less so among the theaters and CAAs. The lower expectations of more experienced administrators in the latter fields may have 

reflected disillusionment, but they may also have represented a realistic reaction to two facts: first, the more senior managers had less time left in which 

to make any moves and, second, because they probably already commanded 

larger and more prestigious institutions than their more junior peers, there 

may have been little room left for improvement. 

Cohorts also varied in their propensity to leave arts administration. The 

commitment of art museum directors appeared to build with time: the longer 

they had served in art museums, the less likely they were to contemplate 

working outside museums or the visual arts. By contrast, commitment in 

the other fields actually seemed to decline with experience. In both the orchestra and community arts fields, members of the most junior cohorts were 

least likely to anticipate leaving the field, while administrators in the middle cohort were most likely to do so. 

36 
REWARDS AND EXPECTATIONS
 

If arts management and museum administration were becoming professions that span disciplines, we would expect that the newest recruits to 

theater and CAA administration would have been more likely than the more 

senior managers to anticipate taking jobs in other fields of arts management; and that the more recent entrants to the art museum field would have 

been more likely to see themselves directing museums other than art 

museums. The data, however, provided meager support for this view. It 

is true that, among the art museum directors, between 15 and 20 percent 

of the youngest cohort expected to direct a non-art museum, while not a 

single member of the most senior cohort did. But at the same time, the newest 

recruits to theater management were less likely than their more senior colleagues to anticipate managing other kinds of performing arts organizations 

(and fewer than one third of any cohort reported such expectations). Further, although over half the CAA directors expected to move into other 

kinds of arts management, no trend toward this view was discernible among 

cohorts. Thus, at this point, different kinds of museums and, to a lesser 

extent, different kinds of performing arts disciplines appear to constitute 

separate labor markets. 

Variation by Budget Size and Career Experience 

Despite substantial variation in managers’ expectations among budget quartiles within each field, much of that variation was relatively unpatterned. 

Directors of the smallest theaters and CAAs were, however, more likely 

to anticipate working as artists than were administrators of larger 

organizations. 

Where opportunities are blocked for men and women who attain top 

positions in their fields early in their careers, the discipline may lose the 

services of its top executives. Indeed, almost half the managers of the largest 

orchestras reported that they were likely to seek jobs outside the performing arts; and more than half the directors of the two largest quartiles of 

CAAs (compared with 42 percent of the directors of smaller agencies) expected to leave arts work altogether. These managers were least apt of all 

respondents to consider it likely that they would administer organizations 

similar to their own. By contrast, managing directors of the largest .theaters 

were least likely to anticipate leaving their field. 

Surprisingly, administrators with management degrees are not more 

likely to look outside the arts to make their careers. Almost half of theater 

managing directors with administration degrees reported that it was "very 

unlikely" that they would take jobs unrelated to the performing arts, as 

compared with only 16 percent of their colleagues. In the other fields, individuals with and without management degrees were about equally as likely 

to anticipate departure. 

37 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

Theater managing directors with prior acting or technical experience 

appeared highly committed to the performing arts: proportionately just half 

as many as those who lacked such experience expected to leave the field. 

Similarly, orchestra managers with undergraduate or graduate degrees in 

music, or with experience in the arts (as artists or managers) before entering the orchestra field, were less likely than others to anticipate taking positions outside the performing arts. Finally, art museum directors with Ph.D.s 

were less likely than those without to expect to administer non-art museums, 

whereas those who had been curators were less likely than those who had 

not to anticipate accepting a position outside of museums or the visual arts. 

In sum, these findings suggest that arts administrators with artistic 

backgrounds were somewhat more likely to have positive career expectations and less likely to anticipate leaving the arts than were those without 

such experiences. Nonetheless, there was no evidence that administrators 

with management degrees were any less committed to their fields than were 

those without such degrees, despite the fact that their opportunities outside 

of the arts may be greater because of their training. 

Multiple Regression Analyses of the Predictors 

Of Expected Departure from Work in the Arts 

To examine the net influence of the factors discussed thus far (and of additional aspects of background and attitudes) on administrators’ expectations 

of leaving the arts, we performed multiple regression analyses for each of 

the four fields to examine how various factors influence the loss of 

managerial talent while controlling for the effect of other variables. 

Although age and seniority were largely unrelated to expectations of 

leaving the performing arts, age was the most powerful net negative predictor 

of expected departure for art museum directors, and years of experience 

in the arts before CAA work accounted for a substantial disinclination among 

CAA directors to leave the art field. Further, art museum directors who 

worked in other fields before going into the arts and those who had been 

curators were notably more likely than others to plan to take jobs outside 

the arts. (The latter finding contrasts with the results of analyses without 

controls.) 

Career satisfaction, not surprisingly, strongly influenced responses for 

every group but the orchestra managers. Satisfaction with contacts with artists 

bore a notable negative relationship to expected exit among art museum 

directors and a modest negative relationship for CAA directors. Oddly 

enough, controlling for other sources of satisfaction, art museum directors 

who enjoyed contact with their trustees were substantially more likely to 

anticipate leaving the museum and visual arts worlds than those who did not. 

Among resident theater managers only, women were substantially more 

38 
REWARDS AND EXPECTATIONS
 

likely than men, other things equal, to anticipate leaving the performing 

arts. (Recall that it was in the resident theater field that women were most 

disadvantaged relative to men in their earning power.) 

Controlling for other factors, theater and orchestra managers with 

management degrees were less likely than others to expect to leave the performing arts, whereas orchestra managers with highly educated parents, 

music degrees, and high levels of educational attainment were somewhat 

more likely than others to do so. Art museum directors who attended private 

schools and held Ph.D.s in art history were notably less likely than Other 

directors to plan to work outside museums or the visual arts. And among 

the CAA directors, educational attainment modestly increased expected 

departure while college quality negatively affected it. Holding these and 

other factors constant, CAA directors with highly educated parents were 

less likely than others to expect to leave the arts, whereas those whose fathers 

or principal guardians were professionals or owners or top executives of 

major businesses were more likely to anticipate departure. 

Conclusions 

Insofar as managers’ reports of their own satisfactions and expectations were 

guides to the extent to which fields were likely to retain administrative talent, 

none of these fields was in crisis, but, to varying degrees, each seemed 

likely to face challenges in the years ahead. Resident theaters may fred it 

difficult to retain talented young men and, especially, women. Orchestras 

may have a hard time providing satisfactions for young managers and offering further, career opportunities to successful managers of large institutions. Art museums appeared to face the fewest difficulties, but even here 

the most junior directors expressed less commitment than did more senior 

ones. Finally, local arts agencies are likely to encounter the most severe 

problems in attracting and retaining managerial talent: the most successful 

LAA directors may lack necessary opportunities for career growth; and 

members of the middle cohort appeared, from their responses, to be undergoing a crisis of confidence, reporting relatively low levels of satisfaction and 

high probabilities of leaving the arts. 

39
 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

Notes 

1. Because of the special relationships between many local arts agency directors and 

their municipal governments, the results are not completely comparable for CAA directors and other respondents. More generally, without comparable questions regarding 

contacts with private foundations and corporations, it is difficult to interpret the relatively negative response to government, particularly since it is unclear which agencies (federal, state, local, or survey-toting recipients of federal grants like the author) 

respondents had in mind.

For the purpose of data analyses, the numbering of categories in the survey instruments, 2. in which "1" = "very likely" and "4" = "very unlikely," has been reversed. 

4O
 
3
 

Training
 

As the number of arts organizations has grown and their complexity has 

risen, the need for skilled managers has become increasingly apparent. Many 

universities have founded arts management programs that train and certify 

administrators? Service organizations and public agencies have sponsored 

internships and supported technical-assistance programs run by consulting 

firms and active arts administrators. Almost all the major service organizations conduct workshops and seminars for in-service managers. Advocates 

of different methods of management training have developed fervently argued 

and often persuasive rationales in behalf of their favorite approaches. 

This discussion and activity has proceeded in a knowledge vacuum. 

Systematic information about how arts administrators learn their jobs, how 

they evaluate different training techniques, and what their perceived needs 

are--except for local-level needs-assessments and evaluations of specific 

programs--has been unavailable. The following discussion represents the 

first national study of the learning experiences of working arts administrators 

that permits comparison among artistic disciplines and explicitly distinguishes 

among several management functions in assessing the value of different training approaches. 

None of these findings should be interpreted as reflecting definitively 

on the objective quality of any training method. First, they are all based 

on subjective opinions of arts administrators; thus, we cannot tell which 

methods best enhance administrative effectiveness because we have no way 

of knowing how effective these respondents are. Second, different organizations require their administrators to have different skills: financial manage4] 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

ment ability may be especially crucial, for example, to an art museum director whose museum lacks a full-time assistant director for financial affairs. 

Third, assessments of different learning methods cannot be generalized to 

all sources of a given kind of training. There are good and bad consultants, 

good and bad administration courses, and good and bad internships. Finally, our methodology did not lend itself to an investigation of the ways 

in which administrators acquire, or fail to acquire, certain critical aspects 

of arts-administrative competence: sensitivity to the needs of artists and to 

the requirements of artistic work, and commitment to the core artistic missions of their organizations. 

Levels of Preparation 

Using a three-point scale ("1" = "good," "2" = "fair," and "3" = 

"poor"), respondents_ were asked to evaluate their own level of preparation in each of seven management functions at the time they assumed their 

first top administrative position (see table 3-1). Four of these functions (financial management, personnel management, board relations, and labor relations) are primarily internal. Three functions (planning and development, 

marketing and public relations, and--for art museum and CAA directors-­

government relations) concern management of the organization’s external 

environment. 

Surprisingly, few managers felt they were well prepared to assume many 

of these functions. For example, fewer than one third in any discipline believed their preparation in financial management was "good," whereas between one and two fifths in each field reported poor preparation. Indeed, 

only among the CAA directors, and only for planning and development 

and for marketing and public relations, did slightly more than half of the 

respondents report being well prepared for any management function; usually, most respondents characterized their preparation as "fair." Only in 

the field of labor relations (which may have been less important for administrators of smaller organizations, especially museums and CAAs) did 

more than two fifths of the administrators in each field regard their preparation as "poor." 

What the data in this table suggest is that none of these artistic fields 

prepared prospective administrators satisfactorily for their first executive 

jobs. A substantial minority in each field felt inadequately prepared for one 

or more important administrative tasks, and only a minority in any field 

believed they were well prepared for many of their responsibilities. In particular, preparation for financial management and labor relations in each 

field appears to have been problematic, while readiness for board relations 

among theater managing directors, and for both government relations and 

42 
TRAINING
 

Table 3-1 

Self-Evaluation of Preparedness at the Time 

Of First Top Managership, by Management Function 

(percent) 

Fiscal 

Mgmt 

Personnel Board 

Mgmt Relations 

Planning 

and 

Dvlpmt 

Marketing 

and 

Public Labor Govt 

Relations Relations Relations 

Theaters 

Good preparation 27.45 42.57 30.69 37.62 39.60 20.00 NA 

Poor preparation 25.49 13.86 29.70 23.76 16.83 45.26 

(Respondents) (102) (101 ) (101 ) (101 ) (101 ) (95) 

Art Museums 

Good preparation 25.60 30.40 45.83 32.52 29.27 15.25 21.95 

Poor preparation 40.80 24.00 14.17 23.58 30.89 55.00 43.09 

(Respondents) (125) (125) (120) (123) (123) (118) (123) 

Orchestras 

Good preparation 26.42 36.89 43.14 33.33 47.06 22.00 NA 

Poor preparation 23.58 15.53 23.53 19.61 20.59 49.00 

(Respondents) (106) (103) (102) (102) (102) (100) 

CAAs 

Good preparation 29.46 39.84 42.64 52.71 ’53.13 11.02 37.01 

Poor preparation 20.16 13.28 17.83 14.73 11.72 50.85 25.20 

(Respondents) (129) (128) (129) (129) (128) (118) (127) 

NOTE: NA = not asked/not applicable. 

marketing and public relations among art museum directors, was reported 

to be particularly low. 

It is possible, of course, that some fields had already begun to address 

the problems by the time these surveys were conducted. If so, we would 

expect administrators in the most recent cohorts to have reported higher 

levels of preparation than did members of more senior cohorts. Although 

recollections are not always trustworthy--it would be better if someone had 

undertaken a comparable survey 15 years before--such data can at least 

provide some guide to changes over time. 

The only discipline in which administrators reported becoming better 

prepared for the management functions described here during the professional lifetimes of current managers was the resident stage. For all functions but labor relations, the most recent entrants were more likely to report 

having been well prepared than were members of the two more senior 

cohorts. And for all functions but personnel management, they were less 

likely to term their preparation "poor." 

By contrast, the percentage of art museum directors reporting poor 

preparation was higher for every function but personnel management among 

43 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

the most junior cohort than among the preceding one (although lower in 

every case than the percentage for the most senior directors). Taken at face 

value, this suggests that preparation of museum directors improved markedly 

between the first and second cohorts but deteriorated somewhat among the 

most recent entrants. When one recalls that the recent professionalization 

occurring among art museum directors has had much more to do with art 

history credentials than with administrative ones, this pattern is not 

surprising. 

If the younger cohort of theater managing directors felt better prepared 

for their first administrative posts, the opposite was true for orchestra 

managers: for every function but planning and development, the most recent entrants into the field reported lower levels of preparation than either 

of the preceding cohorts. By contrast, however, except for personnel 

management and labor relations, fewer members of the most recent cohort 

reported being poorly prepared than did members of the preceding cohorts. 

Because most CAA directors were relatively new to their field, there 

was less reason to expect intercohort change in that field than in others. 

Yet members of the middle cohort reported better preparation in virtually 

every respect than did the more senior directors, many of whom were 

pioneers in agency management. And the most junior cohort felt better 

prepared than their immediate predecessors in financial management and 

in planning and development, but felt somewhat less well prepared in the 

areas of marketing and public relations, labor relations, and government 

relations. 

These self-reports suggest that theater managing directors have become 

better prepared for their first top administrative posts during the careers 

of the survey respondents; art museum and CAA directors became better 

prepared between the times that the most senior and middle cohorts assumed 

top managerial posts, but readiness remained stable or declined thereafter; 

and the subjective readiness of orchestra managers for their first top positions seems to have declined. 

Neither budget size nor career experience was systematically associated 

with managerial preparation in any of these four fields. Administrators with 

higher degrees in artistic majors reported lower levels of preparation for 

at least some functions in each field, but the differences were usually small. 

The absence of association between budget size and reported preparation 

in all fields but theater (where there was a negative association) is striking, 

for it suggests that lack of prior management training or experience has 

not been a serious impediment to administrative career success. Thus, it 

is not surprising that, as we shall see below, most arts administrators placed 

greater stock in on-the-job experience than in formal training, for the former 

has generally been responsible for their own achievements. 

44 
TRAINING 

How Managers Learned 

We did not ask administrators to assess their own current competence, 

because their responses would have been influenced at least as much by 

personality and expectations as by actual levels of skill. Still, it seems 

reasonable to assume that during the course of their careers almost all 

respondents learned something about each functional area. For each type 

of managerial responsibility, respondents were asked to indicate if they had 

used any of five training formats (on-the-job training, professional workshops 

and seminars, university arts administration courses, university general 

management courses, and consultants) to learn that function; and, if so, 

to assess the value of their experiences. Table 3-2 below reveals the extent 

to which top administrators in each field had used each training format to 

learn each management function.: 

On-the-job training was far more frequently cited than any other kind 

in familiarizing arts administrators with the functions they performed. More 

than 85 percent of each set of administrators reported receiving on-the-job 

training for every skill about which they were asked. (The single exception-­

labor relations for CAA directors--was a skill of little salience to most 

respondents in this group.) Workshops and seminars were a distant second, 

their use reported by more than 40 percent of all but the art museum directors for learning about personnel management, fiscal management, board 

relations, planning and development, and marketing and public relations. 

Some managers in all fields, but especially theater managing directors, 

reported using consultants for a range of purposes, most frequently planning and development, and fiscal management. 

Relatively small minorities in each field received training from university 

arts administration and general management courses, especially in the area 

of financial management. Performing arts administrators, above all orchestra 

managers, were more likely than others to report attending arts administration 

and general management courses, whereas local arts agency directors were 

least likely to have sought instruction in such university programs. 

Use of university arts administration and general management courses, 

as well as attendance in workshops, increased markedly among the more 

junior cohorts in each field but the art museums. Although even among 

the newcomers only a minority received such training, if the trend were 

to continue it would represent a significant change in the way arts administrators learn their jobs. 

Global Assessments of Selected Training Methods 

Respondents were asked to indicate their "general assessment of the relative 

value" of several forms of "management training" for administrators in 

45 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

Table 3-2 

Use of Five Learning Methods by Function, by Field 

(percent) 

Marketing 

Planning and 

Fiscal Personnel Board and Public Labor Govt 

Discipline Mgmt Mgmt Relations Dvlpmt Relations Relations Relations

Theaters (102) * 

On the job 96.08 97.06 99.02 96.08 95.10 91.18 NA 

Professional 

workshops/seminars 49.02 28.43 46,08 53.92 55.88 17.65 

University arts 

administration courses 23.53 15.69 14.71 17.65 18.63 14.71 

University general 

management courses 

Consultants 

28.43 

56.86 

22.55 

36.27 

12.75 

44.12 

17.65 

47.06 

17.65 

4.90 

11.76 

33.33 

Art Museums (125) 

On the job 92.80 92.80 90.40 92.80 92.80 83.20 91.20 

Professional 

workshops/seminars 36.80 39.20 24.00 34.40 28.80 21.60 27.20 

University arts 

administration courses 16.80 15.20 15.20 18.40 12.80 14.40 12.80 

University general 

management courses 

Consultants 

22.40 

36.80 

21.60 

32.80 

12.80 

0.00 

16.80 

39.20 

15.20 

38.40 

17.60 

32.00 

12.80 

24.80 

Orchestras (106) 

On the job 99.06 99.06 95.28 96.23 95.28 89.62 NA 

Professional 

workshops/seminars 51.89 39.62 44.34 49.06 55.67 34.91 

University arts 

administration courses 22.64 17.92 16.04 19.81 19.81 18.87 

University general 

management courses 33.02 17.92 14.15 22.64 24.53 19.81 

Consultants 36.79 23.58 26.42 38.68 36.79 33.02 

CAAs (129) 

On the job 89.15 92.25 93.02 89.15 88.37 65.12 86.82 

P rofessiona! 

workshopslseminars 45.74 31.78 44.96 58.91 57.36 14.73 24.03 

University arts 

administration courses 18.60 9.30 10.85 15.50 12.40 6.20 10.85 

University general 

management courses 25.58 16.28 7.75 21.71 18.60 8.53 8.53 

Consultants 27.91 16.28 22.48 42.64 31.01 10.85 17.05 

NOTES: NA -- not asked/not applicable. 

* Figures in parentheses are the number of respondents for each group. 

46 
TRAINING 

their own field. The purpose of this question was not to assess the actual 

value of these approaches to management training, since responses were 

sought from individuals who had not experienced each approach firsthand, 

and since meaningful evaluations require some specificity as to training goals. 

(For example, a given format may be superb for learning financial management but poor for learning how to use a board of trustees.) Rather, this 

question was intended to tap the general reputation of each training method 

among administrators in each field. We shall see in the next section that 

reports of administrators who had used each training method diverged in 

important ways from the reputations of these approaches among administrators as a group.
 

The methods of training evaluated were university arts administration
 

training and university general management training undertaken prior to 

first top administrative position; internships; university arts management 

courses (or "theatre-management," as it read in the instrument sent to theater 

managing directors) and university general management courses undertaken 

in-service; professional workshops or seminars; consultancies by full-time 

management consultants; consultancies by other top administrators in the 

respondent’s field; and "learning by doing on the job." In addition, a space 

was left blank for respondents to add alternative approaches. 

After each method was ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 (with" 1" = "most 

valuable"), the scale was collapsed into three categories, for which "1" 

indicated a rank of 1 to 3, "2" indicated a rank of 4 to 6, and "3" indicated a rank of 7 to 10. The percentage of administrators in each field 

ranking each learning format in the top and bottom of the three collapsed 

categories is reported in table 3-3. 

Most striking about the data that emerged was the relative consensus 

among managers in these fields about the general value of these 

approaches? On-the-job training and internships were valued very highly, 

as were workshops to a lesser extent. Apparently, in these fields, lack of 

formal training has been no obstacle to success. Whereas peer consultants 

and arts administration courses had both proponents and detractors, general 

management training met with much skepticism, and consultancies by 

management consultants were accorded the least stature as a management 

training tool. There were few differences by cohort among administrators of art 

museums, orchestras, and CAAs; however, the most junior cohort of theater 

managing directors reported more positive evaluations of arts administration training programs, and of preservice general management training in 

particular. Whereas the most senior cohort in this field ranked the latter 

below even management consultants, 40 percent of the most recent entrants 

rated such training among the top three. By contrast, the reputation of 

47 
Table 3-3 

Evaluation of Learning Methods,a by Field 

(percent) 

Field A1 G1 IN A2b G2 WS MC PC OJ 

Theaters 

Method 1-3 

Method 7-10 

(Respondents) 

41,11 

28.89 

(90) 

25.33 

30.67 

(75) 

54.43 

12.92 

(79) 

34.48 

22.41 

(58) 

12.20 

36.59 

(41 ) 

33.67 

21.43 

(98) 

20.43 

47.31 

(93) 

41.11 

25.56 

(90) 

79.31 

9,20 

(87) 

Art Museums 

Method 1-3 

Method 7-10 

(Respondents) 

41.05 

29.06 

(117) 

29.91 

31.62 

(117) 

58.68 

16.53 

(121) 

40.00 

20.00 

(110) 

27.83 

33.04 

(115) 

38.14 

27.12 

(118) 

19.13 

46.96 

(115) 

32.48 

33.33 

(117) 

80.65 

8.06 

(124) 

Orchestras 

Method 1-3 

Method 7-10 

(Respondents) 

35.58 

30.77 

(104) 

27.18 

37.86 

(103) 

60.78 

8.82 

(102) 

31.07 

22.33 

(103) 

21.57 

41.18 

(102) 

40.78 

18.45 

(103) 

14.85 

61.39 

(101 ) 

26.47 

43.14 

(102) 

78.64 

10.68 

(103) 

CAAs 

Method 1-3 

Method 7-10 

(Respondents) 

28.80 

39.20 

(125) 

26.40 

37.60 

(125) 

46.77 

22.58 

(124) 

39.84 

19.51 

(123) 

23.20 

34.40 

(125) 

45.31 

20.31 

(128) 

15.87 

50.00 

(126) 

37.01 

31.50 

(127) 

65.89 

12.40 

(129) 

NOTES: a A1 = university arts administration training before becoming top administrator; G1 = university general management training before becoming top administrator; IN = internships; A2 = university arts administration training in-service; G2 = in-service university general management 

training; WS = professional workshops and seminars; MC = full-time management consultants; PC = peer consultations; OJ = learning by 

doing on the job. 

b For theaters, A2 = in-service university theater management training. 
TRAINING 

workshops seemed to be experiencing a concomitant decline, with more 

than one third of the most recent entrants to the field, compared with just 

14 percent of the more senior managing directors, rating workshops and 

seminars in the bottom categories. Moreover, the most junior managing 

directors also held peer consultancies in lower esteem than did members 

of the most senior cohort. Thus, consistent with the increased use of academic 

administration training among theater managing directors is an improved 

reputation for such training programs and a devaluation of peer instruction 

through workshops and consultancies. 

Evaluation of Learning Methods by Managers Who Had Used Them 

We now consider the utility of specific training formats for learning about 

selected management functions, as evaluated by administrators who had in 

fact used them themselves for these purposes. Even with this added specificity, however, these evaluations must be interpreted with caution. First, 

characterizations of training methods are broad and include many diverse 

programs. If, for example, one set of administrators reports finding a consultant more useful for learning about labor relations than does another set, 

it may be that the more positive respondents used superior consultants. Second, many of these findings are based on assessments by very small sets 

of experienced managers. 

Respondents were asked, for each of seven management functions, to 

rate any of five training formats they had actually used as being "very 

useful," "somewhat useful," or "not useful." The training formats were 

on-the-job training, workshops and seminars, consultants, university arts 

administration courses, and university general management courses. All 

findings reflect only the responses of administrators who had actually used 

the training format for the purpose at hand. Intrafield differences by cohort, 

budget size, and experience are not reported here because the subgroups 

generated by such distinctions were too small for results to be meaningful. 

In general, administrators ranked on-the-job training particularly high 

as preparation for financial management, personnel management, and board 

relations, and relatively low as background for labor relations. Workshops 

were reported to be relatively useful ways for learning about financial 

management, planning and development, and marketing and public relations, but less useful for learning about board relations and labor relations. 

Consultants were seen as very useful for training in planning and development and in marketing and public relations; and less useful for learning 

about labor relations and, especially, personnel management. Arts administration and general management courses were both given moderate 

marks on marketing and public relations and considered not very useful 

49 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

for training in labor relations or board relations. In general, respondents 

had few positive evaluations about most methods for learning about labor 

relations and board relations; and reported positive evaluations of a range 

of sources of information about marketing and public relations, financial 

management, and planning and development. 

Administrators from different fields varied in their assessments of different learning methods. Art museum directors tended to be generally less
 

likely than members of other groups to rate experiences as very useful, while
 

CAA directors were somewhat more likely, other things equal, to express
 

positive sentiments. Orchestra managers were particularly positive, as a
 

group, in their evaluation of workshops, while CAA directors were unusually 

positive in their assessment of general management and, particularly, arts 

administration programs. 

Conclusions 

These specific evaluations by administrators who had experience with different forms of training differed from the global evaluations by all administrators in two notable respects. Although the global reputation of consultants among all administrators is quite low, those managers who actually used consultants for various purposes were quite satisfied. By contrast, 

despite the relatively high ratings that arts administration programs were 

given by administrators on the whole, actual users found them to be relatively 

unhelpful for most purposes. (Paradoxically, the one exception to this, the 

CAA directors, are in the field that, as a whole, gave arts administration 

courses the lowest global evaluation.) These findings suggest that generalized reputations of training programs may be poor guides for decisions by 

either policymakers planning programs or aspiring administrators seeking 

instruction. 

5O
 
TRAINING
 

Notes 

1. University of Wisconsin Center for Arts Administration, Survey of Arts Administra­ tion Training 1985-86 (New York: American Council for the Arts, 1984). 

2. For each function, respondents were asked to indicate in one column which of the 

five learning formats they had used, and to assess, in columns to the right, their experiences for only those methods they had used themselves. However, most respondents 

failed to use the first column to indicate explicitly the methods they had used, and 

most simply circled assessments to the right of some of the learning formats. In coding 

these responses, we assumed that, where only some assessments were circled, these 

learning formats had been used, and that those formats for which no assessments were 

offered had not been. Where all assessments were circled for all functions, we inferred that the respondent had misunderstood the instructions, and we treated the 

responses as missing data. In the few cases in which a respondent circled some of 

the numbers next to training methods in the first column, but assessed each training 

method in the columns to the right, only those assessments of formats for which use 

was indicated in the first column were coded. In calculating the percentage of 

respondents who had used a given learning format, the base used was the largest number 

of respondents to any question in the first part of this section of the survey, which 

requested information regarding level of preparation for each function. 

3. For reasons that are not apparent, theater managing directors alone showed a high 

degree of selective nonresponse to these questions. Consequently, data for these 

respondents must be interpreted with caution. 

51
 
4
 

Professional Participation
 

And Attitudes Toward
 

Professionalism
 

Sociologists define professionalism1 as a form of self-organization that 

enables practitioners of an occupation to defend the importance of their contribution and the legitimacy of their decisions. What Magali Sarfatti Larsen 

has called "the professional project" involves several dimensions: the 

development by practitioners of a cognitive basis for specialism that is seen 

as unique and not easily learned; the development of university programs, 

run by professionals, that control the certification of practitioners; the 

emergence of professional associations and the consignment to peers of the 

right to admit individuals to the practice of an occupation and to set and 

enforce ethical standards; and the establishment of at least some autonomy 

of professionals from the organizations in which they ,are employed?­

In this view, professionalism has two sides, one ideological and 

cognitive, the other behavioral and organizational. The role of the first is 

to establish the legitimacy of professional claims to authority, autonomy, 

and expertise. The set of attitudes associated with this side of professionalism 

usually includes 

 ̄ Claims to authority based on knowledge and expertise; 

 ̄ A commitment to the importance of university training programs that 

provide needed credentials for entry into the field; 

52 
ATTITUDES TOWARD PROFESSIONALISM
 

The belief that the expertise needed for professional practice cannot 

be acquired solely through formal means;
 

The belief that professional standards can best be set and enforced by
 

other professionals;
 

A commitment to these professional standards, extending to a willingness to place the common good of the profession above the specific 

good of the employing organization when these interests conflict; and 

A concurrent commitment to the community of professionals, involving orientations that are "cosmopolitan" rather than "local.’’~ 

The role of the second side--behavioral and organizational--is to provide a framework in which professionals can interact with their peers, learn 

about new developments in their fields, develop reputations that can aid 

them in.seeking professional advancement, and contribute to the public acceptance of their professional claims to expertise and authority. Components 

of this side include 

 ̄ Participation in professional activities and organizations, particularly 

on the regional and national level; 

 ̄ Reading of periodicals and other materials about the profession and 

professional practice; 

 ̄ Acquisition of university training for professional practice; 

 ̄ Attendance at professional conferences and similar gatherings; and 

 ̄ Maintenance of strong ties and friendships with professionals employed 

in organizations other than one’s own. 

Several sets of questions we posed to the arts administrators bear on 

the issue of professionalism, as so defined. The questions, which differed 

from field to field, were based on reports in professional periodicals and 

discussions with managers, and were reviewed by administrators, 

policymakers, and service organization staff. In several cases, opinion questions were modeled on standard items used in other research on 

professionalism? The first part of this chapter is devoted to behavioral, 

the second to attitudinal, professionalism. 

Behavioral Professionalism ­

Participation in Professional Activities 

Administrators in each field were asked whether or not they had participated 

in a wide range of professional activities, including membership in service 

and professional associations; service as officers, board members, or committee members in such associations; service on federal, state, and local 

53 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

government arts-related panels and commissions; attendance at professional 

and service organization conferences; reading of periodicals related to their 

work; and friendship with other professionals. 

All administrators reported engaging in a wide range of professional 

activities, although, as a group, art museum directors reported a somewhat 

broader and orchestra managers a somewhat narrower range of activities 

than did other administrators. In addition to their principal service organizations, almost half of the theater managing directors were members of the 

League of Resident Theaters (LORT). Almost three quarters of the art 

museum directors belonged to the Association of Art Museum Directors 

(AAMD), and almost half belonged to the College Art Association. Among 

community arts agency (CAA) directors, two thirds reported membership 

in the American Council for the Arts (ACA) and one third were members 

of the Association of College, University, and Community Arts Administrators (ACUCAA). 

Relatively few administrators in any field reported serving as officers 

or as board or committee members of such organizations. Among art 

museum directors, one in six had been AAMD officers and over half reported 

AAMD committee membership. Among the other administrators, however, 

board membership only ranged from 10 percent for theater and CAA directors (in LORT and the National Assembly of Community Arts Agencies 

[NACAA], respectively) to 14 percent for orchestra managers (in the 

American Symphony Orchestra League); and committee membership was 

just a bit higher, averaging about one manager in five for each group. Some 

managers in all fields also reported serving in state or regional service or 

professional organizations. 

All but the CAA directors were asked about participation on federal 

grant-review panels. (At the time of the survey, no federal program was 

explicitly aimed at supporting CAAs.) Almost 40 percent of the art museum 

directors reported serving on panels of the National Endowment for the 

Arts Museum Program during the previous five years, more than 25 percent had served on other Arts Endowment panels, one third had served as 

reviewers or panelists for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and 

almost one quarter had reviewed for or advised the Institute for Museum 

Services. By contrast, the percentage of orchestra or theater administrators 

who reported having served on their respective discipline panels or on other 

Arts Endowment panels was fewer than 10 percent for each. The reason 

for this discrepancy between museum and performing arts administrators would seem to be that art museum directors are the central actors in 

their institutions, commanding (with only a few exceptions) primary responsibility for both the aesthetic and administrative functions. By contrast, 

although many theater and orchestra managers are experienced in drama 

54 
ATTITUDES TOWARD PROFESSIONALISM
 

or music, artistic directors play the prime aesthetic roles in their organizations. 

Nonetheless, performing arts managers are often present on peer-review 

panels at the state level: almost one third of the theater managing directors 

and over one fifth of the orchestra managers reported serving on state arts 

agency (SAA) discipline panels. In addition, two fifths of the art museum 

directors reported having served on SAA museum panels, and almost 50 

percent of the CAA directors acknowledged serving on an SAA panel during the past five years. CAA directors were also more likely than other 

administrators to have served on some other state government panel, commission, or committee concerned with the arts. 

In summary, respondents worked in a wide variety of capacities that 

took them beyond the bounds of their own institutions. Many of their activities focused on the regional, national, or state level. Some involved 

association with other professional arts administrators; others involved contact with government agencies; and still others brought them into contact 

with universities, community organizations, and the broader public. Panel 

participation on the national level was most common for the art museum 

directors, most of whom were art historians, and these administrators were 

also more likely to lecture at universities, to advise businesses and foundations about contributing to the arts, and to serve on professional association committees. And while CAA directors reported being especially involved at the local and state levels in both public-sector and private-sector 

arts activities, all managers were active on SAA panels and in state and 

regional professional associations, and all were substantially involved in 

university and workshop lecturing, as well as in other activities. 

Conference Attendance 

Patterns of conference attendance varied from field to field, in part depending on the number and frequency of events. Most top administrators in all 

fields had attended at least one meeting of their field’s primary service 

organization during the previous five years. Specifically, about two thirds 

of the art museum directors reported attending meetings of the American 

Association of Museums (AAM), an equal proportion of theater managing 

directors reported attending national meetings of the Theatre Communications Group (TCG), and over three quarters of the CAA directors had been 

to at least one NACAA national convocation. Finally, fully 89 percent of 

the orchestra managers had attended one or more ASOL national conferences, and over half reported having been to four or five between 1976 

and 1980. 

Other meetings also attracted respondents during the previous five years. 

Among theater managing directors, more than half had attended conferences 

55 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

of the Foundation for the Extension and Development of the American Professional Theatre (FEDAPT), almost half had attended an annual meeting 

of LORT, and the same proportion had attended a state or regional theater 

conference. Similarly, almost two thirds of the art museum directors reported 

having attended one or more AAMD annual meetings, just over half had 

attended a national conference of the College Art Association, and almost 

half reported attending a convocation of a state or regional museum association. More than half of the CAA directors had attended a conference of 

the American Council for the Arts and a similar percentage had been to 

at least one ACUCAA conference. Nearly three quarters of the orchestra 

managers reported having attended one or more of ASOL’s regional 

workshops. In sum, although the fields varied in the extent to which conference attendance was focused on a single national service association, arts 

administrators actively attended conferences that enabled them to develop 

their professional skills and extend their professional networks. 

Periodical Reading 

A more passive form of professional engagement is the reading of periodicals 

that treat issues important to one’s field. Respondents were asked whether 

they read selected periodicals "never," "occasionally," or "regularly." 

Those periodicals that were read regularly included some, like the newsletters 

and magazines of the service organizations (e.g., NACAA and NASAA 

newsletters), that carried articles about management, artistic accomplishments, and personnel movements within each field. Others (e.g., 

Theatre or Art Journal) emphasized artistic developments, whereas still 

others (Cultural Post or Arts Reporting Service) focused on the relationship between government and the arts. And a few provided general coverage 

of the arts (e.g., Sunday New York Times Arts and Leisure Section). 

Most administrators in every field reported reading regularly the publications of their primary service organization. These included the AAM’s 

Museum News, read by just over half of the art museum directors, and 

ASOL’s Symphony, read by nearly all of the orchestra managers. Managers 

varied in the extent to which they read periodicals of largely aesthetic interest: just 10 percent of the theater managing directors read Theatre regularly, whereas over 25 percent of the art museum directors reported regular 

readership of Art Bulletin. 

Respondents also varied in the extent to which they read other materials 

relevant to their fields or to the arts in general. For example, more than 

one third of the theater managing directors reported reading the weekly edition Variety on a regular basis, compared with just a handful of the orchestra 

managers (who were even less likely to read Billboard, which covers recording industry news). About half the CAA directors said they read American 

56 
ATTITUDES TOWARD PROFESSIONALISM
 

Arts regularly, compared with just about one in eight administrators in the 

other fields. Orchestra managers and CAA directors were most likely to 

read Cultural Post and the Arts Reporting Service, while art museum directors were least likely to do so. And performing arts administrators constituted the most devoted readership of the American Arts Alliance’s 

Legislative Reports. 

Friendships 

Professions are commonly believed to absorb more of an individual’s time 

and commitment than other occupations. Consequently, respondents were 

asked, "Of your five closest friends, how many work in your own field?" 

Administrators of the resident theaters were strikingly more likely than 

managers in other fields to number colleagues among their closest friends: 

over 40 percent reported that three to five of their closest friends worked 

in their field, whereas only about 10 percent found none of their five closest 

friends so involved. By contrast, only about 17 to 25 percent of all other 

respondents said three to five of their closest friends were colleagues, while 

30 to 40 percent found no colleagues among their five closest friends. Given 

the high average levels of professional experience among the art museum 

directors, their responses were somewhat surprising. The high degree of 

intrafield friendship among the theater managing directors, however, may 

be related to the greater geographical concentration of theater activity than 

of activity in the others fields. 

Variation by Cohort and Organization Size 

In all four fields, the link between seniority and professional participation 

was found to be inconsistent, although in general, it was strongest among 

the orchestra managers and weakest among the art museum directors. In 

all disciplines, the more senior managers were far more likely to report 

participation as officers, board members, or committee members in national 

service organizations or on national panels, whereas differences in participation by cohort were far smaller at the state and regional levels (although, 

among orchestra managers, such differences remained notable). By contrast, local activities were sometimes favored by members of the more recent cohorts. 

More senior managers among the theater, museum, and CAA administrators were also more likely to attend national conferences. At the 

same time, the most junior cohorts of orchestra managers and CAA 

directors--but not of theater managing directors--were somewhat less likely 

to read many periodicals than were their more senior colleagues. 

In the art museum field, however, junior cohort participation was far 

greater than that in other fields, particularly with regard to invited or ap57 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

pointive positions such as reviewer or adviser for the National Institute of 

Museum Services. Yet these more junior directors were less likely than 

others to attend AAM conferences and to read Museum News. Three reasons 

may account for these differences. First, members of the junior cohort of 

art museum directors had been top executives longer than had recent administrators in any other field. Insofar as time (rather than position in a 

queue) is related to participation, they would be expected to participate more. 

Second, cohort was less closely related to organization size in the art museum 

field than it was in any other; insofar as managers of larger organizations 

participated more than those of smaller ones, we would expect the junior 

cohort of art museum directors to have been less affected. Finally, the newest 

art museum directors were more likely than their predecessors to hold Ph.D.s 

and to have taught in universities; thus, their professional commitments may 

have been directed more to the worlds of art history and art museums than 

to the museum world in general. 

Organization budget size appeared to bear a similar relationship to professional participation as that of tenure in the field. Generally speaking, 

the wider the geographic scope of an activity and the more participation 

was invited rather than voluntary, the greater the tendency for managers 

of larger organizations to participate more than those of smaller ones. This 

tendency was exceptionally strong in the orchestra field, somewhat less so 

among CAA directors, and weakest, although still notable, in the art 

museums. 

For example, managing directors of small theaters were no less likely 

than were directors of larger theaters to participate in state, local, and 

regional activities; to attend local or regional conferences; or to read widely 

in professional periodicals. Art museum size was similarly unrelated to 

whether a director participated in National Endowment for the Arts panels 

other than those of the Museum Program, reviewed for the Humanities Endowment or the Museum Services Institute, or attended AAM meetings. 

Indeed, directors of smaller museums were more likely than directors of 

larger ones to be involved in many state and local activities (including 

membership in SAA panels). Somewhat surprisingly, directors of the larger 

museums tended to read less widely in their field’s periodical literature and 

to recruit fewer friends from the museum field than did their smaller budget 

colleagues. It is possible that directors of large museums were so well integrated into the field that they did not need to read to keep up with events; 

but it is also possible that participation in the university-centered world of 

art history has created stronger professional networks among directors of 

small museums (many of which are university museums) than among those 

of larger institutions. 

By contrast, professional participation was strongly related to organiza58 
ATTITUDES TOWARD PROFESSIONALISM 

tion size among CAA directors and orchestra managers. For the former, 

it may have been that, in the absence of major variation in experience in 

the field, organizational budgets were the principal axis of differentiation; 

thus, directors of large CAAs were more active not only at the national 

level but also in most state and local activities and more active not only 

in invited participation but in voluntary conference attendance as well. 

Among orchestra managers, those with the smallest orchestras were less 

integrated into the field with respect to every measure of participation except membership in SAA panels (other than orchestra panels) and certain 

local activities. They were also less likely to attend national ASOL meetings 

(but not ASOL regional workshops), to read regularly most of the publications listed on the survey, and to have many close friendships with other 

orchestra colleagues. 

In summary, then, more experienced managers and administrators were 

more active participants in professional activities in all fields, especially 

when those activities were national in scope and were invited (or elective) 

rather than voluntary. In most fields, younger managers and those of smaller 

organizations appeared active in state and local affairs, suggesting an informal apprenticeship system with interorganizational professional careers. 

This system appeared strongest in the art museum field, where differences 

in professional participation based on organization size and length of experience were weakest, and it appeared weakest in the orchestra field, where 

such differences were strongest and where managers of the smallest organizations were also less integrated than others in terms of several informal and 

voluntary forms of professional participation? 

Attitudinal Professionalism 

Professional attitudes are characterized by adherence to claims about the 

qualities of both individual practitioners and the occupational community 

as a whole. With respect to the individual, professionalism includes an emphasis on expertise as the basis of authority; claims of altruism, 

disinterestedness, or public spiritedness; and a view of career advancement 

through professional practice in several organizations rather than through 

promotion in a single organization. With respect to the community, professionalism entails loyalty to the professional community and its standards 

being placed above loyalty to one’s employer; an emphasis on the collective action of professionals to enforce professional ethical standards; and 

a commitment to use professional associations to increase the legitimacy 

of professionals with the general public and with specific constituencies, 

including government. 

Three multifaceted questions tapped these individual and collective com59 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

ponents of professionalism. The first question asked managers to assess the 

relative importance of several qualities or criteria that could be used to select 

the chief administrator of an organization like their own. The second question asked them to rate the relative importance of a number of functions 

that service organizations might perform in their field. The third question-­

actually, a set of several paired statements between which respondents had 

to choose--was designed to tap their attitudes toward specific aspects of 

the managerial role and organizational mission. 

At the individual level, respondents’ attitudes toward the importance 

of managerial expertise were reflected in their ratings of management experience, formal training in administration, ability to prepare a budget, 

marketing experience, grantsmanship ability, and private fund-raising ability 

as managerial qualifications. Their attitudes were reflected as well in how 

they rated the importance of keeping managers informed about new administrative techniques and of providing training opportunities as functions 

of service organizations. Two forced-choice pairs also addressed the issue 

of managerial expertise: one asked respondents to assess the relative importance of artistic and administrative experience as background for jobs 

like their own; and one (addressed only to orchestra and CAA administrators) 

asked about the relative utility of volunteers and trained paid employees. 

(In such fields as social work, exponents of professionalism have opposed 

the use of volunteers on the ground that they lack appropriate training and 

expertise.) As for the other two characteristics of individual professionalism, 

the emphasis on disinterestedness and altruism was tapped by a forced-choice 

question asking respondents to assess the extent to which professional administrators in their fields were motivated by extrinsic, as opposed to financial, rewards; and the focus on interorganizational careers was addressed 

by asking respondents to assess the importance of enhancing career opportunities as a function of service organizations.
 

Several other items were used to assess the extent to which respondents 

felt a strong commitment to their professional communities. They were asked 

to rate the importance of a manager’s "standing in the field" as a criterion 

for selecting top executives for an organization like their own. In the forcedchoice format, they were asked to decide whether administrators like 

themselves owe a responsibility to the field as a whole even when it runs 

against the short-range interests of their own institutions. Willingness to 

vest social control over the activities of individual managers in the professional community was tapped by respondents’ assessments of the importance, as functions of service organizations, of establishing standards of 

ethics for managers and of preventing unqualified persons from serving as 

arts administrators. In addition, museum directors were asked, in forcedchoice format, about their attitudes toward museum accreditation and, in 

60 
ATTITUDES TOWARD PROFESSIONALISM
 

a separate question, about the proper agency to enforce museum ethical 

standards. Finally, their opinions about the use of service organizations to 

represent their profession to those outside their field were tapped by the 

importance they attributed to enhancing the public status of their organizations or professions, representing the field to public agencies, and advocating 

legislation in the interests of the arts. 

It should be noted that all these questions assessed attitudes only toward 

managerial professionalism, and not toward artistic or scholarly professionalism, as might be espoused by theater artistic directors or academically oriented museum directors. This is yet another reason why professionalism, as defined here, must not be confused with either effectiveness 

or virtue. 

Criteria for Selecting Administrators 

Respondents in each field were asked to rate criteria for selecting a chief 

administrator for an organization like their own as "unimportant," 

"somewhat important," or "very important." Patterns of response were 

quite similar from field to field (see table 4-1). 

Given the diversity of organizational missions and structures among 

the four fields, the degree of consensus on the question of what makes a 

good manager was high. Administrators in all groups reported that they 

would choose replacements for themselves who had management experience; 

tact, refinement, and style; and the ability to prepare a budget; and who 

appreciated the work of the artists or artistic experts whom they managed. 

In none of these fields were respondents very concerned about the standing 

of candidates in the field as a whole, whether they had received formal training in administration, or whether they had training or experience in educational work in their field. 

Functions of Service Organizations 

Respondents demonstrated similar consensus in assessing the importance 

of 10 potential functions of service organizations in their fields (see table 

4-2). On the whole, managers agreed strongly that service organizations 

should take stands on legislation relevant to their fields and represent the 

field to public agencies concerned with the arts. Over two thirds of the performing arts administrators also considered status enhancement a "very important" function. Also considered among the most important functions were 

the need to keep members abreast of current management techniques, and 

the provision of training opportunities for managers. 

By contrast, relatively few respondents in any field considered it a "very 

important" function of service organizations to pre~,ent unqualified persons from holding jobs (an important function in the classic professions of 

61 
 

MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

Table 4-I 

Criteria Considered "Very Important" for Selecting 

A Chief Administrator, by Field 

(percent) 

CAAs 

Criteria 

Management experience 

Theaters 

74.19 

(103)* 

Art Museums

85.61 

(124) 

Orchestras 

85.85 

(107) 

92.23 

(132) 

Tact, refinement, style 81.55 

(103) 

88.71 

(124) 

90.57 

(106) 

75.76 

(132) 

Ability to prepare a budget 85.44 

(103) 

56.45 

(124) 

86.92 

(107) 

81.06 

(132) 

Appreciationa 83.50 

(103) 

64.23 

(123) 

82.24 

(107) 

67.42 

(132) 

Marketing 51.46 

(103) 

NA 60.75 

(107) 

NA 

Private fund-raising ability 58.25 

(103) 

49.59 

(123) 

42.99 

(107) 

NA 

Grantsmanship ability 61.17 

(103) 

28.46 

(123) 

46.73 

(107) 

56.06 

(132) 

Commitment to outreach 36.89 

(103) 

26.83 

(123) 

46.73 

(107) 

58.78 

(131 ) 

Knowledgeb 24.27 

(103) 

45.16 

(124) 

44.86 

(107) 

32.06 

(131 ) 

Standing in the field 9.71 

(103) 

34.68 

(124) 

17.76 

(107) 

24.24 

(132) 

Formal training in 

administration 

14.71 

(102) 

8.87 

(124) 

15.89 

(107) 

18.94 

(132) 

Educational trainingc 3.88 

(103) 

12.20 

(123) 

8.49 

(106) 

9.85 

(132) 

NOTES: Criteria are ranked in order of importance according to the average percent of respondents 

reporting "very important" across all four fields. 

NA = Not asked/not applicable.

a For theaters, ’appreciation of the dramatic art’; for museums, ’connoisseurship’; for orchestras, ’appreciation of classical music’; for CAAs, ’appreciation of the arts.’ 

b For theaters, ’knowledge of the dramatic literature’; for museums, ’scholarship’; for orchestras, ’knowledge of the symphonic repertoire’; for CAAs, ’familiarity with the community 

arts scene nationally.’ 

c For theaters, ’training or experience in theater education’; for museums, ’training or experience in museum education’; for orchestras, ’training or experience in music education’; for CAAs, ’training or experience in arts education.’ 

* Figures in parentheses are the number of respondents for each item. 

62 
ATTITUDES TOWARD PROFESSIONALISM
 

medicine and law), or, except in the case of CAA directors, to bring together 

administrators and colleagues from similar fields into one professional 

community. 

If many art museum directors looked toward their service organizations to set ethical standards, fewer were willing to let such associations 

enforce them. Almost half of the art museum directors reported that ethical 

standards should be enforced by each museum’s board of trustees. Slightly 

fewer would have them enforced by either the AAM or the AAMD, while 

fewer still suggested some other method of enforcement. None, however, 

recommended that such standards be enforced by government agencies that 

support museums. 

Forced-Choice Responses 

For each of the forced-choice questions, respondents were asked to choose 

one of two conflicting statements and to indicate whether making the choice 

was "very difficult," "somewhat difficult," or "easy." For each question, combining the choice and the estimate of difficulty yielded a scale 

ranging from "1" (easy choice of first alternative) to "6" (easy choice 

of second alternative). 

Respondents were asked to choose between two statements, one of which 

asserted that "while business sense is useful, it is essential that" administrators in the respondent’s discipline "have strong artistic backgrounds," while the other stressed the importance of "a strong background 

in management." From 70 to 80 percent of all groups but the art museum 

directors strongly favored the management alternative, while the same proportion of the art museum directors thought an artistic background was more 

essential. This stalking difference reflected the academic background of most 

art museum directors, who appeared to offer their professional allegiance 

more to art-historical than to administrative standards. 

Asked to choose between one statement asserting that "nonmonetary 

rewards make up for the low salaries" of managers in their fields and another 

stating that "salaries are so low . . . that many dedicated managers are 

leaving the field for more remunerative work," more than half of the (betterpaid) art museum and orchestra administrators chose the first option, compared with about 40 percent of the theater managing directors and just over 

one in five CAA directors. Respondents were also asked to choose between 

one statement asserting that administrators of several kinds of arts organizations were members of the same profession and a second asserting that "I 

f’md that I have little in common" with members of these other groups. 

The reference group for theater and orchestra administrators was managers 

in all the performing arts; for art museum directors, it was people in all 

kinds of museums; and for the CAA directors, it included administrators 

63 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

Table 4-2 

Service Organization Functions Considered "Very Important," 

by Field 

(percent) 

Functions Theaters Art Museums Orchestras CAAs 

Initiating or taking stands on 

legislation in areas of 

79.00 

(100) 

87.20 

(125) 

85.19 

(108) 

71.54 

(130) 

interest to the field 

Representing the field to 

state and federal agencies 

72.78 

(101) 

75.20 

(125) 

83.18 

(107) 

78.29 

(129) 

concerned with the arts 

Enhancing the status of the 

field in the eyes of the 

67.33 

(101) 

47.11 

(121) 

66.67 

(108) 

58.46 

(130) 

public 

Keeping members/professionals abreast of current 

61.39 

(101) 

43.59 

(117) 

71.03 

(107) 

54.20 

(131) 

management techniques 

Providing training opportunities for administrators 

53.47 

(101 ) 

30.77 

(117) 

65.74 

(108) 

67.42 

(132) 

Setting standards of professional or managerial ethics 

45.54 

(101 ) 

86.29 

(124) 

45.37 

(108) 

38.93 

(131 ) 

Facilitating career development through fostering 

38.61 

(101 ) 

34.40 

(125) 

40.74 

(108) 

38.46 

(130) 

contacts with other 

administrators in field 

Exercising leadership to 

make the field more relevant 

18.81 

(101 ) 

18.40 

(125) 

23.15 

(108) 

38.17 

(131 ) 

and accessible to 

disadvantaged groups 

Bringing together administrators and colleagues 

14.84 

(101) 

17.60 

(125) 

7.41 

(108) 

44.27 

(131) 

from similar fields into one 

professional community 

Preventing unqualified 

persons from serving as 

14.29 

(98) 

21.01 

(119) 

20.37 

(108) 

23.66 

(131) 

administrators 

NOTES: Functions are ranked in order of importance according to the average percent of respondents 

reporting "very important" across all four fields. 

Figures in parentheses are the number of respondents for each item. 

64.
 
of all kinds of arts organizations. CAA directors and orchestra managers 

were most inclusive, with more than 90 percent of each choosing the first 

alternative, as did nearly as many theater administrators. By contrast, almost 

half of the art museum directors reported having "little in common" with 

directors of other kinds of museums. 

In the fourth forced-choice question, respondents were asked to choose 

between the statement that an administrator should always act in the best 

interest of his or her organization, even when the action is not in the best 

interest of the field as a whole; and a second statement asserting the reverse. 

Only among the CAA directors did a majority of respondents choose the 

second, more classically professional, alternative. Majorities of the other 

respondents (from 58 percent of the art museum directors to over 75 percent of the orchestra managers) opted for the well-being of their organizations. (Fewer respondents in any discipline reported making this choice 

"easily" than any other forced-choice item described in this section.) 

Finally, orchestra managers and CAA directors were asked to choose 

between one statement asserting that volunteers are intrinsically valuable 

and another suggesting that they are a necessary evil that should eventually 

be replaced by paid staff; respondents in both fields favored the pro-volunteer 

choice almost unanimously. Similarly, more than 90 percent of the art 

museum directors chose a statement favoring museum accreditation over 

one opposing it. 

IZariation by Cohort 

Newcomers to the resident stage differed from more senior managers in 

several respects. They were only one third as likely to consider knowledge 

of the dramatic literature a very important qualification for their job, whereas 

one in five of them, compared with no respondents among the most senior 

cohort, considered formal training in administration to be very important. 

The more junior managing directors also considered it somewhat more important than did their senior colleagues for service organizations to keep 

managers abreast of recent management techniques and to provide training 

opportunities. The percentage who deemed an artistic background more 

essential than a management background also declined steadily with cohort: 

from almost one third of the most senior managing directors to less than 

a quarter of the middle cohort and just 13 percent of the newest entrants. 

In short, these patterns seem to reflect a growing managerial orientation 

on the part of more junior theater administrators, consistent with the changes 

in training and background described in earlier chapters. 

The responses among junior art museum directors reflected similar 

changes in that field. The most recent entrants were less likely (just over 

50 percent, compared with about two thirds in each earlier cohort) to con65 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

sider connoisseurship a "very important" criterion for selecting a director, whereas they, too, were considerably more likely (almost one quarter 

compared with none) to rate formal training in administration as "very important." The importance accorded fund-raising and budgeting as managerial 

qualifications also rose monotonically with cohort, and more than 50 percent of the junior cohort--twice as many as in the most senior cohort and 

five times those in the middle--included "commitment to outreach" among 

the important criteria. The most junior directors were also twice as likely 

to stress the value of service organizations in "keeping museum professionals abreast of current management techniques"; and just two thirds of 

the two more recent cohorts, compared with more than 90 percent of the 

most senior, placed more importance on scholarly and curatorial backgrounds 

for directors than on managerial backgrounds. 

Although the orientation of the less senior directors was more managerial 

than that of their more senior colleagues, it was not more professional, in 

the classical sense. The newer directors, for example, were less supportive 

of the social control and representation functions of service organizations, 

and fewer would have service organizations keep unqualified persons out 

of museum jobs or represent the field to public arts agencies. Moreover, 

they were substantially more likely to vest responsibility for enforcement 

of ethical standards in each museum’s board of trustees, while the most 

senior directors preferred to vest it in the AAM. Finally, the most junior 

directors also reported a somewhat greater tendency than the most senior 

(two thirds compared with one half) to act in the interests of their institution when those interests conflicted with those of the museum field. 

Has managerial professionalism been increasing in the art museum field? 

Although a notable minority of more recent entrants were more oriented 

toward the managerial aspect of their work, they were somewhat less likely 

to provide traditionally professional responses to questions about collective control and responsibility. At least a minority of the less senior directors, but virtually none of the most senior, apparently held a view of their 

job that was as similar to that held by performing arts administrators as 

it was to traditional notions of museum professionalism. 

The attitudes of orchestra managers varied less dramatically by cohort 

than those of the two groups discussed above, but they still showed the same 

increased tendency toward managerial orientation. Little systematic variation was apparent, however, among CAA directors, for whom each cohort 

covered far fewer years. 

66 
ATTITUDES TOWARD PROFESSIONALISM 

Summary 

Did the arts administrators display a "professional orientation" toward their 

work as managers? The responses elude easy labels. In no field did 

respondents as a group endorse all the traditional components of the professional belief system. For example, most respondents (except art museum 

directors) considered management training and education an important role 

of service organizations, yet they rejected formal management training (and 

its concomitant credentials) as an important criterion in selecting administrators for jobs like their own. Further, again except for the art museum 

directors, respondents expressed little interest in the potential of service 

or professional organizations for collective social control. And, except for 

the CAA directors, most would act in the best interests of their organizations when those interests conflicted with those of their field. On the other 

hand, respondents seemed to appreciate the value of collective mobilization to pursue broadly political ends: supporting legislation, negotiating with 

government agencies, and enhancing public images. In short, the responses 

of these administrators conformed to the professional model in some respects 

and diverged sharply in others. 

This combination of convergence and divergence was most striking 

among the art museum directors, whose responses were least like those of 

other administrators. They placed less stock in formal management training than any other group, both as a criterion for hiring directors and as 

a function of service organizations, yet they were most supportive of the 

role of service organizations in establishing (and, for a large minority, enforcing) professional ethical standards. Further, although members of different cohorts in the art museum, theater, and, to a lesser extent, orchestra 

fields showed a trend toward increasing managerialism, this orientation was 

reflected in the responses of only a minority of respondents. Among the 

art museum directors, the increased managerialism was accompanied by 

a modest decline in support for traditional tenets of professionalism. 

Notes 

Professionalism, as it is used here, refers to a set of attitudes and behaviors associated 

with a distinctive form of occupational organization. It has little in common with the 

conventional, everyday use of the word as a synonym for competence or qualification. Thus, whether professional participation and attitudes are associated, either 

positively or negatively, with competence or effectiveness is an empirical question 

quite beyond the scope of this study. When some administrators are described as having a "professional orientation" to a greater degree than others, or as "participating 

to a greater extent in professional activities," these are factual accounts of their selfreported attitudes and behaviors, which should not be taken to reflect in any way their 

effectiveness as administrators. 

67 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

2. Magali Sarfatti Larsen, The Rise of Professionalism (Berkeley: University of California 

Press, 1977). 

3. Alvin W. Gouldner, "Cosmopolitans and Locals: Toward an Analysis of Latent Social 

Roles I," Administrative Science Quarterly 2, 2 (1957): 281-306. 

4. Richard H. Hall, "Professionalization and Bureaucratization," American Sociological 

Review 33, 1 (1968): 92-104; William E. Snizek, "Hall’s Professionalism Scale: An 

Empirical Reassessment," American Sociological Review 37, 1 (1972): 109-114; 

Harold L. Wilensky, "The Professionalization of Everyone?" American Journal of 

Sociology 70, 5 (1964): 137-158. 

5. Indices of participation were summed to create a composite "professional activism" 

scale and subjected to regression analysis to assess the relative impacts of several determinants of participation net of one another. These analyses, which are reported in 

full in the preliminary report of this study, revealed that three factors--operating 

budget, years of experience, and salary--accounted for most of the explained variation in participation in every field. 

68
 
5
 

Attitudes Toward
 

Organizational Missions
 

To examine administrators’ attitudes toward the missions of their organizations and the role of management in accomplishing them, we analyzed data 

from two sets of questions. Because an organization’s board is responsible 

for policy formation and decisions about goals both in nonprofit organizations and in many public art museums and CAAs, one set of questions asked 

managers to evaluate the relative importance of 10 characteristics of board 

members. To answer the question of "What business are we in?" the second set required respondents to choose between pairs of statements reflecting different attitudes toward organizational mission and strategy. Development of questions was guided by ongoing debates within the fields surveyed, 

and items were revised after review by arts managers, service organization 

staff, and public arts agency staff. 

Board Member Characteristics 

Respondents were asked, "In your opinion, how important is the presence 

of persons with each of the following characteristics to the effectiveness 

of [your kind of arts organization’s] board of trustees?" They were then 

presented with 10 different items and asked to rank them in importance 

(see table 5-1). Some items (ability and willingness to donate money; connections with the wealthy, with business corporations, and with government) had to do with ability to give or get resources. Others (willingness 

to interact with staff, willingness to respect formal hierarchy, and legal or 

management skills) concerned the board’s internal function. Two items (com69 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

mitment to education and outreach, and representativeness of the community’s racial and ethnic groups) reflected concern with pluralism and social 

goals. And one (personal interest in the arts) was related to the aesthetic 

mission. 

Personal interest in the artistic substance of the organization’s work 

was rated among the top three criteria in all fields by almost two thirds 

of the respondents. Also prized highly, especially among performing arts 

administrators, were the ability and willingness to give money, and contacts with business corporations and with the wealthy. Orchestra managers, 

in fact, appeared to seek "donor" boards that give money and serve as 

bridges to wealthy individuals and companies. Theater managing directors 

also emphasized private-sector resource acquisition, albeit with less unanimity. Although art museum directors valued these same income-generating 

qualities, more than half of them also ranked willingness to respect the 

museum’s formal hierarchy of authority among the three most important 

board-member attributes. By contrast, CAA directors were diverse in their 

appraisals, stressing not only contacts with business but also skills, commitment to education and outreach, and contacts with government. 

Managers in all fields were much less likely to include among the top 

three attributes willingness to interact with staff and representativeness of 

the community’s racial and ethnic groups. Similarly, only about one fifth 

of the performing arts administrators ranked commitment to education and 

outreach highly, although it did fare better among art museum and CAA 

directors. And attitudes toward legal and management skills varied widely 

by discipline, ranked highly by almost half the CAA directors but just one 

in eight orchestra managers. 

Forced-Choice Questions 

Most of the forced-choice questions addressed debates or concerns about 

the extent to which traditional aesthetic aims of arts organizations should 

be supplemented by partial reorientations: first, toward the market and earned 

income, and second, toward education and outreach objectives. We sought 

here to document the administrator’s attitudes on these issues, and to see 

if such attitudes represented relatively coherent ideological positions. Finally, 

we wanted to assess the relative impact of a manager’s organization, 

background, and career experience on these attitudes toward missions. Note 

that there is no intention--nor could these data be used--to assess the validity 

of the attitudes. 

Respondents were asked to choose between two statements, each reflecting a different position on a management or policy issue. Responses did 

not necessarily indicate agreement with the statement chosen; respondents 

7O 
ATTITUDES TOWARD MISSIONS
 

Table 5-1 

Three Most Important Characteristics of Board Members, by Field

(percent) 

Item Theaters Art Museums Orchestras CAAs 

Personal interest in the arts 65.35 65.00 65.09 59.54 

(101) (120) (106) (131) 

Willingness and ability to 63.73 70.83 80.19 34.35 

donate money (102) (120) (106) (131 ) 

Connections with business 58.82 53.33 69.81 58.02 

corporations (102) (120) (106) (131 ) 

Connections with wealthy 53.06 39.17 53.77 33.08 

individuals (98) (120) (106) (130) 

Willingness to respect 44.44 56.30 25.71 27.91 

formal hierarchy of 

communications 

(63) (119) (105) (129) 

Legal or management skills 30.69 37.50 12.26 46.56 

(101) (120) (106) (131) 

Influence in government 32.56 33.33 20.00 39.69 

circles (86) (120) (105) (131 ) 

Commitment to education 20.43 32.50 19.05 40.31 

and outreach (93) (120) (105) (129) 

Representativeness 17.20 19.17 14.29 29.01 

of community’s racial and 

ethnic groups 

(93) (120) (105) ’(131) 

Willingness to interact 18.18 10.17 16.04 28.46 

with staff at the departmental level 

(98) (118) (106) (130) 

NOTES: Characteristics are ranked in order of importance according to the average percent of 

respondents across all four fields naming each item among the top three in importance. 

Figures in parentheses are the number of respondents for each item. 

71 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

may have agreed or disagreed partially with both options, and in many cases, 

their personal views were undoubtedly more complex or sophisticated than 

either one. The value of these questions is not so much in permitting 

generalizations about what arts managers believed as in enabling us to compare the positions of different managers on several dimensions. In designing the forced-choice options, we tried to present each statement in a contentious tone, as might an advocate of the position it embodied. Occasionally, 

the tone was softened in an effort (not always successful) to phrase alternatives so as to elicit variation in response. 

Most items were designed to counterpose two of three attitudinal 

orientations--i.e., traditional aesthetic mission, managerialism (emphasis 

on efficiency and earned income, and orientation to the private sector), and 

social orientation (emphasis on education and outreach, and orientation 

toward the public sector)--that were hypothesized to represent somewhat 

coherent ideological positions. To avoid response-set bias, for those questions in which one statement favored and another opposed a position, "pro" 

and "con" responses were alternated in the first and second positions from 

question to question. Since wording of specific items differs from group 

to group, responses are not completely comparable across disciplines. The 

principal value of these data are, first, for description of respondents in 

each field, and, second, for comparison of attitudes across groups within 

each field. As previously described, responses to forced choices were merged 

with those to related questions about the difficulty of each choice to yield 

a six-point scale, ranging from "1" (easy choice of first option) to "6" 

(easy choice of second option). 

Resident Theater Managing Directors 

Aesthetic vs. managerial orientation. When asked to choose between 

a statement favoring efforts to increase earned income and one suggesting 

that resident theaters are often too concerned with this goal, the vast majority of theater managing directors (88 percent) chose the first. More than 

half (61 percent) also selected a statement favoring institutionalization to 

achieve professional excellence over one alleging that institutionalization 

discourages creativity or innovation. And nearly all respondents (92 percent) favored more businesslike management techniques over a warning 

that such techniques are inappropriate for arts organizations. 

Aesthetic vs. social orientation. More than two thirds agreed with a 

statement that resident theaters have a responsibility to go beyond their 

regular programming to educate their audience and potential audience rather 

than with the opposing assertion that educational programs distract attention from the theater’s central artistic task. In another forced choice, more 

than three quarters of the respondents chose "excellence" over "access" 

72 
AI-FITUDES TOWARD MISSIONS
 

as a guide to public subsidy. And almost the same proportion selected a 

statement indicating that resident theaters could expand their audiences to 

include many more poor, mip.ority, and working people over an assertion 

that the theater’s audience will always be limited to individuals who can 

really understand and appreciate the dramatic art. 

Managerial vs. social orientation. By a strong majority (88 percent), 

theater administrators favored a statement indicating that resident theaters 

should look toward business (rather than toward government) for an increasing share of revenues in the coming years. (Shortly before the survey 

was fielded, the national administration proposed dramatic cuts in the federal 

arts budget. The salience of this development undoubtedly affected the pattern of response to this question.) 

Nonclassified attitudinal orientation. Almost half the respondents 

favored coordination in planning and programming among arts organizations over a statement stressing the danger to an organization’s autonomy 

of involvement in coordinative efforts. 

Art Museum Directors 

Aesthetic vs. managerial orientation. Just over half of the art museum 

directors selected the statement that "art museums have become too concerned with maximizing earned income by mounting popular exhibits of 

dubious scholarly or artistic value" over one praising art museums for learning to boost earned income by designing exhibits with popular appeal. 

Approximately 40 percent agreed that museums should use cost-benefit 

measures in order to be taken seriously by potential patrons, while 60 percent believed such efforts to measure museums’ efficiency reflected "a profound misunderstanding" of museum work and goals. Two fifths of the 

museum directors chose a warning that efforts to use auxiliary activities 

(e.g., gift shops, restaurants) to increase earned income risk subordinating 

the museum’s artistic goals to commercial ones, while three fifths agreed 

that museums have a responsibility to exploit commercial opportunities to 

increase earned income. 

Aesthetic vs. social orientation. Almost two thirds of the respondents 

agreed that art museums should provide thorough interpretation of exhibited 

works rather than that extensive interpretation interferes with the relationship between the viewer and the work of art. In the forced choice between 

excellence and access as a criterion for public subsidy, 70 percent of the 

museum directors opted for the former. And just over half selected the statement that art museums can attract many more poor, minority, and working 

people over the assertion that museum visitors will always be "the minority of individuals who can really understand and appreciate art." 

Managerial vs. social orientation. Fully 86 percent of the directors 

73 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

agreed that art museums should look to business to provide an increasing 

share of their revenues in coming years, over an alternative saying the same 

of government. 

Nonclassified attitudinal orientation. More than 60 percent of the art 

museum directors favored coordination of planning and programming among 

museums over the warning that such coordination would threaten museum 

autonomy. 

Orchestra Managers 

Aesthetic vs. managerial orientation. In response to the assertion that 

orchestras worry too much about earned income and too little about challenging and innovative programming, 83 percent of the orchestra managers chose 

a statement praising orchestras for using marketing and programming to 

boost earned income. And the same proportion favored use of commercial 

administrative practices, rejecting the notion that efficiency is not what performing arts organizations are all about. 

Aesthetic vs. social orientation. The vast majority of orchestra managers 

(90 percent) selected the statement that "the orchestra must go beyond its 

regular programming to educate its audience and potential audience" over 

the assertion that educational programs divert attention from artistic goals. 

Two thirds of them also chose excellence over access as a basis for public 

support for the arts. And 57 percent believed that orchestras can increase 

markedly the number of poor, minority, and working people in their audiences, whereas 43 percent believed that the orchestra’s audience will always 

be limited to the few "individuals who can really understand and appreciate 

music." 

Managerial vs. social orientation. Almost all (95 percent) orchestra 

managers chose to look to business rather than government for increased 

revenues in the future. 

Nonclassified attitudinal orientation. More than 60 percent agreed that 

coordination of planning and programming with other arts organizations 

represents a threat to autonomy, rather than that such coordination is increasingly necessary in the current fiscal environment. 

CAA Directors 

Aesthetic vs. managerial orientation. Almost two thirds of the CAA 

directors chose a statement indicating that CAAs should develop more efficient administrative techniques similar to those of the better-run social 

service agencies over an altemative statement indicating that arts agencies 

cannot be run like social service agencies and warning against bureaucratization. 

Aesthetic vs. social orientation. Almost four fifths of the respondents 

74 
ATTITUDES TOWARD MISSIONS
 

agreed that "CAAs should go beyond the traditional arts to support and 

encourage" minority and neighborhood arts groups rather than concentrate 

on the most important and highest quality organizations within their communities. In keeping with this view, almost 75 percent chose access over 

excellence as a criterion for public support, and almost 90 percent chose 

the assertion that traditional arts organizations could expand their audiences 

to include far more poor, minority, and working people over the statement 

that the audiences for art museums and symphony orchestras will always 

be limited to the minority who can appreciate great art and music. 

Managerial vs. social orientation. The CAA directors were almost as 

unanimous as orchestra managers (92 percent) in choosing business over 

government as a future source of increased revenues. Further, more than 

70 percent of the CAA directors selected the assertion that CAAs worry 

too much about getting grants and too little about earning income over the 

statement that CAAs should provide services to individuals and organizations that are too poor to pay for them. 

Nonclassified attitudinal orientation. Again, more than 70 percent supported rather than opposed regional coordination of the planning and programming among CAAs, and more than 85 percent believed CAAs should 

provide artistic programming that is otherwise unavailable rather than limit 

themselves to providing support services to other arts organizations. 

Summary 

Although responses to most items are not comparable across disciplines 

because of variation in item wording, we can make some rough generalizations. Respondents in all fields overwhelmingly favored statements that future 

revenues should be sought from business rather than from government. Further, majorities (albeit sometimes small ones) in each field voiced sympathy 

with the goals of education and outreach, and majorities in all fields except 

art museums tended to agree with statements supporting improved administrative techniques. The most obvious deviations occurred among art 

museum directors, who were more likely to choose statements expressing 

skepticism about or distaste for earned income-producing schemes, and 

among CAA directors, who alone supported the statement endorsing the 

principal of access over excellence. Enough variation in response appears, 

however, that no group’s orientation can be characterized as being overwhelmingly aesthetic, social, or managerial. 

Variation by Cohort 

No major variations by cohort appeared regarding the most desirable qualities 

for board members, but more differences did emerge in response to 

statements reflecting attitudes toward organization mission and strategy. 

75 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

The most senior cohort of theater administrators were somewhat more 

likely than the most junior cohort (86 to 67 percent) to emphasize excellence 

over access as a criterion for public support, and they were only about half 

as likely to choose with ease the statement that resident theaters could greatly 

expand the number of poor, working, and minority people in their audiences. 

They were also substantially less likely than other groups (one quarter, compared with almost 40 percent in the middle cohort and two thirds of the 

newest) to favor coordination of planning and programming among performing arts organizations. As a group, then, the more senior managing directors expressed a somewhat greater commitment to aesthetic values, particularly over social ones, than did their more junior colleagues. But the 

differences were relatively small. 

The more junior art museum directors were approximately twice as 

likely as their colleagues to endorse the use of exhibits with broad-based 

appeal to raise earned income rather than deplore such income-earning exhibitions. Similarly, they were considerably less likely (one third of the 

most junior cohort compared with more than half of the most senior) to 

choose the statement questioning the use of museum shops and similar means 

of generating earned income. Support for excellence over access was 

monotonically related to seniority: more than 80 percent of the most experienced directors, compared with almost half of the least experienced, 

favored the former. Also monotonically related to seniority were attitudes 

toward coordination, with just over half of the most experienced cohort-­

twice as many as the most junior--choosing the statement opposing it. Thus 

among art museum directors, seniority was associated with favoring an 

aesthetic over a social and, to a lesser extent, managerial orientation. 

For orchestra managers, too, aesthetic views found more favor within 

the senior cohort than within the junior ones. Nearly one quarter of the 

most senior managers (compared with just 9 percent of the most junior) 

agreed that orchestras are often too concerned with maximizing earned income at the expense of the quality of their musical programming. And nearly 

one third of them (compared with 15 percent of the middle cohort and just 

1 of 31 less-experienced managers) agreed that efforts to measure the efficiency of symphony orchestras are inappropriate. 

Senior orchestra managers also held aesthetic values over social ones. 

More than one fifth of them (compared with just 3 of 65 other respondents) 

endorsed a statement that "educational programs can deflect energy" from 

the orchestra’s central artistic goals, and 85 percent chose excellence over 

access, compared with fewer than 60 percent of the two more junior cohorts. 

Like the most senior managers in other fields, those in the orchestra field 

were also less likely to favor the coordination alternative (just one in four 

among them, compared with three fifths of the most junior managers). Thus, 

76 
ATTITUDES TOWARD MISSIONS
 

in the orchestra field as elsewhere, seniority was associated with support 

for traditional aesthetic values. In each case, however, it is unclear whether 

variation by cohort represented a decline in traditional aesthetic concerns 

over time, a filtering process that screened out administrators with less 

aesthetic orientations over the course of their careers, or attitude changes 

associated with movement to larger or more prestigious organizations. 

Because of the briefer cohort spans among the community arts 

respondents, cohort variation in their field was far less marked. Like their 

peers in the other disciplines, however, the more senior CAA directors were 

more likely to choose excellence over access than were less experienced 

CAA directors (more than one third, compared with just over one quarter 

of the middle cohort and fewer than one fifth of the most junior). 

Administrative Orientations and Their Determinants 

Although the previous sections described the responses of administrators 

to individual items and examined how those responses varied among 

managers of differing levels of seniority, they did not enable us to assess 

the extent to which the responses cohered into the posited dimensions of 

administrative ideology (managerial, aesthetic, and social). Nor did they 

describe the determinants of variation in administrative orientations by examining the net effects of such factors as seniority, organizational budget, 

experience, and professional participation, controlling for all simultaneously. 

Our next tasks, then, are to see whether responses to attitude questions cluster 

in a manner that permits us to identify managerial, aesthetic, or social orientations within the fields surveyed; and, if so, to determine what predicts 

the extent to which administrators hold such orientations. 

Patterns of Administrative Orientation 

To pursue the first task, we undertook for each field factor analyses of 

responses to questions about director attributes, board member 

characteristics, the "increase relevance and accessibility" function of service organizations, and attitudes regarding organization mission and strategy, 

as well as to a series of questions about the desirability of different forms 

of revenues. In the last, respondents were asked to rank in order of desirability 10 sources of income: endowment; admissions; membership; other 

earned income; private philanthropy; corporate philanthropy; foundation 

grants; and federal, state, and municipal support. This last set of questions 

was included because it was hypothesized that a managerial orientation would 

be disposed toward earned income and corporate aid, while a social orientation would favor public subsidy. As expected, factor analyses yielded 

meaningful "managerialism" and "social orientation" clusters for every 

77 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

field. (In part because of the wording of forced-choice questions, aesthetic 

orientation did not emerge as a third factor.) 

Managerialism. The managerialism factor, for all fields, included support for a management rather than arts background for administrators; and 

for three of the four fields it included both positive evaluations of managerial 

experience, grantsmanship ability, and ability to prepare a budget as criteria 

for selecting top administrators, and the forced-choice alternative that favored 

businesslike and efficient administrative techniques. 

In the performing arts, directors’ fund-raising ability and marketing 

experience, in addition to those skills listed above, loaded heavily onto the 

managerial factor. Among the theater managing directors, desirability of 

admission revenue loaded positively and desirability of municipal revenue 

loaded negatively onto managerialism. Among directors of orchestras and 

art museums, forced-choice preference for business support in the long term 

loaded on managerialism, as did desirability of membership revenue among 

orchestra managers and forced-choice support for income-earning exhibitions and ancillary activities among art museum directors. Federal support, 

on the other hand, bore a negative relationship to managerialism among 

the art museum directors. 

Among the orchestra managers, three director attributes loaded negatively on the managerial factor: knowledge of classical music, commitment 

to education and outreach, and standing in the field. Thus, this factor 

represents not just support for efficiency but also some opposition to aesthetic 

or social goals. By contrast, for the CAA directors, the managerial factor 

was associated with a rejection of earned income, particularly endowment 

and other earned income, as revenue sources. 

Social orientation. For each field, the social orientation factor included 

high rankings of educational experience and of commitment to outreach 

as criteria for selecting top administrators; of commitment to education and 

outreach as a desirable attribute of board members; and of increasing 

relevance and accessibility as a function of service organizations. For three 

of the four fields, grantsmanship as a criterion for selecting a top manager 

and support for access over excellence loaded on this factor as well. The 

social orientation factor was most similar for theater managing and art 

museum directors: for each group, it included (in addition to the variables 

shared with other fields) agreement that the minority, poor, and blue-collar 

audience could be greatly expanded, and a preference for federal, state, 

and municipal support. For art museum directors alone, it was associated 

with relatively low ratings for endowment income; and for theater administrators alone, it included a preference for foundation assistance. 

,~rnong orchestra managers, social orientation was associated with high 

ratings for fund-raising ability and standing in the field as director-selection 

78 
ATTITUDES TOWARD MISSIONS
 

criteria, in addition to the common variables mentioned above. Among CAA 

directors, it was associated positively with appreciation of the arts as a 

criterion for choosing executives, support for grants to neighborhood and 

minority arts organizations, and support for artistic programming by CAAs. 

(The two latter measures are from forced-choice items asked only of CAA 

directors.) 

Among the art museum and CAA directors, two other interpretable 

factors emerged. For the former, the third dimension represented a kind 

of private-sector market orientation reflecting opposition to conventional 

aesthetic values. For the latter, the third factor represented an extreme publicsector orientation, involving a strong rejection of the market and of earned 

income. 

Predictors of Administrative Orientations 

To examine the net effects of background, career experience, and other 

factors on the extent to which administrators expressed managerial or social, 

rather than more conventionally aesthetic, orientations in their responses, 

we used regression analysis. Scales were developed for both managerial 

and social orientations by standardizing and summing respondents’ scores 

on each variable that loaded on the relevant factor at .30 or above. The 

models reported here include those independent variables that had a notable 

impact on orientations, or the omission of which altered the coefficients 

of other predictors. In addition, budget size and a measure of seniority were 

included in all regression equations as independent variables. 

Managerialism. The regression models predicting the degree of 

managerialism were quite successful (given the subjective nature of the 

measures on which the dependent variable was based) in all but the community arts field, explaining between 34 and 44 percent of the variation 

in managerialism among theater, art museum, and orchestra administrators. 

Among both art museum directors and the orchestra managers, 

managerialism was strongly and negatively related to seniority, controlling 

for other predictors. Among the former, budget size also had a notable 

negative effect, whereas among the latter, women were, other things equal, 

more managerial in orientation than men. 

Managerialism was negatively related to measures of family background 

and educational experience among the art museum directors and orchestra 

managers, and positively related among the CAA directors. Parents’ educational attainment was a strong negative predictor of managerialism for the 

art museum directors, while the quality (Astin score) of the college from 

which a manager graduated had a similar impact among orchestra managers. 

By contrast, having attended a private school was the strongest predictor 

of managerialism among the CAA directors. 

79 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

Among theater administrators, a high degree of managerial orientation was predicted by three variables: a degree in business or management; 

prior work experience in resident theater marketing, development, or public 

relations; and no prior work experience as artistic directors, actors, or technicians. Career-experience variables were also strong, albeit negative predictors of managerialism among art museum directors, who were far less likely, 

other things equal, to score high on managerialism if they had earned a 

Ph.D. in art history or had ever held a professorial appointment. By contrast, career experience had no important effect on the scores of orchestra 

managers or CAA directors. 

Controlling for other factors, professional participation (based on the 

number of professional activities in which a respondent reported taking part) 

had a strikingly positive impact on managerialism in every field but the 

community arts. This was true even among art museum directors and orchestra managers, for whom the simple correlations between managerialism 

and participation were close to zero. What these f’mdings mean is that the 

factors that predicted participation were different from and to some extent 

opposite to those that predicted managerialism; but that if one controls for 

these factors, directors who are more active in their professional field are 

more likely to express managerial views than would be less active managers 

with similar backgrounds and experiences. 

Social orientation. Among theater managing directors, social orientation was positively related to seniority, negatively related to private school 

enrollment and parents’ social class, and very negatively related to organization budget. 

By contrast, the social orientation scores of art museum directors were 

unrelated to museum budget size and were negatively related to seniority. 

As in the case of the theater managing directors, however, having attended 

a private school and, to a lesser extent, parental social class and educational attainment, again were negative predictors. Finally, the most important negative predictors of social orientation among art museum directors 

were a Ph.D. in art history and experience as a professor, two factors that 

also exerted a strong negative effect on managerialism and would seem to 

be associated with a strongly aesthetic conception of the museum’s role. 

On the other hand, the strongest and most significant positive predictor of 

social orientation among this group was participation in professional 

activities. 

The social orientation scores of orchestra managers were predicted 

largely by just three variables: holding other factors constant, social orientation was stronger among women than among men and, to a lesser extent, 

among managers with many years of experience in the orchestra field, and 

it was weaker for managers with prior arts experience. 

8O 
ATTITUDES TOWARD MISSIONS
 

The social orientation of CAA directors was unrelated to their organizations’ budgets and to their seniority. Indeed, the only important predictor 

was their college’s quality score: directors who had attended selective colleges were less likely, other things equal, to score high on this scale than 

others. By contrast, women directors had higher social orientation scores, 

other things equal, than men. 

It should be noted that variation in scores on the managerialism dimension were explained largely by adult educational and career experiences, 

whereas scores on the social dimension were largely influenced by family 

background or gender in every field. 

Conclusion 

Administrators’ responses to attitude questions about management and 

priorities of arts organizations clustered together in groups that reflected 

managerial and social orientations. The former emphasized efficiency and 

market standards in the governance of arts organizations; the latter emphasized education, outreach, and public-sector responsibility. Each orientation opposed, to some degree, more traditional aesthetic views, which stress 

both the role of arts organizations in supporting scholarship, preservation, 

and opportunities for innovation; and the importance of maintaining the 

autonomy of the arts from the demands of the market for efficiency on the 

one side, and of the public for relevance or service, on the other. 

In all fields but the community arts, the analyses indicated that this 

aesthetic perspective was more closely held by senior administrators, while 

younger managers were more likely to express social or managerial views. 

If this finding reflects stable differences among cohorts (as opposed to the 

effects of aging on attitudes), managerialism will probably increase in the 

performing arts and museums in the coming years. For the theater managing directors, for example, managerialism was negatively associated with 

having production experience, which fewer managing directors now possess. 

By the same token, it was positively associated with holding a business degree 

and having prior experience in marketing, public relations, or 

development--both of which are apparently becoming more common. And 

it was also positively associated with professional participation, which suggests that, other things equal, administrators with managerial perspectives 

are likely to play influential roles in their fields as a whole. 

Similarly, among the art museum directors, managerialism was 

negatively associated with years of experience but positively associated with 

participation. To the extent that young directors with managerial perspectives are more active in the art museum community, their orientations are 

likely to spread. Nonetheless, the increased percentage of directors with 

81 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

Ph.D.s and professorial experience--both powerful negative predictors of 

managerial perspectives--may represent a strong countervailing force in 

this field. 

By contrast, the regression analyses provided little reason to expect 

change in the social orientation of performing arts administrators. Yet among 

art museum directors, professional participation exerted such a strong 

positive effect in this regard that we might expect orientation to the museum’s 

educational mission to increase over time. Again, however, the strongly 

negative effects of a Ph.D. in art history and professorial experience could 

exercise a countervailing force. Indeed, if the museum’s historical alternation between education and connoisseurship is any guide, we can expect 

aesthetic and social orientations to continue to coexist in American art 

museums for many years. 

82
 
Index
 

A 

Administrative assistants, women as, 17 

Administrative orientations, 75, 77-81 

Administrators, age of at first executive 

position, 3; appreciation of art or artists 

managed, 61; attrition of, 4, 7, 37; 

autonomy as source of satisfaction for, 

31; certification of, 41; college 

background of, 2; and contact with 

works of art, 8, 31; criteria for selection of, 61; education of, 2; and jobs 

outside the arts, 4; qualities of, 61; 

recruiting of and stable career paths, 4; 

salaries in arts organizations, viii; 

sources of satisfaction for, 29-31 

Aesthetic aims of organizations, and 

market concerns, 70 

America, first art organization in, ix 

American Art Directory, ix, x 

American Arts, 56-57 

American Association of Museums 

(AAM), ix-x, 63; ethical standards of, 

66; meetings of, 54, 55, 56, 58 

American Council for the Arts, 54, 56 

American Symphony Orchestra League 

(ASOL), ix, 54, 55, 56, 59 

Art Bulletin, 56 

Art Journal, 56 

Art museum directors, 12; and accreditation for museums, 65; and administrative programs, opinions on, 50; administrative training for, viii, 66, 75; 

aesthetic vs. managerial or social orientation, 73; age at becoming executive, 

20; age cohorts, 5, 16, 37; age and 

leaving field, 38; age of women as, 13; 

apprenticeship for, 59; associate director for administration, viii; attrition 

among, 4; budget correlated with 

university attended, 27; business rather 

than government help sought by, 74; 

cohort differences among, 66; connoisseurship and contact with trustees, 

36, 38; and contact with artists and 

works of art, 31; coordination of planning and programming among museums, 74; dissatisfaction with contacts 

with government agencies, 31; effect of 

education on salary for, 8, 28; entry 

pattern for, 1, 2, 3, 17-18; ethical standards of, 63; and formal education, 2, 

15; and government relations, 5, 31; 

and jobs outside the arts, 38, 43-44; and 

management training for, 21, 43-44, 

67; managerial vs. social orientation, 

73-74; more satisfaction in smaller institutions for, 33; and need for artistic 

background, 63; and non-art business, 

21; noneconomic career rewards, 25; 

on-the-job training, 44-45; and 

organizational budgets, 3, 27; parents 

of, 15, 16, 27, 28; periodical reading 

by, 58; preparation of, 5, 42-44; private 

secondary school attended, 14, 39; professionalization of, 23; public relations 

for, 5; salaries, 25, 28; scholarship interests of, vii; selective college attendance by, 12; of small museums, 58; 

today vs. the 1930s, viii; training for 

senior cohort, 5; and university 

teaching salaries, 25; unprepared for 

83 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

management, 43-44; unqualified persons restricted by, 60; who they are, 

11; women as, 2-11, 32, 36 

Ar~ museums, accreditation of, 60-61; persormel employed by, vii, viii; public image of, viii; success in attracting 

visitors, viii 

Art organizations, boards concerned with 

administrative quality, viii; employment 

opportunities in, 1; few art museum 

directors served as officers in, 54; fulltime administrative roles, vii; internal 

growth of, vii 

Art world, institutionalization of, in early 

times, vii 

Artistic director of the 1950s, vii 

Arts administration, definition of, 9; 

degree programs in, viii; learning the 

jobs, 41. See also Art museum directors 

Arts-related panels of government, service 

on, 53-54 

Arts Reporting Service, 56, 57 

Association of Art Museum Directors 

(AAMD), ix, x, 7, 54, 56, 63 

Association of College, University, and 

Community Arts Administrators 

(ACUCAA), 54, 56 

Astin Index of "College Quality," 12, 79 

Attitudinal professionalism, 59-66 

Attrition, 37 

Behavioral professionalism, 53-59 

Billboard, 56 

Board members, characteristics of, 69-70 

Board relations, 42-43, 49, 50 

Boston Museum of Fine Arts, vii 

Boston Symphony Orchestra, establishment of, vii 

Budget preparation, as administrative duty, 

61 

Budget Ranges by Category and 

Discipline, Table 1-1, 13 

Budget size, by age and seniority, 27; and 

career experience, 37-38; predictors of, 

27-28 

CAA (Community Arts Agencies), and 

American Council for the Arts, 54, 56; 

entry from community arts fields, 19; 

full-time director of, xi; women directors of, 12 

CAA directors, 18-19; aesthetic vs. 

managerial orientation, 74; age cohort 

of, 16; age of women as, 13; and art 

management careers, 11; as artists, 2; 

attrition of, 4, 22, 36, 38; and board 

membership requirements, 70; and 

budget organization, 27, 28, 59; 

business vs. government as source of 

increased revenues, 75; and career 

issues definition, 23, 31, 33-39; and 

career paths and retention, 4-5; career 

satisfaction of, 32, 38; college selectivity of, 4, 12; and contacts with government agencies, 31; and contacts with 

works of art, 31; and dissatisfactions of, 

31; and donor contacts, 29; educational 

attainment and salary of, 27-28; entry 

patterns for, 1, 18; and family background of, 12, 28-29, 39; and financial 

management strength, 44; and formal 

education, 15; and job outside arts, 3, 

36; and labor relations training, 45; 

likelihood of leaving the field, 34, 36, 

38, 39; management courses evaluated 

by, 50; managerial backgrounds of, 19, 

44; marketing and public relations 

preparation for, 44; and NACAA 

meetings, 55; and organizational budget 

and professional involvement, 59; and 

organizational size and professional 

participation, 58-59; and organization 

size and satisfaction, 33; and organizational well-being, 65; and parental 

education, 4; preference for access over 

excellence, 75; preference for excellence over access in senior cohort of, 

77; professional activities, 33, 55, 

58-59; professionalism, lacking in, 7; 

recruitment of, 2, 18; and regional 

planning and coordination, 75; salaries 

of, 3-4, 26, 28, 34; and small organizations, 34, 38; social orientation vs. 

84 
INDEX
 

aesthetic for, 74-75; and top management at early stage, 20; and years of
 

education’s effect on budget, 27
 

Careers, in art management, 11; in community arts, unstructured, 34; expectations of, 4-5, 33-39; satisfactions in, 31,
 

38
 

Carnegie Corporation of New York, xii
 

Center for Advanced Study in the
 

Behavioral Sciences, xii
 

Cohort Categories for Each Discipline, by
 

First Year of First Job in Field, Table
 

1-2, 14
 

Cohorts, by discipline, 15
 

College Art Association, 54, 56
 

College degrees, among managers, 12
 

College, prestigious effect of, 4
 

Commitment, and experience, 36, 60
 

Consultants, 5, 45, 49, 50
 

Criteria Considered "Very Important" for
 

Selecting A Chief Administrator, by 

Field, Table 4-1, 62
 

Cultural Post, 56, 57
 

Curatorial positions, of art museum directors, 17
 

D 

Development, training in, 49, 50
 

Development of the American Professional
 

theater, 56
 

Directors, attracting and keeping of, 4-5,
 

and budget size, 13-14. See also
 

Administrators
 

Dombach, Chick, xii
 

Donor boards, 70
 

Education, commitment and board
 

membership, 70; and outreach, 75;
 

managers, 15; and salary, 27-28
 

Employment opportunities, in 1960s and
 

1970s, 1
 

Equal opportunities, for women managers,
 

5
 

Ethical standards, for board of trustees, 66;
 

for managers, 60
 

Evaluation of Learning Methods, by Field,
 

Table 3-3, 48
 

Evaluation of learning methods by
 

managers who used them, 49-50
 

Executive Summary, 1-9
 

F 

Family background, effects of, 2, 27
 

Federal grant-review panels, 54
 

Female administrators, increasing with
 

each cohort, 15
 

Financial management, preparation in, 5,
 

42, 49, 50
 

Flora Hewlett foundation, xii
 

Foundation for the Extension and Development of the American Professional
 

Theatre (FEDAPT), 56
 

Foundations and administrative training,
 

VIII
 

Friendship with other professionals, 54, 57
 

G 

Grantsmanship ability, 60
 

H 

Higginson, Henry Lee, vii
 

Horowitz, Harold, xii
 

Huntley, Elizabeth, xiii
 

Institution for Social and Policy Studies, 

School of Organization and Man, xii
 

Internships, 5, 17, 41, 47
 

Interorganizational career enhancement,
 

60
 

85 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
 

! 

Job Satisfactions, by Field, Table 2-2, 30
 

Job stability among managers, 20
 

K 

Kimberly, John, xii
 

I. 

Labor relations, preparation for, 5, 42, 49,
 

50
 

Larsen, Magali Sarfatti, 52
 

League of Resident Theaters (LORT), ix,
 

54, 56
 

Legislative Reports (American Arts
 

Alliance), 57
 

Legislative stand, by service organization,
 

61
 

Likelihood of Future Job Alternatives, by
 

Field, Table 2-3, 35
 

M 

Management and aesthetic tension, 8
 

Management consultants, rating of, 47
 

Management courses, value of, 5-6
 

Management degrees, relation to salary, 26
 

Management experience, 60, 61
 

Management skills, and board membership, 70
 

Management training, value of various
 

forms of, 45-49, 60, 61, 67
 

Managerial careers in arts, 19-22
 

Managerial cohorts, 14-16
 

Managerial expertise, attitude’s toward importance of, 60, 65
 

Managerial preparation, not associated
 

with budget size, 44; not associated
 

with career experience, 44
 

Managerial professionalism, 61
 

Managerial salaries, effect of gender on,
 

29
 

Managerial work experience, over time,
 

20-21
 

Managerialism, 78; and family
 

background, 79; women emphasize
 

more, 79
 

Managers, and attrition in the art field, 34;
 

differences between male and female,
 

12-13, 79; educational and social
 

backgrounds of, 12-16, 22; future expectations of, 34; of largest arts
 

organizations, 15, 22; learning of, 45;
 

in senior cohorts and larger organizations, 26
 

Managing directors, hired into top post,
 

17; of largest art organizations, 15, 22;
 

learning of, 45; with management
 

degrees, 26
 

Mandell, Marilyn, xii
 

Marketing, wide range of ways to learn, 

49, 50, 60
 

Mellon, Andrew W., Foundation, xii
 

Money giving, and board membership, 70
 

Mulligan, Barbara, xii
 

Museum director, and contacts with artists,
 

31; income determined by meritocracy
 

and school, 28; of larger institutions and
 

periodical reading, 58; scholarship interests of, viii; and selective colleges attended by, 12; of small museums, 58;
 

social background of, 12; today vs. the
 

1930s, viii
 

Museum Directory, 1980, ix, x
 

Museum News, 56, 58
 

N 

National activities, for older cohorts, 57
 

National Assembly of Community Arts
 

Agencies (NACAA), x, 54, 55, 56. See
 

also National Assembly of Local Arts
 

Agencies
 

National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, x, 56;
 

National Center for Educational Statistics
 

(NCES), ix; 1978 Museum Universe
 

Survey, ix
 

86 
National Endowment for the Arts, viii;
 

Museum Program, 54, 58; Theater
 

Policy and Grant panels, ix
 

National Endowment for the Humanities,
 

54, 58
 

National Institute of Museum Services, 

54, 58
 

New York State Council on the Arts, xii
 

New York Times Arts and Leisure (Sunday), 56
 

O 

On-the-job training, 5, 45, 47, 49
 

Orchestra managers and directors, 17;
 

aesthetic issues of, 74, 76; age at
 

becoming executive, 20; age cohort,
 

16; and American Symphony Orchestra
 

League, 54, 55; attrition of, 36;
 

background as musician, 2; with degree
 

in management, 4, 34; with degree in
 

music, 38; effect of education on salary,
 

28; entry patterns for, 17; evaluated
 

workshops highly, 50; experience in
 

field and budget size, 27; family
 

background of, 12, 27, 39; jobs of
 

leavers of field, 21, 39; managerial vs.
 

social orientation, 74; new cohorts unprepared in management, 44; organizational budget, 3, 28, 59; and organization size, 33; preference for excellence
 

over access, 76-77; professional acti~,ities of, 54, 59; recruitment into
 

field, 2; rejection of coordination in
 

planning and programming, 74; salary
 

of, 3, 25-26, 28; and selective college
 

attendance effect on budget, 27; tenure
 

and salary, 28 training of, 5; variation
 

between men and women’s satisfaction,
 

32; women as, 12, 15, 17
 

Organization, mission and strategy, 75-76;
 

attitudes toward, 69-81; size of, 23, 26
 

Organizational budget, and salary, 3, 4, 28
 

Outreach, 70, 78
 

INDEX
 

Parents’ education, 79
 

Performing arts directors. See Theater
 

directors
 

Periodical reading, 54, 55-56
 

Personnel management, training for, 49
 

Ph.D. versus curatorial service background, 22
 

Planning, ranges of ways to learn, 49-50
 

Powell, Walter, xii
 

Preventing unqualified people from
 

holding jobs, 61
 

Private secondary school attendance, 4,
 

27, 28, 79
 

Profession, definition of, 7
 

Professional activism, 53-55, 58; scale,
 

68 f.5
 

Professional associations, membership in,
 

53, 59
 

Professional disinterestedness and
 

altruism, 60
 

Professional participation, and professionalism, 52-68
 

"Professional project," 52
 

Professional workshops, 45
 

Professionalism, definition of, 6-7, 52-53,
 

67 f.1
 

Public relations, range of ways to learn,
 

49, 50, 61
 

Racial and ethnic representativeness of 

boards, 70
 

Recruitment and reward, 1-5, 11
 

Resident theaters. See Theater administrators
 

Revenue sources, from business rather
 

than government, 75
 

Rewards and expectations, 11, 25-40
 

Romo, Frank P., xiii
 

Rutenberg, Naomi, xiii
 

$ 

Salaries, and budget size, 25, 27-28; retain
 

87 
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS 

directors with, 4; versus intrinsic
 

satisfactions in smaller organizations,
 

31, 33; and years of experience, 28
 

Salary by Field, Table 2-1, 26
 

Sandor, Ella, xii
 

Self-Evaluation of Preparedness at the
 

Time of First Managership, by 

Management Function, Table 3-1, 43
 

Seminars, 45
 

Senior administrators, attitudes toward
 

policy and management issues, xi-xii; 

and aesthetics, 76; backgrounds of, xi; 

career experiences of, xi; evaluation of 

their preparation for position, xi; and 

national conference attendance, 57; 

satisfaction of, 32; and size of organizational budget, 4; 

Service organizations, functions of, 54, 61,
 

63, 67
 

Service Organization Functions Considered "Very Important," by Field,
 

Table 4-2, 64
 

Shaffer, John, xii
 

Simon, John G., xii
 

Smith, Mitchell, xii
 

Social background, of managers, 2, 12, 22
 

State and local activities, for more recent
 

cohorts, 57
 

State arts agencies (SAA) and discipline
 

panels, 55, 58, 59; sponsor of technical
 

assistance program, viii;
 

Stenberg, Kristen, xiii
 

Survey, methodology and design, ix-xi 

Symphony, 56
 

"1" 

Technological-assistance programs, run by
 

consulting f’trms, 41
 

Theater administrators, acting experience
 

of, 2, 3, 20; administrative experience
 

of, 3, 65, 76; aesthetics vs. management, 72; and age of women as, 13; attrition of, 36, 37, 38-39; and budget
 

size, 27-28; and contacts with board
 

members, 31; and contacts with donors,
 

29; and contacts with government agencies, 31, 43; educational attainment of,
 

2; entry patterns for, 1, 16-17; and
 

family background, 28; knowledge of
 

dramatic literature, 65; and management training, 47; and managerial
 

orientation, 80; members of League of
 

Resident Theaters, 54; and organization
 

budget size and satisfaction, 33; personnel of, ix, 26, 43; prior artistic experience, 21; variation between men
 

and women’s satisfaction, 31-32;
 

women and budget size, 15, 27, 38-39;
 

youngest cohort versus oldest, 5, 37, 38
 

Theatre Communications Group meetings, 

55
 

Theatre, 56
 

Theatre Journal, 56
 

Theatre Profiles, ix, x, 4
 

Three Most Important Characteristics of
 

Board Members, by Field, Table 5-1,
 

71
 

Top executive, selection of, 60
 

Training, 5-6, 41-51, 60
 

U 

University arts administration courses,
 

5-6, 45
 

University general management courses,
 

45
 

University-level teaching, and youngest
 

cohort, 22
 

Use of Five Learning Methods by Function, by Field, Table 3-2, 46
 

V
 

l/arie~, 56
 

Volunteers, 60, 65
 

Watts, Caroline, xii
 

Wealthy institutions, directors of, 14
 

Weiss, Janet, xii
 

Weist, Gretchen, xii
 

88 
INDEX
 

Women, as administrative assistants, 17; 

as administrators, 2; attrition of, 4, 15, 

36, 39; college majors of, 13; as directors, 4, 12-13, 22; earnings of, 4, 

26-27, 29; education of, 13; equal opportunities for, 5; as interns, 17; 

unlikelihood of moving to a larger 

organization, 36 

Work satisfaction, 29-33 

Workshop, as source of information, viii, 

41, 47, 49 

Yale University Program on Non-Profit 

Organizations, xii 

Younger managers, and state and local involvement, 59 

89 
PAUL DIMAGGIO is executive director of the Yale Program 

on Non-Profit Organizations and also associate professor in the 

Department of Sociology, in the School of Organization and 

Management, and in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies 

at Yale University. He has written widely about arts organization and cultural policy and is editor of Nonprofit Enterprise in 

the Arts: Studies in Mission and Constraint. He is currently writing 

a book on the social organization of the arts in the United States 

from the Civil War to the present. 
Managers of the Arts
 

Who are they ? Where do they come from ?
 

How knowledgeable are they about the arts they manage ?
 

What do they think about their responsibilities,
 

their training, and their futures ?
 

Why are some satisfied with their jobs and some are not ?
 

How well do their salaries and benefits compare
 

with those of administrators in other fields ?
 

A survey report by 

Paul D iM aggi_0_o 

Yale University 

Research Division Report #20 

National Endowment for the Arts