February 10, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, recently announced a $500,000 program designed to help struggling arts groups by providing them with free emergency advice.
But some nonprofit blog writers are raising questions about the effort.
Andrew Taylor, a professor of arts administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, writes that the program is a “wonderful” idea, but he says neither the Kennedy Center nor its president, Michael M. Kaiser, has “the capacity (or full range of insight) required to engage the tidal wave of cultural leaders who need help.”
On his blog, the Artful Manager, he encourages the Kennedy Center to work with universities, state and local arts councils, and other organizations that have traditionally helped cash-strapped organizations.
The theater manager who writes the blog Butts in the Seat seems to agree and writes that to be successful, the emergency effort needs to be bigger than the Kennedy Center.
“My optimism and hope is that the current necessity is the mother of invention of a method of partnering, mentoring, information sharing, and learning that arts and cultural institutions sorely need. If some strengthening network emerges out the road Michael Kaiser and the Kennedy Center have started upon, that will be great,” writes the anonymous author.
And Mike Burns, a nonprofit consultant, questions what lessons a well-established institution can teach a small arts group.
“I mean really, can the local mom-and-pop shop ever replicate the lessons that the very big and well financed Kennedy Center has to offer? I guess the answer is that the Kennedy Center thinks so,” he writes on his Nonprofit Board Crisis blog.
Read The Chronicle’s article about the Kennedy Center program. (A paid subscription or free temporary pass is required to view the Chronicle article.)
What do you think of the center’s effort? Click on the comment button to share your views.
