John Michael Kohler Arts Center – Butts In the Seats

So something of a tangential post to my entry yesterday featuring churches whose design and technology rival performing arts venues. Today’s topic– performance spaces you want to work at based on superficial qualities like the name or appearance alone. This is an audience participation post so feel free to add your dreams and stories in the comments box.

I will start mine out with a little confession. I used to hear promotions on the radio for Live at the Concertgebouw. The Concertgebouw is one of the premiere music venues in the world located in Amsterdam.

Not knowing this, however, I thought they were saying Concertebrau which I imagined was a concert hall in which Germans enjoyed their two great passions, classical music and excellent beer. I pictured Germans reclining, great steins in hand and reveling in the music. Since it was pretty much accepted gospel that Europeans had a much greater appreciation of classical music than Americans, I figured attendance was a commonplace past time at which beer was present.

My second theory was that there wasn’t a lot of beer involved, but that the Germans envisioned the creation of great music much like the crafting of a great brew–involving a lot of investment of time and balanced elements but ultimately intoxicating. That was a little more wishful thinking.

Not that the crossing of a concert and beer hall was very realistic. I was almost disappointed to learn that the real place was in Amsterdam. Can’t tell from the website if they serve beer.

The other places that have caught my imagination just on the basis of outward appearances are the Chocolate Church in Bath, Maine; Albuquerque’s KiMo Theatre with its cool interior featuring skulls with glowing eyes and swastika. Though I have never been there, I have mentioned my infatuation with the whole idea of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center a couple times in this blog. Same with Wolf Trap. I don’t know what they are like now, but long ago I got my hands on an American Players Theatre brochure and thought it had some pretty clever and enticing writing. Enough that I still think I need to get to Wisconsin one summer soon.

I am sure there are other deserving arts organizations who have been the beneficiaries of my lust at a distance, but I can’t think of them at the moment. There are a couple that have not requited my lust and thus must suffer not being mentioned.

Any places that have fired your imaginations, gentle readers, if only based on a cool name or well designed brochure?

I am not quite sure what drew my eye to it but Fractured Atlas did an interview with the founders of the Philadelphia Art Hotel this January. I don’t know why, but the project just looks and sounds a like a cool idea.

Personally, if I were a visual artist, I would probably tend toward the residencies in rural settings which is where a lot of them are located. Ready access to the Philadelphia art scene is not to be undervalued though.

I would probably sell my children into slavery to participate in the Arts/Industry program at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

It is probably fortunate then that I am not a visual artist. And I don’t have kids either. That is probably better since they have a performing arts program and I would still love to work there for the washrooms alone!

I don’t really talk about artist residencies too much. Perhaps because there aren’t too many for arts administrators. If you check the residency search tool at the Alliance of Artistic Communities website, administration is not even a search option. The only place I am aware of that offers one is The Studios of Key West which I wrote about 18 months ago.

I start to think that people like Michael Kaiser are correct when he talks about how few training opportunities there are to make people good arts administrators. There aren’t many opportunities for them to take a retreat and do research. Though to be fair, residencies for arts managers isn’t really part of the ethos. Arts administrators don’t get granted long periods of time to hone their skills. I don’t know if there is a market for offering residencies to them. How many administrators would ask for the opportunity? Most would say they don’t have the time. Kaiser talks about starting his day at 4 am which pretty much reflects the trend for many arts administrators.

One might say the Kennedy Center’s Art Management Fellowships are a sort of residency for arts managers. It combines practical work experience around the Kennedy Center with classes on relevant topics. And I believe they provide a $20,000 stipend to support yourself which is really pretty decent compared to what I was paid to intern. Though since the fellowships are for mid-career administrators,they would be bringing much more to the table than an intern would.

In any case, I would imagine the days there are just as long and involved as the position the arts manager left to become a fellow. That doesn’t give a lot of time for reflection and thinking about what the future of the arts might be and how one can restructure their organization to move forward to acknowledge these changes.

This summer I waswoolgathering a little about taking advantage of low real estate prices in Detroit to help grow an arts community there. I wonder if I was being too narrow in my vision and should have been thinking of including opportunities for arts managers to cultivate their skills too since there are so few opportunities.

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Concert And Brew

Arts Administrator Residencies-Is There A Need?

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