Josephine Caust - Arts Leadership in Contemporary Contexts

This book explores and critiques different aspects of arts leadership within contemporary contexts. While this is an exploration of ways arts leadership is understood, interpreted and practiced, it is also an acknowledgment of a changing cultural and economic paradigm. Understanding the broader environment for the arts is therefore part of the leadership imperative. This book examines aspects such as individual versus collective leadership, gender, creativity and the influences of stakeholders and culture. While the book provides a theoretical and critical understanding of arts leadership, it also gives examples of arts leadership in practice.

Josephine Caust is Principal Fellow in Arts and Cultural Management in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies

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The Aesthetics of Scientific Data Representation

More than Pretty Pictures

Edited by Lotte Philipsen and Rikke Schmidt Kjrgaard

Art: Process: Change

Inside a Socially Situated Practice

Loraine Leeson

Visualizing War

Emotions, Technologies, Communities

Edited by Anders Engberg-Pedersen and Kathrin Maurer

Perception and Agency in Shared Spaces of Contemporary Art

Edited by Cristina Albu and Dawna Schuld

Contemporary British Ceramics and the Influence of Sculpture

Iconoclasm, Monument, and Multiples

Laura Gray

Contemporary Citizenship, Art, and Visual Culture

Making and Being Made

Edited by Corey Dzenko and Theresa Avila

The Evolution of the Image

Political Action and the Digital Self

Edited by Marco Bohr and Basia Sliwinska

Artistic Visions of the Anthropocene North

Edited by Gry Hedin and Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud

Contemporary Artists Working Outside the City

Creative Retreat

Sarah Lowndes

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Arts Leadership in Contemporary Contexts

Josephine Caust

First published 2018

by Routledge

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2018 Taylor & Francis

The right of Josephine Caust to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Caust, Jo, author.

Title: Arts leadership in contemporary contexts / Josephine Caust.

Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge advances in art and visual studies | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017039763 | ISBN 9781138677319 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Arts--Management. | Leadership.

Classification: LCC NX760 .C38 2017 | DDC 706.8--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039763

ISBN: 978-1-138-67731-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-55959-9 (ebk)

This book is dedicated to my parents, Tess and David Caust. They always encouraged me to ask questions and not accept easy answers.

A writing and research journey is never accomplished alone. There are many people behind who are helping, supporting and commenting to make the journey possible. Thank you most of all to Dr. Max Lees who has been there throughout, contributing insight and commentary. In addition, I am most grateful to Dr. Martin Caust, Dr. Lesley Stonehouse and Dr. Jula Szuster for giving their time and thought into reading and giving feedback on various drafts of this book. I want to thank the Australian visual artist Annette Bezor who generously allowed me to use her beautiful painting on the front cover of this book. I would also like to thank my fellow researchers from around the world who have helped me shape arguments and understand more about the theory and practice. I would like to thank in particular the artists and arts organizations who have provided many of the stories that are included here, and contributed to my understanding of the arts and arts leadership more generally. Finally, I would like to thank Felisa Salvago-Keyes, Christina Kowalski, Jenny Guildford and everyone from Routledge for making this book a reality.

When I began working in the arts sector as a young woman just out of university, I realized early on that the environment of the arts was a lot more complicated than I had thought. While I was passionate about theater, I had no understanding of how work was programmed, who got funding and what mattered. I learned quickly that other forces that I did not understand influenced decisionmaking. I began a journey then to try to understand how the arts worked, who made decisions and what influenced that decisionmaking. I cannot say that through the journey all my questions have been answered, but I understand more now about the arts sector and the complexities that exist within it. I am still passionate about the arts and grateful that I have always been able to work in various roles that are directly connected with that passion. This book is part of my lifelong exploration of trying to understand the arts and the leadership within.

Arts and leadership are both complex and layered, and the focus of much attention, conversation, debate and controversy. A Google search of leadership yields the astonishing number of 771,000,000 hits, while the term art gets even more at 6,120,000,000. Framing arts and leadership together might be seen as a rather foolhardy or brave undertaking, but that is what this book attempts to do.

The philosopher A. C. Grayling asks his readers to imagine a world without art. A world that is grey, homogenous, devoid of decoration and humor; in other words, a society that is boring and meaningless (Grayling 2015). Just by doing this, he encapsulates how important art is to society. Nevertheless, art may be an impossible concept to define. Everyone has their own opinion of what art is. When I think of art, I think about the way it affects me it heightens my senses and makes me think about issues in a different way. The making of art is an activity that has existed from earliest human times, occurs globally and is a way our world is interpreted, reflected, celebrated and critiqued. Artists talk about art from different perspectives. For example:

The only valid thing in art is that which cannot be explained... If there is no mystery then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art.