Making a life and a living in the arts
Arts Management Program sets the stage

Chloe Bailey, '10, experienced the lights of Broadway during her internship with a New York theater company.

BY BARBARA FITZGERALD

Now in its fifth year as an interdisciplinary concentration, the University’s Arts Management Program has already become, according to program co-coordinator Kathy Panoff, “the go-to place for the best arts management talent around.”

Panoff, executive director of the Modlin Center for the Arts, and the program’s other co-coordinator, Richard Waller, executive director of University Museums, say arts organizations around the country are now calling the two directly to ask who from the program is graduating and looking for work. “We’re pretty proud of that,” says Panoff.

Waller had planted the seed for the program with a museum studies course he began teaching in 1991. “People of my generation didn’t have such courses available when we were undergraduates,” he says. He adds that he and Panoff work closely on the program, “keeping it viable and making it exciting for the students.”

Waller’s first class explored the financial and organizational concerns of museum operation, as well as the creative elements involved in the job. Panoff began teaching a performing arts counterpart in 1997, the year after the Modlin Center opened.

Program offerings now include courses in philanthropy in the arts and managing performing arts organizations, a seminar in museum studies, two accounting courses, two marketing courses and an individual internship. Students explore leadership, fundraising, finance, legalities, strategic planning, research, ethics, cultural studies, public relations, management, curatorial skills, operations and more.

Panoff is working with the provost to develop a more broadly based nonprofit management concentration—“a terrific opportunity for commerce between the schools. Our arts management program involves courses in the arts and sciences, business and SCS, but it would be great to more intentionally include leadership and law.”

Meanwhile, the program is still experimenting and expanding. David Howson, associate director of the Modlin Center, will offer in the fall “Opening Nights: The Impact of Arts Organizations in America” as part of the new Sophomore Scholars-in-Residence program, a Living and Learning experience at Lakeview Residence Hall. The class will serve as an introduction to arts management to any student interested in working with nonprofit organizations.

Arts management courses are open to students from any school, but in order to receive the concentration, a student must major or minor in studio art, art history, music, or theatre and dance. Waller says the other “prerequisite” is that students engaged in the program should possess both artistic sensibility and business acumen. 

“The response to the program has been strong,” he says, “because it allows more students who have a passion for the arts to actually make a life of it and a living from it.”

Is it creativity or business?

Through course work, internships and, sometimes independent study, the program initiates students into the world of organizing and managing arts operations and facilities. Students receive both theoretical knowledge and practical experience, with an emphasis on nonprofit performing arts organizations and museums.

Student internships have included assignments with organizations as varied and prominent as the Museum of Modern Art, Atlantic Theatre Company, the New York History Society and Sotheby’s Auction House, all in New York City; the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in Florida; the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville; Arena Stage, the Phillips Collection and the Smithsonian Museum, all in D.C.; and the Water Tower Theatre in Dallas. Locally, students have interned at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Theatre IV, Barksdale Theatre, the Richmond Symphony, Richmond Ballet and the Valentine Richmond History Center.

Students also gain experience working for the Modlin Center and University Museums—about 80 students are currently employed internally.

Supporting Panoff’s claim that UR is now a “go-to” program for employers is the hiring record of students. Waller says the study does not always lead exactly where one might think.

Kristen Malanoski, for instance, works as a government contractor for the General Service Administration as part of the historical preservation team for the modernization of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. She uses her research skills in art history, as well as her training in photography, artifact handling and conservation.

Malanoski says her internship proved to be invaluable during job interviews. “Finding a job in the nonprofit/museum world is incredibly competitive, especially in today’s economic climate. Being able to talk about professional experiences in curating exhibits and completing collections and conservation work, instead of just about classes, was a great foot in the door.”

Jason Tseng, ’08, says he was “flabbergasted” by the quality of internship and interview opportunities that came his way. “I interned with the Washington National Opera, and the name recognition of that internship led directly to job interviews—and second and third callbacks. Tseng is now development assistant with Theatre Communications Group in New York City, a national service organization for nonprofit theater in America.

“My arts management courses,” says Tseng, “were structured to be more practical than theoretical,” with the result that he learned how to negotiate contracts and write press releases, annual fund letters and budgets. 

Students describe their internship experiences as not just career changing but life changing. Chloe Bailey ’10, a theatre major and business administration minor took the arts management concentration as a way of combining her passion for theater and her original goal of a career in business. She says her internship was definitely the highlight of the program. “I interned at an off-Broadway theater company that produces many successful shows on Broadway, and I loved it.”

Paul Kappel, '10, interned at the regional Arena Stage theater in D.C. and says the arts management program bridges his dual interests in theater and business.

Paul Kappel ’10, another theatre arts major/business minor, says the arts management program is one of the major reasons he came to UR. “The program has allowed me to bridge what I like most about art with my existing interest in business.” Kappel’s internship was at Arena Stage, one of the nation’s leading regional theaters in Washington, D.C., and there he found deep connections between what he learned in class and what he saw on the job. “What I did in my internship was the material I learned in my course work,” he says.

Real-world exposure also is enhanced through the Quigg Visiting Lectureship in Arts Management that brings leaders in the field to campus for two- or three-day residencies. The first year featured a lecturer from the Kennedy Center, and last year’s resident was a labor attorney who works for the League of Resident Theatres negotiating collective bargaining agreements with Actors Equity Association and other unions. This spring, the program plans to bring in an arts program coordinator from a major national foundation.

Waller and Panoff say parents appreciate the practical aspects of the program. “When I first came to the University,” says Panoff, “it became clear to me that the biggest obstacle in cultivating arts majors and minors was the fact that parents didn’t see the arts as a viable career field, [yet] the same parents seemed to feel strongly about their children getting a strong liberal arts education. The caveat seemed to be ‘as long as it leads to some sort of gainful employment.’”

Panoff believes the concentration is beginning to change that sort of thinking. Nonprofit philanthropy, she points out, is the fourth largest industry in the country, and just as in business, people at the high end of the career can make a great deal of money. “It’s a good, viable and rewarding way to make a living,” she says.