My new book, Managing the Arts in Rural Areas, is on sale now!  You can receive a 30% discount when you buy direct from rowman.com and use promo code RLFANDF30 by February 2024.  Also available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Battenkill Books.   You can get a signed copy when ordering from Battenkill Books. The post Managing the Arts in Rural Areas appeared first on The David Snider ..read more

Photo by Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times How can arts organizations become more relevant? How can they better serve their communities? How can they afford to pursue greater diversity, equity, inclusion, and access? In the wake of COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and so many more disruptions, these questions have come to the fore – and so many arts organizations are making well-intentioned statements but not radically changing in order to answer them. So many arts organizations have become too weighed down with large facilities and staffs over the last forty years, leaving l ..read more

Last week it was announced that the former space of Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis, MN, was sold for $10M, just over a decade after a former board member bought the space for a steal. Dominique Serrand, the theatre’s longtime artistic director posted the article announcing the sale on Facebook along with this statement:  “How one board member screwed the company He vowed to serve.” Youch.  I was surprised to see that this sad saga is still playing out. Partially because I’ve been interested in how Jeune Lune ended for years and wrote a case study about the company’s demise i ..read more

I’ve visited this huge piece at Mass MoCA three times so far. It dives deep into the events of two Bloody Sundays, woven into the events of today and the continual struggle. As we walk through the piece, shadow figures in protests and battles float across the walls. Ships carrying enslaved people are shown crossing the ocean. A driving beat and nightmarish music underscore the growth of capitalism in the face of humanity. Perhaps the most moving part is the video at the end of Deon Jones, who was brutalized by police while protesting the murder of George Floyd. After seeing video of Mr. Jones ..read more

Mrs. Doubtfire on Broadway Sara Krulwich/The New York Times On January 2, the New York Times announced that the musical version of Mrs. Doubtfire would “pause” on Broadway until March, with hopes they can reopen and run longer then. The producers shared that if they did not take this drastic step, the show might close permanently in the coming days or weeks. This means, tragically, that all of the people working on the show and in that theater are unemployed until at least March.  But it also seems a long shot that Doubtfire will ever re-open, especially given its negative reviews so far ..read more

The Clark Institute in Williamstown, MA features art that goes way beyond its museum walls. The paths and woods surrounding the Clark welcome visitors to revel in the beauty and art of the natural world. Walking there today offered a respite from the dreary gray of mid-January, and reminded me how important it is for every arts organization to connect with its community and surroundings, in ways that go way beyond the art that’s on our walls or stages.   The post The Art at the Clark appeared first on The David Snider ..read more

The artist’s self portrait. L.A.-based artist Richard Nielsen began painting portraits of people masked during the first year of the pandemic. He soon asked people to send him masked selfies from all around the world. The resulting exhibit – currently at Mass MoCA – is a series of 48 masked portraits hung “like an epic Zoom call,” according to Mass MoCA. These are chilling yet heartening images show us joy, doubt, and everything in between. We our friends and neighbors in their faces, as we all continue to try and survive and thrive.           The post This is Not a ..read more

January 26 at 7pm Audiences and Equity: What’s the relationship between audience engagement and the pursuit of equity in this new era? Donna Walker-Kuhne, Walker International Communications Group, Inc.; Patrick Torres, Raleigh Little Theatre; Chad Bauman, Milwaukee Rep. Register here. Listening to the Field: Artists and Arts Leaders Discuss What’s Happened and What’s Next Wednesdays, January 26, February 16, March 23, and April 6 at 7pm. Free! Join us for a series of discussions about the state of the arts in 2022, including issues of equity, programming, audience engagement, funding, and wor ..read more

Wheat Field with Cypresses, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889 Beyond his amazing use of color, for me Van Gogh’s work stands out because of his texture – the layers and layers and swoops of paint in his work. Which is why one really needs to see the work in person to take it all in. Not on a postcard or poster, which inevitably rob any piece of its texture, movement, and deep colors. I was lucky to see Wheat Field with Cypresses at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in early December. It’d been several years since I’d experienced this one, and I again noticed the glorious three-dimensional swoops, curves, s ..read more

Dress of Opening and Close of Being by Lesley Dill, 2008. This striking piece is exhibited at the Smith College Museum of Art. The artist describes this piece as “…a dress of Being-ness. Her persona is a stately testament to the floral blossom on new life, and to the end of life with skeletons drawn from Tibetan art. Her dress is at once a gown of glory and also an armor…” A gown of glory and also an armor. Sounds like a fit for any of us in today’s world. The post Glory and Armor appeared first on The David Snider ..read more