Home > News

Arts Administration Students Talk
With Chair of National Endowment for the Arts

April 7, 2008

Do the arts have a bright future? Wisconsin MBA students in Arts Administration had the chance to ask someone in a unique position to know.

Dana Gioia, who chairs the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), spoke via an interactive videoconference with students, alumni and special guests of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration on March 12. Students explored the role and value of the arts with Gloia and got an inside look at the challenges his federal agency faces in advancing the role of the arts in America.

“It was thrilling to connect as a class with the chairman of the NEA,” said Bolz Center student Jara Kern. “He spoke about the state of the arts in our country with an optimism that belies much of what we hear in the media.”

Gioia, who has held the leadership post at the NEA since 2002, has spent much of his tenure addressing controversy surrounding the agency and pursuing national initiatives on reading, theater, writing and arts education. His interaction with Bolz Center students was made possible by Victoria Hutter, an alumna of the program and the NEA’s acting director of communications.

“A job in arts administration lies at the interstices of all these different areas: politics, fundraising, arts, education, federal policy,” said Gioia in reflecting on his work. “The interesting thing about arts administration is that the whole world comes trooping into your office on a regular basis.”

The Bolz Center, founded in 1969, is one of the nation’s premiere programs in arts administration. Its alumni manage hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cultural facilities and programming across the nation. Its MBA program in Arts Administration combines the tools of business with the tools of community building to help arts and cultural organizations thrive.

The Bolz Center Visiting Speaker Series has long brought leading arts administration professionals from across the country to Madison to share professional insights and experiences, and to meet individually and in small groups with current students. Bolz Center Director Andrew Taylor said videoconference technology is allowing even more national leaders in the arts to interact with students.

Other recent speakers have included:

• Neill Archer Roan, President, The Roan Group
• Midori, International Violinist
• Mark Nerenhausen, President & CEO, Broward Center for the Performing Arts
• Steven Wolff, President, AMS Planning & Research Corp.
• Alan Brown, President, WolfBrown
• Diane Ragsdale, Associate Program Officer, Performing Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• Russell Willis Taylor, President/CEO, National Arts Strategies