Americans for the Arts

How does cultural identity impact arts leadership?

“We really need someone who’s more out front, who relishes the spotlight, who can shake the hands and kiss the babies.” (A major donor)

Let us picture the figurehead of an organization. The lighting rod. The glad-handing executive, the creative dynamo, the visionary. The confident and outspoken advocate with the answers. Is that what we want from a leader? Can that be anyone, any gender, any age (within reason), any race? Can it be a senior black woman? A young disabled veteran? Can that be a third-generation Asian-American, like me?

This essay is cross-posted on Linda Essig’s blog, Creative Infrastructure

There’s a line in Alfred Uhry’s play Driving Miss Daisy that has stuck with me for the last 30 years. In response to a well-meaning, but misguided (and forgotten) comment by Daisy, an elderly, White, Jewish, southern widow, to Hoke, her equally elderly Black chauffeur, Hoke replies, “How do you know what I see unless you can look out of my eyes.” I heard the play at least 50 times over several years serving as its associate lighting designer on numerous companies but that is the only line I remember today. I remember it because it is foundational to the development of my personal ethic of cultural equity. In one way or another, Hoke’s reminder that we all have unique, individual, and valuable perspectives formed by unique, individual, and valuable lives informs the way I interact with students, colleagues, board members, artists, neighbors, and all the other people with whom I interact who neither look like me nor believe what I believe.

Everyone has to be part of the change. We have an obligation not to just sit and complain. If you’re not part of the process, you can’t complain about the outcome. I was one of the skeptics—I questioned often, “Is this real?” And in seven years, I’ve watched this place change and then go back, move forward and then fall back. But this time feels different.

Despite the fact that minority communities are the emerging majority, diversity in the arts isn’t growing at the speed of reality. This paints a very troubling picture of what can be the “future” of arts in America—a future which, if trends continue, is less diverse than the American public.

Several community organizations are working to create innovative solutions that improve access to capital related to Memphis’s creative class.

For the past seven years, we have been developing super-hybrid work that pushes us to seek new ways to define quality, integrity, and success. After many years of development and touring, we wanted to understand and be able to talk about this work among ourselves and with others who are working similarly. Throughout the project, we tried developing surveys ourselves and with support from other people in the field. We got some useful feedback but most of it didn’t get to the heart of both the social justice and artistic goals of the work. Aesthetic Perspectives helped us do that.