Paper presented at Conference on the Economic Impact of the Arts, sponsored by Cornell University, Graduate School of Business and Public Administration, held in Ithaca, New York, May 27-28, 1981.

Arts management has a history going back at least to Hellenistic Greece, where leading citizens assumed responsibility not only for funding Dionysian festivals, but also for arranging to provide actors, playwrights, and other professional participants. These civic leaders, called choregoi, had the option of providing funding and management for the theatrical festivals or outfittng a warship. Both were honorable choices in that society.

Academic programs, such as the one I direct, attempt to combine within an individual the sensitivity of the artist with the skills of the professional manager. Such efforts could be construed as preposterous, were it not for a social phenomenon - institutionalization - which has influenced virtually every aspect of society. Americans especially have the tendency to organize into groups or systems, probably as a result of the vastness of the country and the pluralistic nature of its people and economy.

In any case, arts management is the profession that seeks to assist the arts to flourish within an institutionalized society. It may be defined as the management of institutions, large and small, whose mission is cultural programming, whether directly or indirectly. The structure, methods, and problems of these institutions are, by and large, directly comparable to those of similarly sized businesses in the for-profit sector. (p. 90-91)