This article deploys the term "artist-producer" to respond to Gary D. Beckman's (2007) call for an effective definition for artist entrepreneurship, one that illustrates the productive work that artists do and counters longstanding romantic notions of artists as creative geniuses who are unconcerned with commerce. Unpacking the term entrepreneur historically and focusing on its troubling relationship to class, race, and gender, even among entrepreneurship scholars, I illustrate how and why many artists still resist the de facto entrepreneur label even as they take what many identify as entrepreneurial approaches. Returning to Beckman's domain of training, though outside of the university setting, I show how a number of contemporary community-based artist training and professional development programs across the U.S. reflect, even nurture, the longstanding artist ambivalence to entrepreneurship even as they fulfill some of its key dynamics; moreover, I note how these programs are creating a very specific approach to entrepreneurship, or entrepreneurs, by training what I call "artist-producers" -artists capable of balancing both their expressive ambitions with their material concerns in strategic ways. Ultimately, the artistproducer designation illustrates what many scholars, artists and arts organizers talk about when we talk about artist entrepreneurship; it defines a type of entrepreneurship that by its very structure acknowledges the nation's weak cultural infrastructure and offers a collaborative, productive, even sustainable way of working for artists.
Arts entrepreneurship," like its close relative "arts management," has a complex pedigree and a sprawling footprint. Its frameworks and practices span many disciplines. Its areas of focus include the person, the process, and the outcome of entrepreneurial effort. But while we argue about the various branches and twists of this evolving ecosystem, we may be missing the forest for the trees.As an older sibling of arts entrepreneurship, arts management offers some useful markers to find our way. Arts management has been aptly labeled a "borrower's field" (DeVereaux and Vartiainen, 2009, p. 8; Brindle and DeVereaux, 2011, p. 5) as it draws from many disciplines in both theory and practice -visual and performing arts, humanities, business, political science, social science, and on and on. But arts management could also be labeled a "burrower's field" as its practitioners, scholars, and supporters often dig their way into emerging and established domains in search of money, shelter, and positive attention.Centuries ago, the arts found support by burrowing toward the values and vanities of affluent merchants, nobility, or organized religion, and borrowing the trappings of status and class. In the mid-20th Century, artists and arts organizations burrowed toward public purpose, growing philanthropic wealth, and nationalism, borrowing the tools and tactics of the evolving not-for-profit sector. More recently, the arts have burrowed into urban renewal, educational achievement, health and wellness, social cohesion, and a range of other favored foci of philanthropy and policy, often borrowing the processes and practices of each related field. So it's no wonder that "arts entrepreneurship" faces a similar kerfuffle about what it is and what it isn't, and how we might practice, promote, or study it. The larger concept of
What brings the two halves of our expanded, double issue together, other than rigorous scholarship and shared commitment to our growing field, is this moment of crisis and change. During our editorial process, the world went into quarantine, and like many arts scholars we found ourselves asking how the journal's field-building aims would contribute to the resilience of arts organizations facing unparalleled crisis. Dance studies and arts policy scholar Sarah Wilbur writes eloquently of the challenges facing her as a professor for in an op-ed for Duke University Arts 1 : My biggest challenge, honestly, was trying to avoid showing my own sense of devastation in seminar about the dire and still-changing statistics on the US cultural workforce under COVID-19. We already know: 30 percent of museums that have closed will not reopen2; a projected $4.51 Wilbur, S. (2020). "It's Hard to Stay Optimistic." Duke Arts. https://arts.duke.edu/news/sarah-wilbur-it-ishard-to-stay-optimistic/.
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