Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice. I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/) My most recent role was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA. Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

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Forced Evaluation

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The most attention demanding thing on my desk these days is a College Strategic Plan form I have to fill out. Essentially what it means is that I have to figure out how what the theatre is doing and what it wants to do fits in with the goals and objectives of the college as a whole.

As reluctant as I am to admit it, this is a good thing. The common wisdom is that most arts organizations write up their mission statement and then put it away in a closet only bringing it out to copy it down for grant proposals. This whole project forces me to look at the mission statement and think about how it can manifest itself in the context of the college mission.

This is not to say I want to do it. I pretty much spent 3 hours today skirting around the edges of it, allowing myself to be distracted from it to deal with other concerns.

Eventually I got down to business and to my surprise, found that I actually had a lot of ambitions that fit into the goals and objectives.

Now my problem is writing justifications for what I want to do. The vogue these days is student learning outcomes and since I am a non-instructional unit falling under a non-credit division. One of the unrealized goals of the last strategic plan was to upgrade the position of the theatre clerk to a classification that reflected the job she actually does.

This time around however, I have to fill in a box that describes how student learning will benefit. I just don’t think it would be wise to note that paying for the job she is actually doing will prevent her from venting her frustrations with a shotgun thereby securing the safety of the students.

Speaking of unrealized goals, looking over the old strategic plan and discussing it with the clerk and my predecessor, I came to realize there were a lot of goals in there that other divisions are probably only vaguely aware they were supposed to be accomplishing in conjunction with us.

My predecessor decided to respond to the politics of the college by finding every opportunity she could think of to propose programs and projects, many of which included other divisions and departments. Her strategy was to get the theatre mentioned in as many places a possible so that the 99.5% of the faculty, staff and administration that never attended performances would at least gain the impression that a lot was moving and shaking over there.

So I am reading over the old document and am getting really impressed by the ambitious plans people had. I am on my way out the door to talk to our once and future partners about revisiting these goals for the future when the office manager stops me and sort of sheepishly informs me that she and the old theatre made the goal up with minimal consultation with these other people.

Now I am sitting here thinking what a good idea some of these things are (which is probably why they were among those that made the cut to be included in the last plan) and wondering if I will have the staffing to pull it off and should I maybe go and consult with these other folks in earnest.

Drive Through Art

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Courtesy of Artsjournal.com, I read a partially satiric, partially serious article from The Guardian. The author pokes fun at the types of people who attend those mega-art shows that you have to reserve times to see.

But his more serious point is that these type of art shows are really no way to view art. Do you really get a chance to understand what you are viewing with hordes of people passing through and subtle encouragements to move along and make space for the next tour group.

He also points out, quite correctly, that there is something of a herd mentality about needing to see the works at a certain time and place when the show is in progress, but feeling no desire to do so when the pieces are ensconced in their home museums.

It attaches, also, to the self-defeating way in which we choose to appreciate art. That is not to say that we must have conditions that enable us to spend as much time in front of a painting as Wollheim, but the herd instinct the modern blockbuster show produces does not do the greatest paintings justice.

This point became clear to me the other day when, in the National Gallery, I shared a room of Titians with a security guard all but uninterrupted for half-an-hour. In that room were some of the same paintings that I had struggled to see at the National’s Sainsbury wing temporary exhibition of Titian in 2003.

The reason this piece caught my fancy today was that just last week I was thinking that I was glad I had taken the opportunity to visit the Dali Museum
when I was in Florida rather than having to be in a position of viewing his art with a horde now that the pieces are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Okay, granted, I don’t live near Philly any more–but if I did…! Visiting the Dali in Florida would still be worth it after doing the Philly show since I presume the side of a barn size pieces found there didn’t make it to Philadelphia.

Going to see a Dali show at all would be worth it. I think that my visit to the Florida museum was the first time I realized just how crappy a job posters and other reproductions did at revealing the subtle and not so subtle elements of art work.

A Measure of Entry

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I had some people from the state disabilities board come visit my theatre at my request today. When they visited last about 6 years ago to provide input into renovations, there were apparently some miscommunications. I was told that my predecessors were told we couldn’t have reserved seating in the theatre because of ADA standards. The people from the board told me the only reason they would advise that would be if people with disabilities couldn’t order reserved seats and everyone else could. Certainly that is not the case with my theatre.

They also came to assess two locations on row E that clearly appear to be seating for people in wheelchairs. Six years ago we were told that we couldn’t have people in wheelchairs there because it wasn’t up to code. Unfortunately, it was a verbal comment so no one knew how the problem could be fixed. In addition, because it appears to be a place for wheelchairs, is closer to the stage and doesn’t require a slow ride up on a chair lift, people really want to sit there.

The preliminary comments of the gentlemen who were assessing the space was that it can clearly accommodate wheelchairs without fear of them falling to the level below. However, other people in the row might not be able to pass them. This was sort of disheartening because my theatre pretty much has the widest row of any theatre on the island.

If they are right, it may require knocking a couple seats off near the location and building an extension so that people could pass in front of them. I would really consider losing the 2 seats on either side of the theatre because the locations really make it easy for everyone involved, theatre staff and customers both. We rarely have to use the chair lift because we only have 2-3 wheelchairs at any one time in the theatre. And we haven’t sold the theatre out so often that we would be wishing we had those last 4 seats to sell.

Now I just have to wait for the official report. At least if they say I can’t seat people there, I will finally have it in writing.

Of course, while they were there, they noticed a few other little problems. None of them were really serious and a few of them are fairly easy to fix by simply moving some signs a few inches. One of them ironically was a very specific fix that their office had suggested 6 years earlier.

Interestingly enough the ADA standards are a little racist and sexist. A lot of them seem to be based on the size of white Anglo-Saxon males. As a result, to be in compliance, I have to move some Braille signs to a place that is natural for someone of my build to read, but could be a little stretch for the generally shorter Asian and Polynesian population which comprise the majority here on Oahu.
It never occurred to me until the guy pointed the spot out and I realized it would be above the heads of quite a few of those who use the restrooms. He commented that the standards were based on Mainland norms.

I also learned that there is no grandfather clause exemptions for ADA requirements. While age of a building will exempt a building of other architectural requirements, the best you can do with ADA requirements is meet them to the fullest extent possible.

Overall I felt good about having them come out. For every little flaw they found, they also found an element of our set up which most other companies did not have.

Also, it is probably good to have an assessment like this periodically so that one can be a little proactive about making changes and show good faith effort if someone accuses your organization of being deficient.

In Your Right Mind

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In case you missed seeing it on Artsjournal today because it was a holiday for you, an article appeared from Wired suggesting that the future prosperity of the US lay in right brain activities.

The author foresees that as more left brain logic based jobs either get off shored or relegated to increasingly sophicated software, a demand for people with intuitive and empathic skills will emerge.

There was an interesting section that might mean good things for the arts organizations able to fulfill an apparently emerging need people are beginning to feel-

For companies and entrepreneurs, it’s no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that’s reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you’re like a few million Americans, you’ve got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it’s commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business – for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country’s more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence.

Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of everyday life.

This may present an interesting turn of events. I have been reading articles of late that talk about people skipping college or going into technical training to gain specific skills. While it is certainly true that colleges could do a better job at endowing their graduate with practical skills, if this Wired artice is correct, it may be time to shift one’s concentration back to liberal and fine arts degrees to gain marketable skills.