Arts Admin. Hey Girl, It's The Sexy Career Choice

In case you’ve been stuck under an office rock the past few months and have been missing out on Ryan Gosling, Arts Administrator then we need to get you an appletini and some trendy new threads stat. If you’re not up on the whole Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” thing, it’s a Tumblr meme that started with one guy and snowballed into a host of derivatives, even arts administration.

Let’s hope that isn’t the meme’s jumping the shark moment because most of the posts are pretty damned funny in the sort of “you have to work in this business to get it” sort of way.

Some of my Feb favs (so far) include…

Feb 15(a)

Feb 15(b)

Even database frustration can be funny…

Feb 21

Feb 10

Feb 1

Jan 31

And ending with some development love…

Feb 8

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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