IU's art administration masters program offers hands-on experience in management to participating students

Behind the scenes of every great opera, Broadway production or museum exhibit, someone is pulling the right strings to make the event happen. Beyond the costumes, make-up and lights, someone sits calculating ticket sales and strategizing audience development and marketing techniques. Without the arts administrators who work diligently behind the scenes, none of what is seen on a stage or in a gallery could be possible. \nThis year, IU's arts administration masters' program celebrates its 30th anniversary. Since its inception at the Kelley School of Business, the program has turned out graduates who have gone on to leadership positions at prestigious arts institutions throughout the country, including Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian Institution, the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Symphony Orchestra League. Throughout the years, the program has moved from the business school to the School of Music to its current home, the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. It has also earned a reputation as one of the best programs of its type in the nation.\nIU Auditorium Events Manager Maria Talbert graduated from the arts administration program in 1999. She said she was drawn to arts administration because of her lifelong passion for the arts. She had been involved with dance performance but wanted to learn how to do some of the work behind the scenes.\n"I knew what it was like to be a dancer. I knew what it was like to be backstage, but I didn't have the administrative practical experience," Talbert said. "The program helped me get that."\nShe said the training the program provided was necessary to learning the complexities of administrating the arts. The program teaches its participants how to handle all aspects of running an arts venue, from booking the performers to publicizing the event to handling budgets and finances. In order for things to go smoothly at any arts venue, a lot of behind-the-scenes details must be seen to. Talbert said a proper education in arts administration is necessary in making those things happen.\n"A lot of administrators couldn't jump on stage and dance. They need training to do that the way training is needed to become an administrator," she said.\nTalbert credited some of the program's success with its hands-on approach to teaching students how to administer the arts. The two-year program, which accepts about 15 students each year, requires students to work extensively with arts programs in and out of the University through three unpaid practicum and an internship.\n"(Working outside of the classroom) was one of the biggest things that really helped me with my future career," Talbert said. \nIt was Talbert's internship doing publicity for the IU School of Music that eventually led to her current position at the IU Auditorium. When she graduated, she went straight from her internship to a paid position as assistant director of the Office of Communications for the School of Music. A year later, the "assistant" part of her title disappeared when she was promoted to director. In 2003, she moved over to work at the IU Auditorium.\n"That initial passion and joy in the arts, that's where administrators come from, but you need to have some education and practical experience to be able to be an arts manager," Talbert said.\nIn the required practicum, students must work extensively on projects for outside organizations over the course of five to eight weeks. Students get to choose their practicum projects and write proposals to the program about where they want to work and what they want to do. In the past, students have worked with the IU Auditorium, Bloomington Area Arts Council, School of Music, Mathers Museum and Bloomington Playwrights Project, among other local arts organizations. \n"When they come here, they are going to get their hands dirty," Program Coordinator Susan Sandberg said. "They don't just read about it in their textbooks. They are able to work in a variety of settings available on campus and in the city."\nLast fall, graduate student Sara Beanblossom and recent graduate Kevin Hudson's practicum at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater mushroomed into the PRIDE film festival -- Bloomington's first Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender film festival. Their idea for a GLBT film festival was greeted with so much enthusiasm from the community that they had to enlist the help of their fellow master's students to help field the calls and requests from the community, and organize the event.\n"The practicums are what you make of them," Beanblossom said. "The way that the community helped us out made it really rewarding. We weren't just doing a college thing."\nBecause of PRIDE's large success last year, the film festival has been slated by the Buskirk-Chumley Theater to become an annual event.\n"It seems really cool to leave a legacy, and it happened almost by accident," Beanblossom said. She and Hudson had originally planned to do a showing of "Rocky Horror Picture Show," but on a whim changed their plan to a night of GLBT short films.\nWhen PRIDE ballooned from a screening to a festival, graduate student Jean Kerley was one of the volunteers who stepped up to help her peers organize the event.\n"It was just amazing to be part of a project that benefited the community and brought them together," Kerley said. "It's a great example of what students can do if they put their minds to it."\nKerley was drawn to the program after a lifetime of arts experience. With both of her parents involved in the theater -- her mother was a performer and her father was involved academically and as a director -- Kerley felt drawn to the stage and the arts.\n"I didn't know where I fit in that picture until recently. ... I have no talent as a performer, but in college, I discovered I could get involved in another way -- as a producer or in publicity," Kerley said. "It's as behind the scenes as you can possibly get, but they are vital roles to the performance of theater."\n-- Contact arts editor Jenica Schultz at jwschult@indiana.edu.