Arts Management Commons^™

Measuring Administrative Hiring Confidence Of Music Teachers In The Context Of Shallow Hiring Pools, Aaron M. Strum

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify and measure the confidence of K-12 administrators in hiring music faculty. This study also aimed to analyze administrators’ perspectives and confidence in key stages of the hiring process, including defining job expectations, posting, advertising, interviewing, and selecting highly specialized music teachers in K-12 settings. Confidence of K-12 administrators can be gauged through their understanding of how well an applicant aligns with the specific needs of the school’s program. Three research questions guided this investigation: (1a) How confident are K-12 administrators in their understanding of music teaching pedagogy when interviewing music teacher candidates …

From Story To Stage: A Journey In Pursuit Of Virtuous Leadership And Artistic Intentionality Through Student Directing A Full Play Production At University Level Theatre, Josephine L. Partridge

Honors Projects

A passionate storyteller and artist, earning her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Honors Liberal Arts and Theatre-Performance, explores her personal potential as the play Director of Little Women, a stage play adaptation based on the 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott, adapted from the 1912 play by Marian de Forest and Jessie Bonstelle written by Josephine Partridge. Throughout the course of four months, Partridge adapted the script and works as Director and Marketing Director for this production with SPU Theatre Company club. She uses this experience to deepen her understanding and practice of intentionality with artistic vision and virtuous leadership. …

The Business Of Music: Where Planning And Performing Meet, Mac Heelein

Honors Capstones

This project explores the intersection of business and music through the planning and execution of a collaborative recital featuring the NIU Viola Studio. In this process, I served as both the organizer and a performer, applying project management principles to handle logistics such as scheduling, venue coordination, and event promotion. The project required managing multiple moving parts while keeping both the artistic and organizational aspects aligned.

Through this experience, I found that while project management provides a strong structure, artistic settings require flexibility when unexpected challenges arise. This project also highlighted the importance of balancing organization with creativity to ensure …

University Theatre Guild Guide, Maria Perez

Honors Theses

The WMU Theatre Guild Assistant position is one of the primary assistantships in the Arts Administration department. The Theatre Guild Assistant works alongside Emily Duguay, the Director of Arts Administration, Joan Herrington, the Director of the School of Theatre and Dance, and the WMU Theatre Guild Board to manage their daily operations and help develop donor events. The University Theatre Guild Guide explains the details and processes this position follows. This guide is broken down into four sections. The first section is the Introduction. The Introduction includes congratulations from the past Theatre Guild Assistant and a short breakdown of the …

Leadership And Creative Placemaking In Central Appalachia: Morehead, Kentucky, Toni C. Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations--Arts Administration

In rural Appalachia, longstanding patterns of extractive economic development, coupled with limited public investment and uneven institutional support, have contributed to persistent economic stagnation and a diminished sense of pride among residents. These conditions reflect deeper structural challenges, including economies shaped by resource extraction and external control. Addressing these conditions is critical to fostering economic growth, promoting cultural heritage, and enhancing overall well-being in the region. By cultivating resilient communities, leaders can create environments in which both the economy and local pride can thrive, contributing to a more prosperous and unified Appalachian region.

This study investigates the organizational and leadership …

Build A Global Art And Jewelry Auction Ecosystem That Integrates Offline And Online, Xiaochun Cathy Liu

MA Projects

Our success path is clear and executable: through a phased global market penetration strategy, we first deeply cultivate the Asia Pacific region to establish a lighthouse, then enter the European and American hinterland, and ultimately achieve global network interconnection; Deeply bind core collectors through the "elite membership system" and build a high stickiness community; And by competing for academic discourse power and publishing authoritative market indices, gradually mastering the pricing power of the industry, evolving from a participant to a rule maker. Arture's vision is to become a super species that integrates trading platforms, academic institutions, top communities, and industry …

From Monasteries To The Market: The Legal And Spiritual Economies Of Himalayan Art In China, Hengshi An

MA Theses

In recent years, the Himalayan art market in China has shown a remarkable transformation, emerging as one of the most dynamic segments within the broader Asian art economy. While much of the global and domestic art market has stagnated, Tibetan and Himalayan artworks have achieved sustainable growth and high auction price with major collections been published, showing structural strength rather than speculative enthusiasm. This paper examines the drivers behind this phenomenon through a qualitative analysis of auction data, dealer networks, and collector behavior across key hubs in China such as Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. The findings suggest that …

When Fine Art And Commercial Art Merge: A Playbook For Emerging Artists Without Gallery Representation To Create Successful And Sustainable Careers, Regina Escobedo Guerra

MA Theses

Pursuing a career as an artist comes with no clear path nor directions. The first years after graduating are filled with confusion and uncertainty. Emerging artists are oftentimes unequipped with the necessary resources to create sustainable and profitable careers. In a saturated market where only a select few are able to make a living solely from art, artists need to gain autonomy and control over their practices. This thesis provides emerging artists with no gallery representation with the tools to create an independent career that prioritizes artistic authenticity and sustains profit. Through a dismissal of the negative perceptions placed on …

The Language Of Value: Lot Note Complexity And Auction Performance In Abstract Expressionism, Artur Sharifullin

MA Theses

This thesis asks a simple question: does the language in lot notes relate to price and to whether a lot beats or misses its estimate? I study eight Abstract Expressionist artists: Ad Reinhardt, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, and Sam Francis because their works are less representational and often need supporting text to explain the context. The main sample includes only lots sold for more than $1 million at Christie’s or Sotheby’s in New York or London over the past ten years. I measure a small set of writing features that are easy …

Corporate Patronage In Art And Education: A Case Study Of Bloomberg's Interventions, Xiaojun Tian

MA Theses

This study focuses on the application of corporate sponsorship in the fields of art and education, delving deep into the interventions and cases made by Bloomberg L.P. in these two domains. Corporate sponsorship for the arts acts as a significant display of Cultural Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), not only fostering diversity in the production of art institutions and artists but also having a profound effect on the educational sector. Utilizing case study methodology, this research deconstructs key projects and activities funded by Bloomberg, encompassing support for exhibitions and public art projects, as well as various initiatives aimed at art education, …

The Flavor Of Marketing: How Food Is Revolutionizing Luxury Brand Communication, Aloisa Ruf

MA Theses

This thesis explores how food operates as a cultural, psychological, and strategic instrument within the global luxury industry. Drawing from art history, marketing theory, and sensory studies, it traces how societies across Europe, the Middle East, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States have long used food to express hierarchy, belonging, and emotion—from the banquets of seventeenth-century Versailles to the branded cafes and collaboration of the 2010s and 2020s. Through a comparative and interpretive methodology, the research connects historical visual traditions with contemporary brand strategies, examining case studies such as Gucci Osteria, Louis Vuitton’s Desert Iftar, Dior Café, Loewe’s “Tomato” …

Global Art: An Economic Exploration Of The Factors Driving Sensible Gallery Expansion, James Mclennan

MA Theses

The goal of this thesis is to develop a practical and defensible decision tool to guide art gallery expansion. Focusing on four cities – New York, Hong Kong, London, and Doha – the thesis translates heterogeneous considerations into a matrix that scores each of the cities according to eight factors: Market & Demand; Regulation & Tax; Logistics & Shipping; Labor & Immigration; Legal Entity & Finance; Brand, PR & Audience; Competition & Benchmarking; and Risk. Sub-factors are scored and averaged to provide results on how each city scores against each other. The output is a ranked set of city recommendations …

Evolving Motives: How Art Collecting Has Changed Across Generations, Giovanni Mazzoleni

MA Theses

This thesis elucidates the changing reasons for collection in recent years and focuses on three generations of collectors: those born before 1950; those born between 1951-1980; and those born after 1981. It commences with a literature review of the initial collecting motivations and challenges, motives based on socio-cultural, economic and technological advancements which foster the importance and reasons for collections. To make this investigation tangible, a quantitative survey was adopted. Forty-five participants, each ranking their levels of agreement from one to five based on an assessment of eight statements based on five motives: economic, normative, uniqueness, hedonic and intellectual. Descriptive …

Does Blue-Chip Art Genuinely Provide Diversification And Risk Mitigation Once Illiquidity, Transaction Frictions, And Survivorship Bias Are Explicitly Incorporated Into Performance Analysis, Or Is The “Safe Haven” Label Fundamentally Misleading?, Radhika Vissanji

MA Theses

Blue-chip art is widely presented as a safe haven and portfolio diversifier, particularly during periods of financial market uncertainty. This perception is reinforced by art price indices and industry reports that emphasise long-term appreciation, relatively low volatility, and weak correlation with traditional financial assets. Despite the growing prominence of these claims in advisory and institutional discourse, there remains limited agreement on whether such properties persist once the structural characteristics of the art market are fully taken into account. This thesis evaluates whether blue-chip art genuinely delivers diversification and risk-mitigation benefits under realistic market conditions. Focusing on three structural factors, illiquidity, …

Beyond The Stream: Valuing Music Catalogs As An Alternative Asset Class, Amelia Jade Magay

Honors Theses and Capstones

This thesis builds a quantitative valuation framework for music catalog transactions and tests its limits systematically. The goal is not to produce a formula that perfectly prices every deal. The goal is to identify where streaming-based financial analysis is a useful underwriting tool, where it breaks down, and what categories of value investors appear to be pricing beyond publicly available streaming data.

Human Resource Policy And Practice In The American Regional Theatre: The Intersection Of The Actors’ Equity Association And The League Of Resident Theatres, Kathleen Holland

Theses and Dissertations--Arts Administration

Human resource management plays a critical yet understudied role in the American regional theatre, an industry characterized by project-based labor, mixed union and nonunion workforces, and deeply ingrained cultural norms that prioritize artistic production over worker well-being. This dissertation examines how institutional human resource policies intersect with the Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) collective bargaining agreement and the League of Resident Theatres (LORT), and the implications of these intersections for human resource practice in regional theatre organizations. While entertainment-industry unions predate the formalization of contemporary human resource management, little scholarship has examined how union agreements may shape or substitute for organizational …

From Regulation To Practice: Exploring Aml/Kyc Compliance, Proportionality, And Technology In The Art Market, Layla Rujugiro

MA in Art Business Dissertations

To sum - this dissertation examines how the UK’s adoption of 5AMLD through MLR 2019 has shaped compliance practices within the AM, focusing on SMEs classified as AMPs. Five interviews and a survey of 24 London galleries, highlight how uniform regulation create uneven impacts across the sector. The study argues that clearer guidance, proportionate fees, and accessible training are essential for effective compliance, while RegTech tools, though helpful, cannot replace AMP responsibility.

An Investigation Into The Scottsdale Art Week: Cultural Focus, Location, And Sustainability In An Already Saturated Environment, Sophia K. Meshel

MA Theses

This thesis examines the role of regional art fairs within the wider American art market and examines how these events contribute to the growth of local cultural artistic ecosystems. While firmly established international art fairs often dominate attention within the global market, lesser known regional fairs play an important role in connecting artists, galleries, collectors, and cultural platforms within specific communities. Through analysis of established regional fairs and consideration of factors such as artist selection, audience engagement, institutional partnerships, and economic impact, this study investigates how art fairs can move beyond temporary commercial events to become meaningful cultural platforms. Particular …

A Comprehensive Digital Marketing Strategy Guide For Independent Musicians, William Elree Hilburn

Theses

Creating and implementing a sound digital marketing strategy is a crucial element to consider as an independent musician. In this thesis report and the strategy guide that follows, a number of current digital marketing strategies are discussed at length. The strategies that are discussed in this report and within the strategy guide have been gleaned through semi-structured qualitative interviews with two separate up-and-coming music artists. The information shared by these case studies has been documented and synthesised into this report, as well as, into a comprehensive strategy guide that has been written to aid fledgling music artists in their digital …

Knockin’ On Music’S Door: A Cross-Generational Study Of The Formation Of Tastes, Roles, And Affinities For Music, Hannah B. Turner

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

The music we love is a direct reflection of who we are. It shapes our identity, fuels our emotions, and connects us to the world around us. Whether it's the anthems of our youth, the lyrics that put our feelings into words, or the melodies that bring back memories, music is woven into every stage of life. It influences the way we dress, the communities we belong to, and the way we see ourselves. Our playlists may evolve, but the connection remains the same. Music is more than just something we listen to; it’s a part of us.

Community Engagement For The Children's Theatre, Lindsey R. Guilford

Undergraduate Theses

Community Engagement for the Children’s Theatre examines how children’s theatres across the United States build and sustain mutually beneficial relationships with their surrounding communities. In a field where community support is essential, but resources are often limited, long-term success depends on meaningful, reciprocal engagement. This research draws on surveys and interviews with theatre professionals to investigate strategies used by organizations of varying sizes to connect with local audiences, educators, and families. Findings highlight key practices such as sharing resources, aligning programming with community needs, valuing both internal and external stakeholders, and maintaining transparent, ongoing communication. By consolidating these insights, the …

The Biggest Night In Music: A Case Study Of The Grammy Awards Digital Marketing Strategies, Samantha Canik

Experience Industry Management

Music has the power to bring people together and create connections. Every year, music fans and artists eagerly anticipate celebrating their love for music at the Grammy Awards through performances, receiving awards, or simply attending. The Grammys serves as the ultimate celebration, uniting people to honor and celebrate all things music. The purpose of this study was to examine the digital marketing strategies of the Recording Academy’s Grammy Awards. Data on digital marketing was collected through a case study and an instrument developed by the researcher. The results of this study highlights the effectiveness of the Grammys’ digital marketing strategies, …

Finding Our Way: Three Studies On The Evolving Role Of Arts Nonprofits In Contemporary Society, Trevor Meagher

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

Arts nonprofits play vital roles in defining the character of a community. However, our collective relationship with these organizations is evolving. This article-based dissertation leverages mixed methods to explore arts nonprofits’ evolving relationship with society.

The first article conceptually analyzes historical trends in arts advocacy in the United States. It explores how the arguments organizational supporters make in the hopes of securing financial and public support have developed and shifted in popularity over the past half-century. These streams are thematically connected through an emphasis on utilitarianism and value-extraction, and they have historically been employed in almost completely static proportion to …

Art Collecting In India Through The Ages, Muskaan Mehta

MA Theses

This study examines the evolution of art collecting in India, from royal patronage to modern practices shaped by socio-political and economic changes. It highlights the ancient tradition of art– serving spiritual, cultural, and political purposes, evolving through colonial influences that introduced Western aesthetics and private collecting. Post-independence, collecting in India became a means of reclaiming cultural identity, marked by movements like that of the Progressive Artists' Group. Three collections illustrate the diversity of contemporary Indian collecting- the personal collection of Kiran Nadar and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art focusing on public engagement and modern Indian art; Vinay Sheth’s private, …

How Social Media Is Reshaping The Art Market: Catalyzing The Rise Of The Art Agency Model In The United States, Leo Braudy

MA Theses

The art world is undergoing a fundamental transformation, marked by a shift from the traditional gallery-centric model to a talent agency model akin to those in the entertainment and music industries. This evolution is driven by the increasing influence of social media platforms, which empower artists to directly engage with audiences, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of galleries and auction houses. Drawing on insights from industry reports, social media analytics, and case studies, this thesis explores how social media has catalyzed this shift and examines its implications for artists, collectors, and the broader art market. It argues that the rise of …

The Dying Swan: How To Predict And Evaluate The Survival Rate And Longevity Of Small Dance Companies In The United States, Evemarie N. Bessenbach

Theses and Dissertations--Arts Administration

Smaller dance organizations are an integral component of the arts and culture sector in the United States, making valuable artistic, economic, and social contributions despite limited resources. They provide employment for professional artists, contribute to a region’s economic vitality, and increase accessibility to quality arts-related programming. However, there are numerous professional dance companies that have permanently closed these past ten years alone, such as Dance Theatre of Tennessee, Ballet Theatre of Indiana, and Missouri Ballet Theatre, to just name a few—all of which can be considered smaller dance organizations.

The purpose of this interdisciplinary, exploratory study is to address the …

Come Hell Or High Water: A Constructed Grounded Theory Of Disaster Preparedness In Nonprofit Arts Management, Leah D. Hamilton

Theses and Dissertations--Arts Administration

This dissertation study constructs a grounded theory of disaster preparedness in nonprofit arts management, a research area that is underrepresented in broader disaster science research, and underrecognized by US government emergency management policy. Using the Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology, this qualitative study involves a systematic document review of more than 20 years of US practices and standards related to arts preparedness in combination with a two-year inquiry using a purposive sample of nonprofit arts managers who have recently been affected, directly or indirectly, by disasters in the state of Kentucky. The findings and the subsequent Theory of Performative Preparedness provide …

From Vinyl To Viral: Evaluating The Mere Exposure Effect Through Music And Technological Advancements, Ariana R. Deboo

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The Mere Exposure Effect (MEE) refers to a psychological pattern in which a person develops preference for a stimulus that has been repeatedly presented to them. The present study examined environmental influences of preference through repeated exposure to music. Social media platforms such as TikTok, Reels, and Shorts influence where people listen to music. The fast-paced consumption algorithm for new media is provided by quick, entertaining videos that allow users to scroll past content that does not keep their attention. A total of 406 participants (n=406) were involved in this study. The purpose for this study was to identify how …

Has K-Pop Lost Its Koreaness?, Madison J. Gusler

Capstones

Since the 2010s, the global expansion of K-pop has been undeniable, with music from Korean idol groups resonating with fans around the world. We’ve seen the industry adapt to cater to this global audience, placing emphasis on non-verbal aspects of performance such as choreography and set design, and integrating more English lyrics in their songs. K-pop has always had multinational, multicultural influences in its production, yet the music has remained distinctly Korean. But as the industry expands into new markets, faces new challenges, and adapts to convey greater global appeal, the public must contend with the idea of a K-pop …

Harmony In Collaboration: Curating Sustainability In Post-Pandemic Arts, Natalie M. Stepaniak

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In an interconnected world, collaboration in the arts is rising, challenging the traditional notion of the solitary artist. Interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial for advancing performing and visual arts, especially amidst declining audience attendance. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating challenges for the arts sector, recent data suggests a gradual recovery, with collaborative efforts fostering resilience.

This dissertation investigates the transformative potential of interdisciplinary collaboration from the perspective of musicians and their organizations. Through three case studies—collaborations between the Rapides Symphony Orchestra and Play On Theater Company, The Next Festival for Emerging Artists, and violist-composer Leilehua Lanzilotti and her collaborative relationship with …