The document discusses how metaphors shape our understanding and management of organizations, including arts organizations. It outlines three key premises: that we understand the world through models and metaphors, which are always imperfect but can be useful; and that these mental structures influence our behavior. The document analyzes two common but potentially limiting metaphors for arts organizations: the container or boundary metaphor; and the production/consumption metaphor. It suggests exploring new metaphors, like seeing collections as a shared national resource or artistic experiences as lightening in a field, that could help organizations adapt to changing environments.

1. The Metaphors
We Manage By
Andrew Taylor, Director
Bolz Center for Arts Administration
www.bolzcenter.org
Wisconsin School of Business
University of Wisconsin­Madison
ataylor@bus.wisc.edu

2. presented
November 25, 2008
at the
“New Media, New Audiences” conference
in Dublin, Ireland
hosted by
The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon
www.artscouncil.ie

3. Here’s the Plan
• Short introduction
• Metaphors and models
• Three premises
• Two problematic metaphors for the arts:
• Container | Boundary
• Production | Consumption
• So what?

4. Here’s the theory...
• Technology does not create anything new.
• It just reveals dynamics that were always
there, but latent or obscured.

5. Who is this guy?

6. Models & Metaphors
(three premises)

7. premise 1:
We engage the world
through models and
metaphors.

8. We can’t have the world
in our head.

9. So we create
little simulations, models,
and metaphors.

10. case in point: the door handle

11. case in point: the door handle

12. case in point: the door handle

13. case in point: the door handle

14. case in point: the door handle

15. case in point: the door handle

16. premise 2:
Our models are
always wrong.

17. Framing &
Selective Abstraction
(you can’t have the world
in your head...remember?)

18. “All models are wrong...
some models are useful.”
George Box

19. premise 3:
Structures, even mental
ones, inNluence behavior.

20. “We shape our buildings,
and afterwards our
buildings shape us.”
Winston Churchill

21. “I thought this was about
cultural management and
new technologies.”
someone in the room

22. The Box Ofice

23. Metaphor: A Bank Teller Window

24. re‐conceived...but not much...

25. ...even when banks have moved on.

26. Does this metaphor inluence behavior...
of audiences, staff, management?
What models does it reinforce?

27. The Three Premises
• We engage the world through
models and metaphors.
• Those models are always wrong
(but often useful).
• Structures, even mental ones,
inluence behavior.

28. Container | Boundary

29. Canvas
Theater
Auditorium
Museum
Compact Disc
The Container
The Arts Organization Gallery
DVD
Festival Grounds
Pub / Bar

30. Canvas
Theater
Auditorium
Museum
Compact Disc
The Container
The Arts Organization Gallery
DVD
Festival Grounds
Pub / Bar

31. Canvas
Theater
Auditorium
Museum
Compact Disc
The Container
The Arts Organization Gallery
DVD
Festival Grounds
Pub / Bar

32. Canvas
Theater
Auditorium
Museum
Compact Disc
The Container
The Arts Organization Gallery
DVD
Festival Grounds
Pub / Bar

33. A useful iction.

34. Box OfNice
Rental
Gate
Purchase
The Boundary
Bouncer
Donor’s Circle
Toll
Skybox

35. Extracting value at the boundary

36. Building new boundaries

37. Who chooses?
Who beneits?
Who pays?

38. YouTube pays sync rights
on behalf of its users
(on­line rights in UK are up 40%)

39. Production | Consumption

40. Presenter Education
Producer
Production | Consumption
Outreach
Audience Development

41. Consider a meaningful
arts moment of
your own.

42. All meaning is
co‐created
or co‐produced.

43. “Without an act of
recreation the object is
not perceived
as a work of art.”
John Dewey, Art as Experience, 1934

44. So what?

45. What do we do when
“traditional”
boundaries & thresholds
move or dissolve?

46. What if all value
is co‐created?

47. What if our current
management metaphors
are no longer useful?
(they were always wrong, but usefully so)

48. Two metaphors
to chew on...

49. Honey Mushroom
(Armillaria ostoyae)

50. “...museums’ collections and
acquisitions, while remaining
in the direct ownership of individual
institutions, could also be viewed as
contributing to the nation’s
‘public collection’ as a single resource
under the custodianship of many
individual museums.”
UK Dept. for Culture, Media, and Sport
“Understanding the Future,” 2005

51. Lightening in a Field
John Dewey, Art as Experience

52. What would an arts
ecology look like that
embraced those
two metaphors?

53. Who better than the arts
to discover that ecology?

54. What’s the next
useful iction?

55. Andrew Taylor
www.artfulmanager.com
ataylor@bus.wisc.edu