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2023–2024 

EDITORIAL 

Editors’ Introduction 

Olaf Kuhlke 

Minneapolis College of Art 

and Design 

Diane Ragsdale 

Minneapolis College of Art 

and Design 

E. Andrew Taylor 

American University 

 

Entrepreneurship, at its essence, involves the discovery of new means-ends relationships 

(Shane and Venkataraman 2000). Arts entrepreneurship infuses both means and ends with 

creative, expressive, and aesthetic practice (Essig 2015). So, this twelfth volume of Artivate 

follows a similar impulse. 

With this volume, Artivate explores multiple means to achieve its intended ends. Our 

leadership team now comprises three new coeditors eager to combine their time, atten-

tion, advocacy, and networks to this important next chapter. Our first steps have been to 

update the journal’s description and submission policies in collaboration with our pub-

lisher, the University of Arkansas Press. 

In addition, with Volume 12 Artivate is transitioning to a rolling-publication basis. Ra-

ther than anchoring our releases in two full issues, we will now publish articles through-

out the academic year as they are available. This will make the journal more timely, rele-

vant, and responsive to our authors and growing community. 

These innovations in our means are all intended to sharpen and amplify our long-

standing ends: to disseminate new thinking and perspectives on arts entrepreneurship 

theory, practice, and pedagogy. We hope these changes inspire new conversations across 

the community and that new and established authors trust their work with us. 

We are publishing a set of editorial essays to launch Volume 12 to help catalyze con-

versations and contributions and mark the editorial team transition. The first is by out-

going coeditors Paul Bonin-Rodriguez and Neville Vakharia, who reflect on the field-build-

ing focus of their tenure. The following three essays are authored by each of the new 

coeditors, exploring the origins and nature of our relationship to the field of arts entre-

preneurship as well as the areas of inquiry that those origins inspire.  

https://www.artivate.org/index.php/artivate/about
https://www.artivate.org/index.php/artivate/about/submissions


ARTIVATE 12 

2 

While our coeditor narratives are idiosyncratic, two cross-cutting themes seem to 

unite our areas of inquiry: 

1. Arts entrepreneurship at the intersection of a rapidly shifting cultural environ-

ment: How is arts entrepreneurship evolving in response to the climate crisis; 

generative AI; collective trauma; the entirely legitimate demands for more in-

clusive and just workplaces; trends toward collective, decentralized, and non-

hierarchical forms of management; and the need to imagine and make new 

worlds together? 

 

2. Moral and ethical boundaries in the arena of arts entrepreneurship: Are we pay-

ing sufficient attention to cultural appropriation, commodification, commer-

cialization, the tension between the publicness required of 501c3 nonprofits, 

the autonomy and authority needed by artists and entrepreneurs, and the im-

pacts of business language and framing on how we make sense of and take ac-

tion in art worlds? 

We hope that these essays inspire a similar reflection among our community and en-

courage a more expansive conversation and examination of entrepreneurship in the arts. 

We also endeavored to signal this interest in the following statement on our shared un-

derstanding of arts entrepreneurship, which you can find on our website:  

The editors of Artivate understand “arts entrepreneurship” as the pursuit of creative and 

expressive opportunity beyond the resources at hand. This can manifest as both (1) entre-

preneurship aimed at creating artistic, cultural, or aesthetic value alongside other forms 

of value creation; and (2) the application of artistic methodologies, ontologies, and habits 

of mind to the process of entrepreneurship. We understand entrepreneurship as a process, 

orientation, and practice employed by individuals, teams, organizations, public agencies, 

communities, cities, states, and countries. 

Our profound thanks to outgoing coeditors Paul Bonin-Rodriguez and Neville Vakha-

ria for their five years of extraordinary service at this publication, for their involvement 

in this evolving field, and for their contribution to the “Editorial Perspectives: What’s Past 

is Prologue” article featured in this volume. They have fostered and shaped our shared 

understanding of arts entrepreneurship in its many manifestations. They have also been 

generous with their time and guidance these past few months as we have taken on stew-

ardship of Artivate. 

We look forward to working and learning with you, to explore and expand how we 

understand, describe, and apply arts entrepreneurship in more diverse and dynamic 

ways. Thank you for taking the time to read “Editorial Perspectives: What’s Past is Pro-

logue.” If you are interested in serving as a peer reviewer for Artivate, or if you have an 

article you would like to submit, please contact us. 

https://www.artivate.org/index.php/artivate/about
mailto:editors@artivate.org


ARTIVATE 12 

3 

References 

Essig, Linda. “Means and Ends: A Theory Framework for Under-
standing Entrepreneurship in the US Arts and Culture Sector.” 
The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 45, no. 4 (Oc-
tober 2, 2015): 227–46. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/10632921.2015.1103673. 

Shane, Scott, and S. Venkataraman. “The Promise of Entrepreneur-
ship as a Field of Research.” The Academy of Management Re-
view 25, no. 1 (2000): 217–26. 
https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2000.2791611.  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Photo by Mitchell Luo, www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-a-color-

ful-ceiling-3685175/ 
 

https://doi.org/10.1080/10632921.2015.1103673
https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2000.2791611
http://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-a-colorful-ceiling-3685175/
http://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-a-colorful-ceiling-3685175/

