
































Microsoft Word - perspectives_part 4 final.docx


Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts  Volume 6, Issue 1 
http://artivate.org  pp. 3-7 
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 
Copyright © 2017, the authors      
 
 

PERSPECTIVES ON ARTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP, PART 4 
Susan Badger Booth, Eastern Michigan University 
Diane Ragsdale, Erasmus University 
 

We offer this fourth installment in our opinion series, “Perspectives,” as the last in which 
we invite Artivate’s current editorial board members to respond to open-ended prompts about: 
their position in relation to arts entrepreneurship; how arts entrepreneurship is situated in relation 
to other disciplines or fields; what problems we are grappling with as scholars, practitioners, 
teachers, and artists; and what are the research questions we are attempting to answer 
individually or as a field. In this installment’s pair of contributions, Susan Badger Booth and 
Diane Ragsdale reflect on arts entrepreneurship in two different contexts: individual university 
students and alumni on the one hand, and organizations in a system on the other, thus reflecting 
the diversity of arts entrepreneurship contexts found in this issue’s three features.  
 

Arts Entrepreneurship: An alumni-centered definition 
Susan Badger Booth 

Eastern Michigan University 
 In this series of essays, Artivate has asked authors to contextualize how we approach arts 
entrepreneurship in our programs, through our scholarship, and, of course, in our creative 
practice. My previous career path as both artist and then arts administrator has always informed 
my teaching. In fact, both my teaching and scholarship continue to find form and definition in 
my applied work of arts entrepreneurship and administration, particularly when this work 
intersects with my students and alumni. To add a frame around my personal perspective, I teach 
at a large regional university nationally recognized for excellence in applied learning. Being a 
regional university we draw heavily from the state with 86% of our students coming from 
Michigan during our 2015 winter term. This creates a unique relationship with our region 
especially since 75–80% of our alumni continue to work and live within 50 miles of our campus 
after they graduate.  
 My students collaborate with a network of local cultural organizations, creative 
businesses and artists. Often the line between campus community and cultural community 
becomes blurred as relationships that develop during school often continue way past graduation. 
I know that part of the proliferation of local creative projects is modeled after work these arts 
entrepreneurs have completed on our campus and in the applied learning laboratories throughout 
our community.  
 As current students learn entrepreneurial theory and practice in our classrooms, they 
watch our alumni apply these lessons learned in the development of their own post-graduate 
professional work. This point of view offers me the opportunity to track learning outcomes past 
the last day of class or even graduation. It is through this long lens that I find my definition of 
arts entrepreneurship.  
 For example; I see arts entrepreneurship defined by watching alumni and clarinetist of the 
Akropolis Reed Quintet develop a music publishing business. Since reed quintets are not a 
common chamber orchestra configuration, Akropolis found early on that they needed to 
commission most of their pieces. This gave them a library of music they could make available to 
other reed quintets through an in-house publishing business (Akropolis, 2016). I see arts 
entrepreneurship defined through alumni and DIYpsi host during the sixth season of this local 



Booth and Ragsdale            Perspectives on Arts Entrepreneurship, Part 4 
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

                                                 
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Artivate 5 (2)   

 4 

indie art fair created with the “intent to be one component of a thriving community of 
entrepreneurs, artists, organizations and events” here in Ypsilanti, Michigan (DIYpsi, 2016). 
 I suggest it is through watchful eyes in all our institutions of higher education that we 
must track the work of our graduates and ask how and why they are influenced by our 
enthusiasm and passion for the entrepreneurial process. We should look to partners such as the 
Strategic Arts Alumni Data Project (SNAAP, 2015) and their findings around what they call an 
“entrepreneurial skills gap.”  Their data brief and other alumni tracking sources should be 
explored and discussed in the broader community of arts entrepreneur scholars and practioners as 
William Gartner (2015) suggests in a previous essay in this series. Editorial board colleagues 
Vakharia (2016) and Zabel (2016) suggest measuring impact and Taylor (2015) notes the 
definition is found through the journey. I concur with all these assumptions and suggest that the 
most important stakeholder in moving forward will be our alumni. 
 

References 
Akropolis (2016) Akropolis Reed Quintet I Acclaimed Classical Music Ensemble. Akropolis 

Reed Quintet . Retrieved December 11. 2016 from www.Akropolisquintet.com   
DIYpsi (2016). DIYpsi Indie Art Fair Ypsilanti Michigan. DIYpsi Indie Art Fair. Retrieved 

December 11, 2016 from www.dypsi.com   
Gartner, W.B. (2015) Arts Entrepreneurship: Scope, Practice and Community. Artivate: A 

Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts 4(2), p. 3-5. 
SNAAP (2015). Spotlight on entrepreneurial skills, part 1. Data Brief 3(4). Retrieved from 

http://snaap.indiana.edu/databrief/vol3no4.html. 
Taylor, E.A. (2015). Arts Entrepreneurship vs. the Sum of Its Parts. Artivate: A Journal of 

Entrepreneurship in the Arts 4(1),  p. 3-4. 
Vakharia, N. (2016). Knowledge Centricity and the Artist Entrepreneur. Artivate, 5(2), p. 3-4. 
Zabel, L. (2016). Meaning-making and arts entrepreneurship. Artivate: A Journal of 

Entrepreneurship in the Arts 5(2), p. 5-6. 
 
 

On Entrepreneurialism and Publicness (Or Whose Theatre is it, Really?) 
Diane Ragsdale 

Erasmus University Rotterdam 
 

But democratic society — in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the 
artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In 
serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.  
  - President John F. Kennedy (Remarks at Amherst College, 1963) 

 
 In his paper on the creative industries and cultural entrepreneurship Richard Swedberg 
examines “the parallels between the entrepreneur and the artist, according to the young [Joseph] 
Schumpeter” (Swedberg, 2006, p. 250). Swedberg conveys that, among other characteristics, the 
artist/entrepreneur (as contrasted with the static majority) “puts together new combinations,” 
“battles resistance to his actions,” and is “motivated by power and joy in creation.” I was 
disquieted when I encountered this discussion of cultural entrepreneurship a few years ago; 
however, it took completing a case study on the Margo Jones Theatre last year for me to identify 
the source of my unease. 



Booth and Ragsdale            Perspectives on Arts Entrepreneurship, Part 4 
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

                                                 
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Artivate 5 (2)   

 5 

 Margo Jones is generally credited by theater historians with having founded the 
prototypical nonprofit-but-professional resident theater in Dallas, Texas in 1947. Among a 
handful of “pattern-setting elements” attributed to Jones’s theater, her adoption of the nonprofit 
form is said to have had “the most far-reaching effects” on regional theater in America 
(Berkowitz, 1982, p. 58). It is difficult to refute the statement if one considers that before 1950 
there were almost no examples of professional (read: unionized) theaters organized as nonprofit 
corporations and that today there are hundreds. Nevertheless, it is ironic that one of the few 
enduring dimensions of Jones’s unique theater model—which combined elements of the 
community, academic, art, and commercial theater—was its nonprofit status.  
 While Jones founded her theater as a nonprofit “civic venture” (Jones, 1951, p. 67) there 
is considerable evidence that she didn’t actually run it like one. Jones is said to have “believed 
firmly that the head of a theatre must of necessity be an autocrat—which [she] unquestionably 
was” (Larsen, 1982, p. 123). Likewise, her biographer relays that when the business chairman of 
the board “expressed a desire to have more authority over how money was spent and accounted 
for,” Jones declared, “I will not be confined!” and “demanded 100 percent artistic and financial 
control” (Sheehy, 1989, p. 236). In return, the board of directors gave Jones a “free hand” and 
“unquestioning support” (Wilmeth, 1989, p. 365). Evidently, it “was not disposed to refusing her 
whatever she wanted” (Larsen, 1982, p. 183). Jones was able to dominate the theater in part 
because the economics of the arena-style venue she created enabled the organization “to depend 
solely on ticket sales for operating expenses” (Wilmeth, 1965, p. 269). Moreover, Jones actively 
avoided soliciting donations from the community, beyond the $40,000 (in 1946 dollars) she 
raised to convert a found space into a theater and produce her first season. 
 In her manifesto-handbook, Theatre-in-the-Round, Jones suggests three business forms 
that a resident theater might take: nonprofit, sole proprietorship, or stock company funded with 
investments from shareholders (Jones, 1951, p. 66-67). One of Jones’s so-called followers—
though a maverick in her own right—was Zelda Fichandler, who co-founded the Arena Stage in 
Washington, DC in 1950 as a stock company utilizing shareholder investments. It sustained itself 
on box office income and converted to the nonprofit form only when doing so became a 
condition of a significant grant from the Ford Foundation. For years after the conversion, 
Fichandler expressed concerns about the potential influence of the public on the institution—a 
worry captured and explained in this poetic passage: 

I am not very strong on community giving, except perhaps when it represents only 
a small percentage of the total. I think we could well do without the hand that 
rocks the cradle, for the hand that rocks the cradle will also want to raise it in a 
vote and mix into the pie with it. For while a theatre is a public art and belongs to 
its public, it is an art before it is public and so it belongs first to itself and its first 
service must be self-service. A theatre is part of its society. But it is a part which 
must remain apart since it is also chastiser, rebel, lightning rod, redeemer, irritant, 
codifier, and horse-laughter. (Fichandler, 1970, p. 110) 
 

 The Milwaukee Repertory Theater—another organization that consulted with Jones 
before opening—was founded in 1954 as a hybrid nonprofit-stock company. It solicited 
donations from the community, which it combined with investments by its founder, Mary Widrig 
John, who held a majority of shares in the stock corporation. This unorthodox pairing reflected 
John’s desire (akin to that of Margo Jones) to involve the community financially in raising a 
theater from the ground, but to exercise control over its direction once raised. According to one 



Booth and Ragsdale            Perspectives on Arts Entrepreneurship, Part 4 
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

                                                 
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Artivate 5 (2)   

 6 

chronicler, there was “growing dissension among the staff and board of directors regarding 
John’s authority. The crucial question to be answered was whether the theatre belonged to John 
or the public” (Pinkston, 1989, p. 377). The matter eventually went to court and a judge ruled 
that the theater could not be nonprofit and have shareholders. It became a non-stock nonprofit 
corporation and John departed.  
 One imagines that if Certified B Corporations or Low-Profit Limited Liability 
Corporations had been in existence at the time, either one would have been a preferable legal 
structure for these theaters, given the goals of their entrepreneurial leaders. It is no coincidence 
that we are witnessing the creation and adoption of hybrid forms of organization alongside the 
emergence of social, cultural, creative, and arts entrepreneurs. Such forms are ideally suited to 
those who want to do work that benefits society but don’t want to relinquish ownership or 
control over their enterprises to do so. 
 And this brings me to the source of my unease. For all intents and purposes, the Margo 
Jones Theatre (née Theatre ’47) was operated by Jones as if it were a sole proprietorship (i.e. a 
private enterprise). Put another way, in terms of funding and control, Jones’s theater was, to a 
great extent, lacking in “publicness” (see e.g. Andrews, R., Boyne, G. A. & Walker, R. M., 
2011). Moreover, the characteristics that made Jones a highly successful artist/entrepreneur made 
it nearly impossible for the board of the nonprofit theater (owned by no one and therefore 
everyone) to exercise what is now generally taken to be good governance, including: oversight of 
the theater’s financial health; determination of the theater’s goals; and representation of the 
public’s interest in the theater. Tellingly, following Jones’s untimely death in 1955, the board of 
directors seized the power that had been denied them for years, dismantled many of Jones’s 
policies, and took the theater in a different (and ultimately fatal) direction.  
 As I ponder the motives, opportunities, and means of the three pioneering leaders 
highlighted in this essay, the parallel characteristics of the artist and entrepreneur as theorized by 
Schumpeter, and the emergence of new hybrid private/public organizational forms, a 
philosophical question emerges—in large part because I hear calls these days for nonprofit arts 
organizations to become both more entrepreneurial (i.e. innovative and self-sustaining) and 
more communal (i.e. responsive to, or representative of, the communities they ostensibly exist to 
serve): 

Is there an inherent, underexamined, and perhaps necessarily unresolvable conflict 
between the autonomy or authority needed by the artist/entrepreneur and the publicness 
required of the 501c3 charitable nonprofit, in order for them effectively to fulfill their 
respective roles vis-à-vis society?  

 
References 

Andrews, R., Boyne, G. A. & Walker, R. M. (2011). Dimensions of publicness and 
organizational performance: A review of the evidence. Journal of Public Administration 
Research and Theory, Volume 21(Issue Supplement 3), i301-i319. 

Berkowitz, G. M. (1982). New Broadways: Theatre across America 1950-1980. Totowa, NJ: 
Rowan and Littlefield.  

Fichandler, Z. (1970). Theatres or institutions? The American Theatre 1969-70: International 
Theatre Institute of the United States, Volume 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.  

Jones, M. (1951). Theatre-in-the-Round. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 
Kennedy, J. F. (1963). Remarks at Amherst College, October 26, 1963. Retrieved at: 

https://www.arts.gov/about/kennedy-transcript 



Booth and Ragsdale            Perspectives on Arts Entrepreneurship, Part 4 
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

                                                 
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Artivate 5 (2)   

 7 

Larsen, J. B. (1982). Margo Jones: A Life in the Theatre (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from 
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (Accession Order No. 8222956) 

Pinkston, A. (1989). Milwaukee Repertory Theatre. In W. B. Durham (Ed.) American Theatre 
Companies, 1931-1986 (376-386). New York: Greenwood Press. 

Sheehy, H. (1989/2005). Margo: The Life and Theatre of Margo Jones. Dallas: Southern 
Methodist University Press. 

Swedberg, R. (2006). The cultural entrepreneur and the creative industries: Beginning in Vienna. 
Journal of Cultural Economics, Volume 30(4), 243-261. 

Wilmeth, D. B. (1965). A History of the Margo Jones Theatre (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved 
from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (Accession Order No. 6503696) 

Wilmeth, D. B. (1989). Margo Jones Theatre. In W. B. Durham (Ed.) American Theatre 
Companies, 1931-1986 (362-369). New York: Greenwood Press. 

 
 
 


