Opportunities : Study

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"Taking courses in the Business School gave me the confidence to deal with the financial side of the arts. I think that every artist can benefit from this training - I know I have."

Leah Maddrie, '00

The Arts Administration Program offers a 60-point Master of Arts degree that requires two-years of full-time graduate level-study. The core curriculum represents an unusual alliance among the faculties of Teachers College, the Graduate School of Business and Columbia Law School.

Courses are sequenced to provide the student with a well-rounded curriculum that builds both knowledge and experience. Core curriculum requirements include principles of arts administration in the performing and visual arts, cultural history, fund raising and development, labor relations, accounting, marketing, business policy, and arts law, including copyright and nonprofit incorporation. Courses in business and law are taken in cooperation with the Graduate School of Business and Columbia Law School. Electives are chosen both in Teachers College and from the larger Columbia community.

A master's thesis and internship are also required.

"You should know, I am always grateful for the superb training I received at Columbia. The training combined with my last ten years experience has placed me right where I want to be."

Barbara Sacerdote, '89, Seattle, Washington

Because the M.A. in Arts Administration is a 60-point degree, some students use their elective credits from both Teachers College and Columbia University to create an additional area of study. In addition to the four content areas of arts administration, arts education, business, and law, a student might wish to focus, for example, on courses in anthropology or technology. In addition, there is an area of study in Museum Education which the Program has developed in collaboration with the Program in Art and Art Education, and a partnership with the Department of Art History.

A typical course sequence looks like this:

First Year

Principles and Practice in Arts Administration I and II
Core requirement. Basic overview in arts administration covering major areas of concern to small, medium, and large institutions. Specific aspects of arts management, planning, program development, artist relations, marketing, and fundraising. Section II focuses on issues in either Visual Arts Management or Performing Arts Management.

Arts in Context
Core requirement. A seminar and lecture-style course designed to provide a cultural context for discussion of aesthetics, ethical, and political questions that define and challenge the responsible arts administrator's role.

Historical Foundations of Art Education
Sample elective. An introduction to major historical events and underlying beliefs, values, and practices that have influenced contemporary art and art education programs at all levels of instruction in the United States as well as internationally.

Aesthetics and Education
Sample elective. The relation of art and education, with attention to theories of the creative act, aesthetic experience, and the criteria governing criticism.

Marketing
Core requirement. Business School course that introduces strategic marketing at the general manager level. Emphasizes marketing concepts and tools that are both powerful and broadly applicable for orienting the marketing effort of your own organization and understanding the variety of marketing problems faced by your key constituents. Covers market segmentation, positioning, product life cycles, brand equity, customer value analysis, competitive analysis and assessment of market attractiveness.

Accounting
Core requirement. Business School course designed to develop an understanding of accounting principles for users of accounting information. The course looks at how users of financial information interpret accounting reports when making business decisions. The emphasis is on profitability concepts and performance evaluation. Coverage is not restricted to the existing United States model but includes a broad discussion of measurement issues practices in other countries.

Labor Relations in the Arts
Core requirement. Theory and practice. Special emphasis on employers, unions, contracts, grievance procedures in the arts. Simulated bargaining sessions, evaluation and discussion of dispute resolution, arbitration, contract results. Negotiation by student teams.

Support Structures: Development and Fund Raising in the Arts and Humanities
Core requirement. A practical exploration of fundraising research and proposal writing methods. Proposals are developed for private and public agencies and foundations. Course incorporates aspects of support for the arts, arts education, the humanities, education and artists.

Internship
Core requirement. Internship arranged with host institutions on an individual basis, taking into account the student's needs, interests and capacities, and the host's abilities to integrate those with its operation in an educationally useful manner. Twenty hours per week over four months or the equivalent.

Second Year
Law and the Arts I
Core requirement. Principal artistic applications of U.S. law in areas drawn from copyright law, unfair competition and trademark law, misappropriation, First Amendment questions, miscellaneous torts including rights of privacy and publicity, defamation, interference with contract, other problems relating to authenticity of art works.

Law and the Arts II
Core requirement. Lectures and seminars on not-for-profit corporations, alternative forms of organizations, tax exemption, the role and problems of trustees, directors, and officers, commercial and political activity, administrative regulations concerning arts organizations, and arts-specific contracts.

Business Policy and Planning for the Arts Manager
Core requirement. Designed to integrate arts administration course-work from business, law, education and the arts. Moves from the financial, cultural, political environment to strategic planning tools for specific arts situations in the creation and implementation of policy and planning objectives.

Masters Seminar in Arts Administration
Core requirement. Required of all masters students in the last 10 credits of their program. Guided independent work culminating in the development of a master's essay.

Photography I (studio course)
Sample elective. An introductory course in black and white photography and darkroom techniques. Participants will study applications of the camera as an instrument for producing artistic images, and the darkroom as a setting for reproducing those images, as well as the implications for using these techniques within various educational settings and contexts.

Basic Practicum in Conflict Resolution
Sample elective. Students are trained in the basic skills of collaborative negotiations and mediation and will have supervised practice in these skills.

The Arts and American Education
Sample elective. A comparative study of responses by educators, literary artists, and painters to the American experience in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Leading and Managing in Organizations
Sample elective. Business School course that provides an introduction to and an overview of the major concepts and theories of management. Emphasis on the application of management concepts to specific organizational problems. Develops an awareness and understanding of human behavior within an organization.

Financial Management in the Nonprofit Sector
Sample elective. Business School course that focuses on financing the mission of nonprofit organizations and covers financial analysis from various perspectives, including credit, financing, IRS reporting, management and volunteer governance. In addition, it covers internal control and audit considerations, endowment management, insurance and MIS applications to day-to-day operations.

Critical Issues in Arts Management
Sample elective. A course in conceptualizing problems. Use of existing documents, studies, databases to support investigations into critical issues, while identifying how these documents have been constructed, their hidden and political agendas, and suggestions for improvement and integration into existing programs.

"Upon retiring from a career as a professional dancer from the New York City Ballet, I entered the Program where I gained the valuable skills and knowledge necessary to continue working in the performing arts in a new and expanded capacity." Teresa Reyes, '99

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Images
Top: The Curl by Clement Meadmore, Uris Hall, Columbia School of Business
Bottom: Teachers College