Our program is tailored to meet your professional objectives. Each student takes a combination of required courses and electives designed to meet your goals. Below is a sample student schedule to highlight one path you can take in our program.
Please note, 9 credits per term is considered full enrollment.
Year 1, Fall
| Course Title | Course Description | Course Type | Credits |
| History and Theory of Arts Administration | Overview of the history of the arts and arts organizations in America; major theories of art’s production and consumption; and the development of arts administration as a field. | Lecture | 3 |
| Practicum in Arts Administration | This is a required course that offers professional development sessions and in which students read and critique research and reports on the state of the field, and practices within it. This course must be completed prior to the required internship. | Workshop | 1 |
| Cultural Data and Analysis | This course explores research design, ethics, data collection and analysis as they are employed in arts administrative contexts and relevant to arts administration capstone requirements. | Lecture | 3 |
| Program Elective | 3 |
Year 1, Spring
| Course Title | Course Description | Course Type | Credits |
| Internship in Arts Administration | 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. Pre-requisite: Practicum in Arts Administration | 2 | |
| Marketing for the Arts, Entertainment and Culture | Have you ever wondered what a career in the cultural arts might be like? How do you use strategic marketing tools and methodologies to promote and sell the arts product? Marketing the Arts, Culture and Entertainment (ACE) encompasses a focus on both for and not for profit organizations. ACE covers the diverse fields of commercial entertainment and visual arts, not for profit performing and visual arts as well as service and trade-related organizations in the cultural arts realm. | Lecture | 3 |
| Fundraising | An overview of current thinking in the field on finding support and generating funds for cultural initiatives including traditional and non-traditional approaches, funding trend analysis and research, and social entrepreneurship and revenue generation. | Lecture | 3 |
| Capstone Seminar in Arts Administration | Guided independent work culminating in a draft of the capstone project report. Prerequisite: Cultural Data & Analysis. | Seminar | 3 |
| Program Elective | 3 |
Year 2, Fall
| Course Title | Course Description | Course Type | Credits |
| Law and the Arts | 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, and other problems relating to authenticity of art works. | Lecture | 3 |
| Accounting I | Columbia Business School. 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 U.S. model but includes a broad discussion of measurement issues and alternative country practices. | Lecture | 3 |
| Elective | 3 | ||
| Elective | 3 | ||
| Breadth Elective | 3 | ||
| Breadth Elective | 3 |
Year 2, Spring
| Course Title | Course Description | Course Type | Credits |
| Contemporary Issues in Arts Administration | Contemporary issues within arts administration. Topics evolve with the field but can include debates over deaccessioning art, the importance of new markets like China, etc. | Seminar | 3 |
| Entrepreneurship in the Arts | Designed to integrate arts administration course-work from business, law, and the arts. Moves from the financial, cultural, political environment to strategic planning tools to specific arts situations in the creation and implementation of planning objectives. | Lecture | 3 |
| Elective | 3 | ||
| Elective | 3 |