business committee for the arts

Fifth Annual
Forum for New Ideas

September 20, 2007
Morgan Stanley
New York, NY

National Sponsor:	New York Sponsor:

Moderator:
Annie Bergen
Midday host, 96.3 FM WQXR

Panelists:
Ginny B. Baxter, IIDA, ASID
Senior Manager of Workplace Dynamics
Herman Miller, Inc.

Chuck Hoberman
President
Hoberman Associate

Jill Medvedow
Director
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Excerpts:
Annie Bergen
"I'm sure you're all familiar with these alliances between business and the arts. Promotional opportunities - XYZ bank sponsors this concert and ABC sponsors this theater company's tour. Well today we hope to hear about different and new synergies between the arts and business, and how creativity is really crucial to business in keeping companies competitive and how it can really unlock whole new frontiers in terms of products and design - how understanding the individual and the individual's motives can further artistic endeavors in the workplace and enhance environment. And also, we'll hear how arts organizations can take risks in furthering their business and their missions...."

Ginny Baxter
"Businesses are very creative. They have to be creative or they won't survive. They have to be creative in terms of what they're doing in the market and how their models are going to look and how the people are going to learn. Unless the arts are completely self-sustaining, they have to learn how to be good businesses. And so there are mindsets and methods and models where one can inform the other....

You need to be able to fail. It is important to the vision of the leadership at Herman Miller to be able to say "You can fail at products." There are products I'm not showing you. There are some beautiful products that I'm not showing you, because they weren't executable….We don't even show them in our own internal museums, but we're allowed to be able to fail!"

Chuck Hoberman
"I think there's a whole other axis that's implied by the question which is "Where does art fit into a business context or what are the connections between the individual artist and the business person?" Then there's sort of like a broader one that goes back to mind, body, spirit, which is "What is creativity in all these different contexts?" I mean, certainly in my career, I've always been sort of tracking between these polarities: the arts and science. That's one way of speaking to that dialectic. But certainly, in my experience, you can get the most unbridled creativity from sources that are not typically associated with it. I mean engineering, for one. I'm a mechanical engineer; most of my staff members are engineers. Engineers get a bad rap, you know, they're dullards. But in reality, engineering is this fantastically constructive, creative sector…."

Jill Medvedow
"Creativity, as we're all saying, can be found anywhere. Arts don't own creativity....One of the least creative institutions, I'd say, are museums. They have done nothing like what businesses have had to do. They have just done business as usual for a really long time. One of the reasons the arts are in such trouble is that for 30 years we've just done a really piss-poor job of conveying why they matter, how they are of value to mind, body, spirit, where they fit in the spectrum, and why they are pleasurable and laden with value as opposed to a bitter pill that you have to swallow because it's good for you….

I actually don't see a lot of innovation, with all due respect - I love all our funders - but I don't see a lot of deeply innovative practices happening in business partnerships with the arts. I see fantastic time-honored practices….I think we should actually restore some of the prestige and honor to philanthropy. I think that is a critical need in the field, if we want institutions to play this role.... ”