In recent years, the arts sector has endured the COVID-19pandemic, the rise of generative AI, and evolving audience behaviors and marketing needs. Yet, these challenges have also served as a catalyst for much-needed change, exposing stubbornly entrenched practices and unsustainablebusiness models. To survive, arts organizations found innovative ways to engage with their audiences, embraced technology and social media, and re-examined theimportance of effective arts management and new entrepreneurial initiatives. So, what is next?
Join Doug DeNatale, director of Arts Administration programsat Boston University, and Michael J. Bobbit, executive director of the MassCultural Council, for an eye-opening discussion on the future of the arts, and how to ensure resilient arts organizations in an era of rapid transformation.
Biographies:
Michael J. Bobbitt
Executive Director, Mass Cultural Council
A distinguished theater artist, Michael J. Bobbit is thehighest-ranking public official in Massachusetts state government focused on arts and culture. Since 2021, he has led the Mass Cultural Council through several initiatives, including the development of its first Racial Equity Plan,d/Deaf & Disability Equity and Access Plan, and Native American & Indigenous Equity Plan; the launch of the nation’s first statewide Social Prescribing Initiative; the securing and distribution of $60.1 million in pandemic relief funding; and the design and implementation of a strategic planfor fiscal years 2024–2026. Recently, Bobbit was listed as one of the Boston Business Journal’s Power 50 Movement Makers. He has been appointed by Governor Maura Healey to serve on both the Governor’s Advisory Council on BlackEmpowerment and the newly established Massachusetts Cultural Policy Development Advisory Council, and he recently received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa from Dean College. He is a proud alumnus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Douglas DeNatale
Associate Professor of the Practice
Director, Arts Administration
Dr. DeNatale earned his PhD in folklore and folklife fromthe University of Pennsylvania in 1985. Prior to joining the Metropolitan College faculty, he was the president of Community Logic, Inc., an arts consulting firm specializing in research and documentation. He previously served as director of research for the New England Foundation for the Arts(NEFA), where he played an instrumental role in forecasting the emerging creative economy and in developing the web-based research database CultureCount. Formerly, DeNatale was director of the Lowell Folklife Project at the Libraryof Congress and director of the oral history and folklife program and collections at the University of South Carolina’s McKissick Museum. He has overseen collaborative arts research projects for the Ford Foundation, theRockefeller Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Library of Congress. He conducted oral histories for the Lowell National Historic Park, the Southern Oral History Program, and the J. Alden Weir National HistoricSite, and curated exhibitions for the McKissick Museum and the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
