Brett Egan — Beyond the NEA: Designing a Resilient Cultural Ecosystem

What if the most vulnerable part of U.S. arts isn’t creativity, but structure? Brett Egan, president of the DeVos Institute, joins us to unpack why public funding feels shakier than ever, how AI is making the arts more necessary—not less—and what it would take to build a resilient cultural ecosystem that can weather political swings.

We trace the long arc from the NEA’s founding to today’s accelerated attempts to shrink and politicize cultural agencies, with real consequences for stability, planning, and trust. Brett argues for a both‑and approach: defend what’s left while building capacity beyond government. He lays out a practical blueprint for a flexible national arts framework—more constitution than command—that invites thousands of organizations to align around shared pillars like arts education, creative workers’ rights, disability inclusion, community arts practice, and a legal defense fund for creative expression. Imagine collective philanthropy fueling a dozen long‑horizon campaigns that strengthen the whole field.

We also dig into what leadership looks like now. The future belongs to hybrid leaders who blend classic arts administration with AI literacy, policy fluency, and cross‑sector savvy in health, transportation, and education. Brett shares how to move research from the academy into practice, why structural thinking helps decode fast‑moving policy shifts, and how a big‑tent mindset—assuming good faith across differences—can turn overwhelm into coordinated action. If you care about funding stability, audience recovery, and the role of culture in a turbulent world, this conversation offers clarity and a path forward.

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Transcript

Meet Brett Egan, President of the DeVos Institute for Arts and Nonprofit Management

Elizabeth Bowman 0:00

Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman and welcome to the scene room. Today I have Brett Egan in the room. He is the president of the Devos Institute for Arts and Nonprofit Management. He has an incredibly rich resume that covers many aspects of arts administration. He has held senior roles with major organizations internationally. And through his work with the Devos Institute, he provides planning and training services for arts and culture organizations in the United States and all over the world. He specializes in pretty much every area of arts administration, including strategic planning, succession planning, capital campaigns, and fundraising campaigns, community practices, human resource development, board development, and institutional and programmatic marketing. So he has a very experienced perspective to offer us today, and the conversation is fascinating. We focus on the current economic situation in the United States specifically and what arts organizations are facing and potential solutions or directions forward during this time. If you're enjoying the podcast, please like, share, comment, do any of those free things to help get the word out. I really appreciate all the engagement that this podcast has been getting. And for now, let's get to the conversation. Brett, welcome to the scene room. Thanks so much for being here.

Brett Egan 1:37

Thanks, Elizabeth. Happy to be here.

Why Arts Still Matter In An AI Era

Elizabeth Bowman 1:39

For any listeners who might not know who you are, I mean your huge presence in the arts administration world, having advised major institutions internationally on transformational change and policy shifts. Can you tell us a little bit, a brief background, if you can, about your career and your overall, I guess, professional purpose?

Brett Egan 2:01

Sure, Elizabeth. Well, thank you for having me. I imagine I do a lot of the same work that many of your listeners do. I started as a young theater actor and director and decided that that probably wasn't the right path for me, given my slightly above middling talent, but not exceptional talent. Decided to go into producing and then ultimately had an opportunity to join Michael Kaiser at the Kennedy Center to create the DeVos Institute of Arts and Nonprofit Management. That started in 2009 for me. And for the last 16 years or so, I've had the opportunity to work with nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, performing arts, museums, kristras, dance organizations, community-based organizations here in the States and around the world. We do a lot of training. We run a global arts management fellowship for managers from around the world who come to study with us and with each other for a month each summer in Washington, D.C. I had an opportunity to write lots of strategic plans with great thinkers around the country, help organize and undertake capital campaigns, help birth new institutions, expand existing institutions. But really, Elizabeth, I think of myself as a plumber, thinking about how to connect the pipes to each other to make sure that the water flows smoothly and try to, you know, support my colleagues in creating the most productive, joyful working environments possible. So that's, I think, me in a nutshell, Elizabeth, you know, sort of a Heinz 57 arts background, and happy now to be serving colleagues around the country and the world, trying to improve the productivity and joy within their organizations.

Elizabeth Bowman 3:26

With such a varied experience with all those different organizations and peppering in the current, I guess, political situation. What do you believe arts organizations are getting fundamentally right right now?

A Historical Look At U.S. Arts Funding

Brett Egan 3:40

I think there's a lot to be optimistic about, Elizabeth, even though we are living through difficult times, not just politically, but also environmentally. People have proven time and again they need and want art and creativity in their lives. I don't think that's changed. In fact, I think with the advent of AI, that's going to become even more obvious to more people. Think that AI can help us in our administration. In fact, our organization has been running for the last seven months what we've been calling an exploratory sprint, thinking about the ways in which AI can be utilized in administrative functions. But as I've given that a lot more thought, as the world overall becomes more, let's say, integrated with AI, I think people are going to be asking deeper questions about what is human. I think many of the things that fill our days today are likely to be automated in the future. I expect that we'll have more spare time, or some of us will have more spare time to be thinking about the big questions. I think that this is likely to lead to productive boredom and grappling with some of the most significant challenges and factors facing us as a species. I think this is good for the humanities. I'm optimistic actually that this next 30 years is going to give birth to a new awareness about the role of arts and culture and the way in which it can help interpret and manage the human experience. And I think there are a lot of organizations and administrators that are awake to this. I think that people are really starting to think about how, not just starting to think about, really pressing into how to utilize the arts and culture institution or the creative practice as an interpretive tool to help other humans make sense of the change around them. And I think that there are plenty of organizations that have been at that forefront and continue to be at that forefront as really critical interpreters of the change around us. We all ask big questions. All humans ask big questions. Some institutions have failed humans in interpreting those questions. Arts and culture has a unique ability to facilitate that discussion and also give people or provide people the tools to make sense of a increasingly complex world around them. For that, Elizabeth, I'm really optimistic, actually, about the relevance of arts and culture institutions moving into the next generation.

Elizabeth Bowman 5:49

Aaron Powell With the current situation in the United States, in particular, with all of the cuts that have been made and you've been pretty vocal about what's your take on what is happening from the current administration? What's their intention, do you think?

Unprecedented Tactics And Legal Pushback

Brett Egan 6:04

Well, let me back out of the current administration for a minute and think about this through a more historical lens and then come back to the current administration. I think, you know, there has been for centuries a debate in our country about the role of government in art and culture. And for the first 180 years or so, the verdict was the government probably at the federal level should play very little or no role. In the 1960s, that conversation changed. Well, I should say there were obviously moments prior to that, the WPA and and in particular during the Second World War and the years that followed, but really the institutionalization of arts funding as a mainstay practice of the federal government in the 1960s with the national endowments and with IMLS really was a watershed moment in the relationship between government and the arts in the U.S. And that conversation has in contest since that time. There have been many attempts over the course of the last 60 years to reframe the relationship between government and arts funding, in particular in the states. To that extent, what's happening now is not new. Reagan, in fact, was the first president that called for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities. He was unsuccessful, obviously, and did not try again. And then there were a number of efforts over successive, mostly Republican administrations, which is in obvious keeping with conservative viewpoint on the role of government in American society to reduce or eliminate the agencies. Trump, of course, in his first administration, called for the elimination of the endowments in several of his budgets, I think all four, at least several. And so it really is no surprise that this time around, the Trump administration has again called for the elimination of these agencies, especially within the context of all of the cuts that have been made and moves that have been made in other areas of the federal infrastructure. This is obviously a point which is vociferously contested, especially by defendants of public investment in the arts, of which I'm one. I do think that there is a role for government in supporting arts and culture in America. I don't think that the balance is settled. I think it makes sense that it would continue to be debated, but I think that we can say that there's nothing surprising about the current discussion, even though the speed and the tactics that have been employed are a departure. I think when you look at the focus that the current administration, that I would even distinguish the current administration from the first Trump administration in this manner, that there has been a unprecedented focus on arts and culture as a device of the federal government in this administration. It may come as a surprise or even a shock to some people that this administration named a nominee for chair of the National Endowment for the Arts more quickly than any modern presidency. You go back to Reagan, there is no president that has sought to create a change at the head of the national agencies as quickly as this administration has. This administration, obviously, through executive orders, has attempted to influence the way in which federal funding through the agencies is deployed and somewhat successfully. This administration has exercised contested right to rescind grants. In fact, just last week, there's a landmark ruling in a case of the IMLS, where the court has said that the administration moved unlawfully to rescind grants that were lawfully appropriated by Congress in the case of IMLS. There has been a full frontal approach, might be the polite way of discussing it, to reordering the relationship between federal government and arts and culture in the context of this administration. I think the speed, the tactics, the comprehensiveness of it is, I think we can certainly say it's unprecedented. I think for many of us it's also unsettling at the very least, arguably unlawful, as several of the court actions have indicated, obviously pressing the boundaries of executive power in the way in which the administration is in virtually all aspects of civil society. So, you know, I think that's the context in which we sit. I don't think that's news to anybody who's listening. I think the bigger question is how the arts and culture sector will respond. And here, Elizabeth, I've been spending some time thinking, and many colleagues around the country have been spending time thinking about as these actions have been taken, what has that exposed about how prepared or unprepared independent sector, private sector, let's say nonprofit sector in the United States, arts and culture has been to respond to this cascade of actions that have had very unsettling, at least, impacts on the sector since February of this year.

Elizabeth Bowman 10:36

Aaron Ross Powell When I think about dismantling the investment in the arts, I just can't understand it from a government standpoint because the return on investment is so strong and highly documented. So I don't understand why.

The Sector’s Underorganization Problem

Brett Egan 10:56

But what I would say is I think the argument has been well established. You know, it is not surprising that conservative voices in American government would argue that government should not have a role in certain areas that government has taken a role. And we see that playing out, I think personally, we see that playing out unfortunately, at the very least, and to put it mildly, across many aspects of the American social safety net, health infrastructure, protection of environment, even the economy. And, you know, there's this book that was just, I haven't had a chance to read it, although I've been listening to Walter Isaacson talking about the most beautiful sentence ever written, the book that he published last week or just the week before. I think it's the beautiful most sentence ever written, which talks about the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence, that talks about, you know, the fact that we have rights that are inalienable, that have been prescribed by a creator, that all men are created equal, and the fact that the country hasn't achieved this standard. Even the Founding Fathers understood that this was an aspirational clause that they were not themselves able to achieve, given the fact that many of them, for instance, were slave owners. And Walter Isaacson, I think, provides a really intriguing and very useful tool in thinking about this centuries-long contest that we see unfolding precisely today and in the conversation about federal arts funding, about the balance between what a government can do and what a government should do. I think one of the more useful things, even though I'm looking forward to reading the relatively short book, it just came out, I haven't had time, but I'm listening to interviews by Mr. Egginson. One of the things that I find to be sort of optimistic about the premise of it is that he gives us the tool of saying, you know, the debate with our fellow citizens about the role of government ideally is one that is understood as a contest over that balance, over the balance of what role government can play and should play, and what areas of society government should not play a role in. And you and I may share perspective in certain areas, and you may you and I may disagree in certain areas, but that is really the premise of the argument. And right now, of course, we're seeing, I think for many of us in arts and culture, a viewpoint expressed through the actions of this administration that many would say that's not that's not the viewpoint that I have. In fact, that again is a pretty mild way of putting it. I think many of people feel, myself included, that there have been steps that have been taken that we vehemently disagree with. We have serious questions about the legality of them, we have serious questions about the intelligence of them. I mean, as you say, Elizabeth, arts and culture is a an amazing investment. It always has been for the United States. It is arguably one of the great tools not only of economic prosperity, but also soft power for the U.S. That has drawn people to very well promoted ideals with very high production value through media and Hollywood in particular, but also through the live arts to the United States as a beacon of free expression and of sort of an optimistic viewpoint on what humans can do. I think it's really poor judgment, personally, to de-invest. But I think we do need to get back to a place where we can have a conversation with people who have different political viewpoints about balance and to be able to make the argument for our vision of what the proper balance is, and do our best to listen, if we can, to reasonable and thoughtful arguments about that balance from other sides. I don't think this contest ends with this administration. I think that this is a perennial American question. I think it has been unfolding at least for the last 60 years. And one of the things that I think we really also have to think about, Elizabeth, which is the subject of a piece that I've recently written for ArtNet, is what the arts and culture sector can and needs to be thinking about independent of its relationship with government. The government, in my view, is part of the ecosystem. It has never been a primary part of the ecosystem for funding for arts and culture in America. The vast majority of arts and culture organizations receive from the federal government 3% or less of their annual budget, and many of them receive virtually nothing or nothing from the federal government. So I think if we're truthful, we can acknowledge that federal funding for the arts is an incredibly important symbol. It is a statement of faith, it is a statement of investment, but it is all things considered infinitesimal in respect to private and foundation funding for the arts and state and local funding for the arts. The question I think that this really raises is what is the arts and culture sector going to do about this in response? Does it use this moment of unprecedented focus on arts and culture to try to break open a new conversation with the American public and with itself about how to proceed in light of the fact that the federal government has become an increasingly unstable partner in the sustainability of national arts and culture?

Elizabeth Bowman 15:38

Do you think that arts leaders, arts organization leaders have enough conversation with other arts organization leaders?

Beyond Government: New Funding Models

Brett Egan 15:47

I think there's a crisis of collective action and collective leadership in our country, Elizabeth, as pertains to arts and culture. A crisis of collective action and leadership. There are so many brilliant people in this field. So many. Really thoughtful strategists, both at the organizational level, at the community level, at the statewide level, at the regional level, and at the federal level. But we are woefully underorganized. And I think that that's understandable to an extent. The sector hasn't faced, at least in recent memory, at least in the last generation. I mean, the only thing that comes close to maybe is the culture wars of the 1980s, but I think that's only one slice of the ecosystem of challenge that we're facing today. Our sector has never really faced the confluence of very substantial political change, rapid technological change that has an impact not only on operations, but on audience behavior and interest in our work, and very significant impacts from a global pandemic. And those three forces, and the pandemic nobody likes to talk about, and I realize it in some ways it's old news, and nobody wants to say, oh, well, that's the result. There is a lot that still permeates our sector as a result of both infrastructural change, economic change, and also behavioral change that either solidified or took root en masse during the pandemic, and our sector simply hasn't recovered. And it forces deep questions about why. It forces deep questions about the resilience of the sector in many ways. Of course, there are many organizations that are actually doing fine and in some cases doing better than they were before the pandemic, but that's not the majority case. The majority case is that most museums, most symphonies, most opera companies, most dance companies, most theater companies are still struggling to get back to where they were in 2019. So this confluence of factors, Elizabeth, which includes the political but is not exclusive to the political, I think we can say it's unprecedented in working memory. And what it is exposed is while there are many dozens of thoughtful, insightful philanthropies working on these issues, while there are many hundreds of organizers at the local, state, and national levels that spend time and energy and soul power grappling with these issues within the context of their locality or within their region. There really is not a collective conversation taking place at the national level that would begin to approach the scale and the severity of the challenges that are being faced. It's not that there isn't organizing take place. It's not that there aren't brilliant people. There is not the infrastructure in place to organize and aggregate these efforts in a way that will collectively approach, meet, much less surmount the challenges that are being faced. It's virtually unthinkable that one would put on the shoulders of any individual organization a direct challenge to the policy changes and the actions that have been taken by the federal government since March. That's it. There have been truly courageous rebuttals that have, to certain measure, been effective. You know, the theaters that come together in March, together with the ACLU, to challenge the executive order addressing speech pertinent to gender identity, was effective in getting legal recourse in place to respond to what was determined and it's still being contested to an extent in court to be arguably unlawful restriction of free speech. And that did come down to the collective action of a group of theaters together with the ACLU when you have people like Secretary Bunch at the Smithsonian saying, I hear you, Trump administration, that you want us to review and perhaps excise some of the content in the Smithsonian Institution. We hear that. Our response to that is that we're going to conduct our own internal autonomous review, taking your input under advisement. But this really is our responsibility. This is our purview. It is our right. It is not the role of the federal government to prescribe the content of the Smithsonian institution. These are good examples. And there are others, hundred foundations locking arms, to say, you know what, we really vehemently disagree with the characterization of the nonprofit foundation sector as aiding and abetting domestic terrorism. We're really not going to stand for that, and we are going to speak up. There are instances of response that I find to be courageous and really encouraging. The challenge is that the volume And cadence and scale and swiftness of the changes that are taking place at the federal level, in the broader environment, with technology, with the economy, need repeated, coherent, massive, I think, collective response backed by real capital, probably frameworked by something that looks like a national arts strategy that would not dictate the action of any institution, but would invite the tens of thousands of institutions around the country to join in efforts that they felt were right for them, for their community, for their institution to advance, let's say, critical pillars of what a successful and flourishing national arts ecosystem might look like in 10, 15, 20 years. I think we're missing that, Elizabeth. And I think it's, in the words of my colleague Alan Brown, an underimagining of the sector. I think that there's so much good in this sector, and we could use a bit more framework to think about how we can work together to achieve that good.

Elizabeth Bowman 20:53

So we need a dedicated organization to look at the policy shifts and look at where advocacy is needed specifically.

Toward A National Arts Framework

Overwhelm, Burnout, And Bandwidth

Brett Egan 21:02

That's a great question, Elizabeth. And there's actually a big debate about that. Do we need an organization to do this, or do we need a more decentralized way of thinking about this? I think, you know, our sector is astonishing for its diversity. By that I mean racial and ethnic, of course, socioeconomic, geographic, discipline, philosophy approach. And that pluralism, that radical pluralism, is arguably one of its most beautiful elements insofar as it's a proxy for American democracy and the evolution of a encyclopedic American identity. It really is, I think, one of the marvels of human civilization, the way in which our sector has evolved. On the other hand, that diversity has led to some skepticism about the ability for anyone to lead. And in fact, there have been important moments, even in the last 20 years of national arts policy thinking and organizing that have contributed to the idea that it might not be a great idea for the sector to put too much stock in any individual or any individual organization as a titular leader for the sector. And I think, you know, a lot of people would argue, and I would join that group, that there has been considerable wisdom in the history of our sector to not go after something like the formation of the Ministry of Culture that you see in many European nations. And that there is something authentically American about the resistance to that, and that there's a lot of wisdom in that. Because obviously, that type of aggregated or consolidated power, if you happen to agree with it, happy days, if you happen to see it differently, or if it gets into what we might think of as the wrong hands, there's outcomes that a lot of us would look at and say, that's dystopian, that's not what we would want. So when you say that there's a need for an institution, I think that a lot of people would look at that question and and and say, I'm not, I'm not so sure that an institution is the right solution, although there are some people who might argue that that's the case. Personally, I think that what would be really helpful would be something that looks like a flexible national arts constitution, something that states a series of principles that and goals, a vision for a more fully realized arts and culture sector that should be and would be and would necessarily continue to be debated frequently at conferences and online and in living rooms and in town halls, but that would be a collective discussion about, let's say, 10, 12, 15 major columns of work or enterprises that the sector could undertake over the course of the next 10, 15, 20 years that would lead to outcomes that would be desirable. So, for instance, a number of foundations have recently come together, just three weeks ago, four weeks ago, to form an effort called Humanity AI. You may be familiar with it. Humanity AI is a $500 million fund that has been put together by a series of foundations that say AI should be for everybody, not just for the tech giants. We need to put a lot of we need to put money and thinking into how to make AI a social good. And at present, the contours of it remain a little bit undefined, at least in the public eye. But the principle of it is that it will fund initiatives to ensure that AI is deployed as a public good. And in my mind, a $500 million fund with a vision for the beneficial application of a technology that invites, not demands, invites participation, invites participation from nonprofits and from community organizations and from maybe institutions of faith and maybe universities to contribute to this vision for a thoughtful, humane application of AI as a social good? I look at that, Elizabeth, and I say, well, what if we had a similar fund for and a similar theory of change and a theory of output, for community arts practice, for artist workers' rights, for art as a tool to serve people of all abilities, of art as a tool for education? What if there were a national arts constitution or a national arts framework or national arts strategy that doesn't say exactly how you, Elizabeth, have to approach it or how I have to approach it, but says here are 10, 12, 15 aspects of a healthy arts ecology and that invites people to contribute in some sort of collective and coherent and I'm not gonna say entirely coordinated, that's never gonna happen. That's not even ideal, but a way where the sum is greater than the parts to help achieve an outcome. And it might invite collective philanthropy to support that as well. I think that's what's really impressive about the humanity AI effort is that I don't know exactly how it came together, but I'm gonna assume somewhat organically, a group of serious thinkers at the head of major foundations said, we should do something together to ensure that AI serves the common wheel. And I think that we can do something like that, centered around, let's say, a dozen campaigns over the course of the next 15 years that do not demand that any individual creative practitioner or arts institution does anything, but invites everybody to do something if they wish. In my view, that's Elizabeth sort of how this would unfold. And then there are many dozens, let's say even hundreds, of existing advocacy organizations in the country. I'm not sure we need a new entity, but I do think we need a, let's call it a Congress of institutions that could come together and talk about this framework and then make sure that the information reaches their constituents. And that would also include local arts agencies and state arts agencies and regional arts agencies inviting institutions to participate in collective action over the course of the next 10, 12, 15 years. In my view, Elizabeth, that's one framework that could work. I'm sure there are others, I'm sure there are better options for how this might proceed. But I do think that there is a gap of collective leadership and collective action that is failing as yet to meet the scale and the speed of the change that is taking place.

Elizabeth Bowman 26:57

Yeah, I guess that's the question. It's like the speed of the change that's happening, and then the fact that a a lot of arts organizations don't necessarily have manpower dedicated to advocacy. So these changes come into the news, and then they don't have any time to digest them, and then there's no advocacy, so we're steamrolled.

Cross‑Sector Partnerships And Realities

Brett Egan 27:21

Yeah. Well, I I think that, you know, Elizabeth, there are vociferous advocates working very hard right now to protect, in particular, the agencies. And that's important work. I think it's a fraction of the work that needs to be done. But that is important work that's taking place, and these are real professionals who are doing this. I mean, they are on the hill constantly seeking bipartisan support for broadly popular programs. Part of the genius of the endowments is that they fund in every congressional district around the country. And that's how they were set up by design. And that was an ingenious conceit on the part of the Johnson administration, those who came together to pull together the uh the original legislation, to try to insulate them from exactly this type of political moment where the concept of arts funding may become politicized to the extent that one side feels that it isn't relevant, necessary, or appropriate anymore. I mean, this money is in every American congressional district. That's smart. And there are very serious professional advocates arguing for the continuation of these. My argument is that it's just not enough. You know, the National Endowment for the Arts, well, it's not enough, and that the agencies, largely because of the actions of this administration, have become so overtly politicized. And actually the ingredients or the matrix through which they are making grant-making decisions has changed and has become partisan, not exclusively, but a lot of it has become partisan, that the agencies have been damaged. It's not to say that they're damaged beyond repair. And I think there's a lot of people who would argue that they're not damaged beyond repair, and I would agree that they're not damaged beyond repair. But I think that they have been damaged. I think that it's gonna take years, it might take more than years, to repair them to this sort of noble principle of a nonpartisan entity that can make egalitarian decisions about the distribution of public funding in a fair way across every congressional district without overt politics laid on top of them. I think that's gonna take a lot of time. And what my concern is is that arts administrators and managers and institutions need stable partnership. While it's also true that many organizations, the money that they've received from the agencies has been small compared to their total budget, that's not universally true. There are certain organizations, especially smaller rural organizations, many organizations of color. Some of the grants that come out of the National Endowment for the Humanities, IMLS, are significant six-figure grants that help really move museums forward and libraries forward. Like this is important funding for a lot of these organizations. And it's just not stable anymore. It's not a stable partner. And my view is that continuing to focus in heavy measure on the preservation of the agencies at the national advocacy level is totally understandable. It's necessary work, but we need a lot more. We need a lot more force that is diversified across many other issues. We need, I think, a fund for legal defense of creative expression within arts and culture. I think we can use substantial additional support, in addition to the current advocates that are already thinking about this, about how to ensure that arts education remains a vital and universal function in every American public school. I think we need additional protections and enhancements for artists with disabilities. I think we could use importantly additional thinking and enhancements for how we can make living and working as an artist in America more sustainable and humane. You know, there are several fronts that need attention. And the current advocacy infrastructure has been largely focused on preserving the agencies, which is totally understandable. It's just insufficient. And the reason why I've called for, for instance, thinking about the possible development of a new national nonpartisan public fund for the arts, where the sector would be in direct conversation with the American people as different than in a conversation with the American people through the vehicle of their tax return for funding of arts and culture in America, is that the amount of money that goes to arts and culture in America is at its lowest point against GDP since the formation of the national endowments in 1965. The allocated budget from the Biden administration, this is not a Trump administration issue. Of course, the Trump administration is calling for the elimination of the agencies, but the Biden administration's allocation for the national endowment for the arts is at the lowest percent of GDP since 1965, the year after the legislation. And that's not because the Biden administration wasn't pro-arts, it's because the vehicle of the national agencies is as a funding entity, is not of the level of potency that most arts people would say that's on par with the quality of work that we do, with the return that we provide for the investment, with the value that we provide for American communities. I think many of us believe that, and many of us believe that more is possible. Is more possible through the vehicle of the government? Maybe. That's a conversation that's been going since the beginning of our nation. It's been accelerated since 1960 in the last 60 years. The answer has been probably not. I think that's a tough pull to swallow. I don't know if there's political will across both parties to dramatically increase the allocation for the endowments. That certainly has not been the case in recent memory. And in fact, we're at the nadir, the very bottom point of the relationship between arts funding and GDP since the inception of the agencies. It's not where I'm going to put my stock. I'm looking for areas where we have a little bit more control over our destiny. And that's why I'm calling for a conversation about an independent national arts fund where we can take the conversation directly to the American people.

Elizabeth Bowman 32:46

Oh, really great points. And I'll share your most recent article in the comments as well.

Strategy For The Next Three Years

Brett Egan 32:54

It's also on my Substack, and people are welcome and invited to leave comments there. And I look, this is all really fast-moving terrain, Elizabeth. And, you know, I've been in a number of conversations recently where we've been working on these topics at the conversation and sort of look at each other and say, isn't it, isn't it sort of astounding that here we are 250 years into the development of this nation, and we don't have a framework for this discussion? The endowments think understandably and nobly took up that leadership position over the course of the last 60 years. As they have been dramatically challenged, in many ways reconfigured, some would argue damaged, I would, over the course of the last six months. There's been a hard, bright light shown on the fact that there has been an underorganization of the sector outside of the agencies. And I'm not saying there aren't unbelievable organizers in the sector. There are. They're largely regional and local. There are some that are of national scale, but not of a scale on par with the challenge that we're facing. And I would say that the future of our sector will rely in no small part on how the sector responds to these challenges today. Will we come together and say, here is an imperfect collective or partially collected, even if contested, vision for what we together can achieve as a sector over the course of the next 20 years together? And let's keep talking about it, and it's not perfect and it needs to continue to be debated? Or are we going to remain in a relative quagmire of indecision about how to respond together? And that's really the questions I feel personally drawn to struggle with. And I think a lot of our colleagues are struggling with. And I think there's not one answer. There's probably several. I think that's the debate that I would like to see take on a lot of energy over the course of the next several months.

Elizabeth Bowman 34:46

Do you think that has anything to do with the burnout problem in our industry? You know, how people are obviously just focused on getting their operational funding and the audiences back.

Grace In Debate And Big‑Tent Thinking

Brett Egan 34:59

Yeah, I mean, to an extent, Elizabeth, this is all extracurricular. I'm not sure. There are a few people maybe in the country whose job this is, right? But only a few in respect to the aggregate volume of the sector. For most people, this feels existential. Like many of these issues feel that they will have a profound impact on the health of my organization. But the energy, the power, the bandwidth that I have as an individual to respond to these feels so insignificant to the measure of the challenge that I think very understandably, part of the response is I get it. These are the issues. There's not much I can do. I don't know what to do. I have to stay focused on my job and on my people and I'm making payroll this week. And when you multiply that across tens of thousands of really accomplished, brilliant arts administrators who face that immediate reality, in the absence of a framework that people can tap into, yeah, I think you're going to get less effective response to this than you would if there were more organization and a little bit more articulated vision at the national level. And yet I want to be really clear, this is not a critique or an indictment of the advocacy organizations that exist today. These are, they're not new issues, but the confluence and the scale of the issues is new. It's unprecedented. And the, I think, perceived lack of stability of partnership within the federal agencies. If for no other reason then there has been so much change taking place, and lots of people have left and some people have gone back, but it's confusing and it doesn't feel stable, and the money doesn't feel stable. It has exposed the fact that around that there is not an infrastructure that's equal in stature to what the agencies have represented that has the ability to respond to the issues at a scale and with a force and with the money that's likely needed in order to provide real relief to the sector. It's not a critique of the existing advocacy organizations. It's a question about is this an opportunity to think about what the evolution of those advocacy organizations is? And or is there a way for the existing advocacy organizations at the national and local and regional levels to come together through a new vehicle or a new type of conversation, maybe around a new sort of collective framework or strategy that would produce real results for administrators working at the local level. Yes. Overwhelm is part of it. The fact that it's extracurricular in many regards is part of it. The fact that these are theoretically existential concerns, but in comparison to making payroll on Friday, they're just not gonna get the attention that they might otherwise get because everyone's busy making sure that their own house is in order. These are tough times. Yeah.

Elizabeth Bowman 37:47

Yeah. I mean, a lot of large-scale arts organizations do have at least one person dedicated to government relations or, you know, at least when I was working at the Canadian opera company, there was somebody whose role was government liaison. And I guess this whip might fall under that person, maybe.

Hybrid Leaders And Updated Training

Brett Egan 38:08

Maybe the lot maybe the very largest organizations. I think I think the vast majority of organizations in the states would love to have somebody whose focus would be relationships with local and state government. I think a lot of people rely on their local and state arts agencies to be that proxy and their advocates at the local and state levels. The other issue here is that this is really new terrain for most people. In many ways, new terrain for me. I'm not a policy expert. I haven't spent my time in those circles for the most part. I'd like to think I'm a good student. I'd like to think I read enough to be a competent conversant, but there aren't so many people who have made their livelihood focusing exclusively on these issues. There are brilliant people in the academy who have focused on this. The translation of what happens in the academy to what happens on the ground is another workflow that I think could use improved blood flow. There's a lot of great thinking and has been a lot of great thinking coming from the academy. How can we avail of that data and research in a real-time way, in a practical way, to equip advocates and organizers and strategists with information and thought that has been developed that can really help tackle some of these challenges? But, you know, that's not the job of most orchestra administrators. It's not the job of most people running a small opera company. It's not the job of people running community arts organizations. Do they have thoughts? Do they have passion? Do they have emotion? Are they impacted by it? Of course. But there is an underformed, I would argue, underformed response to the scale of the challenge that's being faced. And the professional workforce that's in place to respond to that challenge, I think, is hustling and doing the best that they can. I just think we need a much broader tent for a national conversation about how in the collective we can address some of these issues together. I think that piece is missing.

Elizabeth Bowman 39:59

Yeah. I feel like if major organizations all did have this type of role, they would also potentially find avenues for revenue as well. Because you would find, for instance, like policy shifts that are announced and then there are grants that are formed based on those policy shifts. So I mean it might result in in more income as well. I mean, I'm not saying that that's the primary use of that, but it it it could potentially.

Structural Thinking For Administrators

Brett Egan 40:30

I think that that's I think that that's right. And I think we have good examples of that. I think, for instance, the work that was done by the National Endowment for the Arts during the Obama administration to develop the Our Town program that was looking at cross-sector applications of creative practice and the development of healthy communities and arts organizations all of a sudden being able to have conversations with the Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Transportation. And yes, some of those departments saying, yeah, we could actually use innovative solutions to some of the challenges that we face. Yeah, artists or cultural organizations could be partners in that. Yes, we're willing to make an allocation for cultural organizations or creative practitioners to be part of the teams, at least, if not also the implementers of some of these solutions, and new money flows from those agencies in the direction of arts and culture organizations. Yes, I think we have good examples of the way in which that work has been successfully executed. I would say, Elizabeth, that we should continue to pursue. I'm not holding my breath for that, though. And I'm not suggesting that you are. I think right now, and at least for the next three years, if not longer, we're 100% in a climate where that's not likely to happen. Uh, you know, I wouldn't argue to any of my colleagues, put 60% of your energy in that direction. There will be some that will continue to press for it, and that's because that's their job. And I'm so glad that they're there. And they're really smart people. For instance, the folks at the Cultural Advocacy Group that think about how to have really thoughtful discussions with partners in government and not just in arts-related parts of the government, but across federal agencies to try to get more opportunity for artists and cultural organizations throughout the federal infrastructure. And I'm so glad that that work is taking place. I just think it's meeting with unprecedented headwinds as we speak, because throughout the federal government, there is a major effort to downsize, consolidate, defund, de-platform. So as an administrator, I'm and as a plumber, I sort of think of myself, you know, just sort of like trying to get the pipes in place to make sure that the ecosystem continues to work. It's not the bet I'm making. I'm not making the bet that over the course of the next three, four, five years, the major advances are going to come from breakthroughs in partnership with government, at least as it pertains to arts and culture. Will that change moving forward? I would like to think that there might be administrations in the future that will be substantially more sympathetic, both to direct arts funding and to the role that arts and culture can play. But it feels very distant to me. You know, it feels impractical to me to say that's where I'm going to put most of my focus. So I think it's a both and, but I think the balance of focus and balance of energy right now, this moment invites a really close scrutiny of what we can do independent of government. Because while that conversation continues to unfold, it's a pretty unstable environment. And from a managerial standpoint, it just doesn't seem like the most strategic use of energy and focus from my perspective in the immediate. I think it's a good opportunity for us to be thinking about what strides and development can we make outside of government.

Elizabeth Bowman 43:33

Definitely, definitely 100% agree. And I hope that those listening also uh It's Walker Isaacson's debate, right?

Brett Egan 43:42

I mean, it's a question of balance. And I don't know if I have the right balance. And I'm sure there will be people who disagree with things that I've said. And the thing that that's ideal is that we can presume goodwill. You know, I think that's another thing that our sector has done to an extent, but not always. I think our sector has done a pretty good job on occasion of quelling or marginalizing certain perspectives and voices. In some cases, I think that there's very understandable reasons why it has, including trauma, including bad behavior, including a sense of urgency to create more opportunity for more people. But I think we have to be careful with each other moving forward. I think we should be careful with each other and caring moving forward, not to be too ooey-gooey about all of this, Elizabeth. But I think that these next couple of years, as these ideas about what a new future might look like are beginning to meet the public sphere, I think to the extent that we can, showing grace towards each other is important. We're not going to agree with each other all the time. We may vigorously disagree with each other some of the time. I think if we presume good faith and that all of us, or the vast majority of us, care about largely the same thing, which is the role of creativity and art and culture in democracy and the role that it can play in practical ways of making our health communities more healthy and just, but also in less tactical ways in making life more beautiful and fuller and richer and more self-aware and more rewarding. I think we all pretty much believe in those things. How we get there should be the focus of vigorous debate. I would like to suggest that we do need to be really mindful of how that debate takes place. And it's hard because there's a lot of emotion in it and there's some trauma that informs some of the discussion. And I think we can acknowledge that at the same time as saying if we're going to make progress, we're going to do it together. And this needs to be a big tent. And we should be as gracious towards each other as possible.

Elizabeth Bowman 45:39

Agreed. I will wrap this up with two sort of more general questions for you. With all of your vast experience, I wanted to ask, what do you think are the qualities of a great leader?

Closing Thoughts And Next Steps

Brett Egan 45:52

So I I I maybe unsurprisingly, Elizabeth, I've given this some thought. I think we're entering into a phase where we need to be developing what I would call or think of as hybrid leaders. And by that I mean we need people who are really good at the essentials of arts administration, but we also need people who are and there are plenty of our colleagues out there that have already fit this bill. But I'm thinking about how do we develop the next generation of arts leaders who are able to grapple with some of these big social and technological changes that are taking place around us. I think our arts administration curriculum needs to include, and I know many of them already do because there are really smart people who have put together these curriculums, needs to include not just curriculum on how do you develop a cultural product, market it, fundraise around it, build effective boards, organize within community, but we're gonna need people who understand how AI is likely to affect human beings, not just as it pertains to art, but broadly speaking, because that is a vector that all of us are gonna be contending with at a greatly accelerated pace and accelerating depth over the course of the next year, three years, five years. And arts administrators need to understand that. And they need to understand how to prepare their organizations for that and how to talk with artists and other human beings within this new age. I think we do need more administrators who have a sense of what role they can play as advocates locally and at the statewide level, and they need tools to be equipped in that manner. I think we probably need additional and continued training on how the arts can intersect and contribute to the success of other sectors, whether that be transportation or agriculture or health. And of course, there are great practitioners in these areas. I think that needs to be laid into the fundamental training of arts administrators. So, Elizabeth, I think we could use more debate and dialogue and visioning around what it means to support hybridic thinking within the arts administrative context without getting too fanciful or philosophical about it. This is this is really just about how arts administrators are prepared to take stock of and adapt to the changing environment in ways that operates outside of the four walls of the theater or the museum. And a lot of this also has to do with the way in which human beings are changing and have changed. You know, I think many people at the start of their careers understand this intuitively, but they don't understand how dramatic the change has been because they weren't alive in the 70s and 80s, like some of us. And some of us who were alive in the 70s and 80s understand that something's changed, but haven't really accepted how profound the change is and want to believe that the ways in which we operated 30 or 40 years ago are going to continue to be competitive over the course of the next 30 or 40 years. And I'm not sure that that's the case. And so these are some of the factors that in my mind influence what I might call hybridic training for arts administrators and the types of things that are going to be needed for leadership.

Elizabeth Bowman 48:47

Great. You answered my second question in that question, since I was going to ask you about what it should be taught in these arts administrator programs that are out there right now.

Brett Egan 48:57

Well, Elizabeth, when I was in I was in school in the late 90s in college, and I actually had the opportunity to create my own major at the school that I went to is called a concentration. And I created a concentration. I was one of the weirdos, because I was like one of the couple dozen kids in my class who was like, I'm not sure anything that's being offered fits my needs exactly. So I just go create my own thing, probably some folly and maybe some wisdom in that. I ended up putting together a concentration in what I called cultural theory and performance studies. And so it was exactly a lot of the curriculum and thinking that the political right in this country today has said has completely corrupted an entire generation of Americans. A lot of uh a lot of Foucault and a lot of the structuralists and post-structuralists, and a lot of the classics. I mean, I studied a lot of Shakespeare and Greek writing and tragedy, and you know, it was a pretty broad mix. For about 10 years after I was in school, I said, geez, I had a great time at school, but I'm not sure it really set me up for success. I didn't come out of school with one of the degrees where, you know, you get shot straight into one of the industries, like consulting or law or business or finance. Wasn't really my interest anyway. But it's like, uh, if I had gotten a degree along those lines, I might have been more equipped to put together a sustainable livelihood. And it took me like three years to learn how to speak like a regular human being again, Elizabeth, after having read way too much Judith Butler. Like every sentence that came out of my mouth was a full page long. Maybe I'm still struggling with that. But what I've realized in retrospect is that that education, in particular for me, and this may sound super nerdy, but I think of myself as sort of a recovering structuralist, like to be able to look at the way in which a text is put together to say, how did the author create the effects on me that the author did, whether it's a film or an advertisement or a book or a poem or a play? Like, how did they do that structurally? How did the pieces go together to create that effect? You know, I think that a structuralist education, where 21, 22, 23-year-olds are able to look at the world and say, I understand the surface of what the author is trying to convey. I understand the image. Do I understand the intent behind the image? Do I understand how the image was constructed? Do I understand how it seeks to develop or reify or cement certain established ideas or challenge certain established ideas? That structuralist education I find to be really helpful now because what we're having to do is look at a political terrain. And this is what, you know, not to try to sound too fancy, what I was trying to do in the ArtNet piece was to say, hey, look, it feels chaotic, but actually, if we can think about this structurally, there are actual pretty clear elements of a cultural policy that has been developed and is being implemented by this administration. And there are at least three sleeves. And in the ArtNet piece, I'm arguing there's an economic sleeve, an ideological sleeve, and an aesthetic sleeve. I think that administrators, insofar as they are looking at their own organizations, obviously benefit from that type of training. But I think also as individuals looking out at the world, that type of training can also be helpful. So I'm not saying that every arts administrator should be reading all too serre and semiotics, Elizabeth. But, you know, like I think the structuralists helped us understand how power is put together, how you can take it apart, how you could put it back together in a way that meets the ends that you have in mind. So that's one more arrow I might put in the quiver for the arts administrator education is read up on the structuralists and the deconstructivists a bit, understand how they see the world, it might help us moving forward. It's a very nerdy way to end our interview, Elizabeth. But it has crossed my mind a few times over the course of the last 20 years of or 25 or 30 years of professional life following my rather chaotic undergraduate education.

Elizabeth Bowman 53:00

Well, there are a lot of moving parts in arts organizations. So it does make complete sense. I mean, especially if you're looking at a performing arts space where you've got production with hundreds of people involved. Yeah. And then that administration behind it, you've got to have a really analytical mind on just understanding them. Thank you so much for being in the scene room today. I really appreciate it.

Brett Egan 53:25

Well, thanks for inviting me, Elizabeth. This was fun. Hopefully, it's of some use to your listeners, and I hope hope to hear from some of them. And thanks for the honor of the invitation.