On Chimeras and Second Bodies:

We Need Arts Organizations to Live So We Can Conquer Our Fear of Organizational Death

How much should we spend on arts organizations when the crises competing for that money keep getting worse? I don't have a clean answer — but I know what we lose if we let the subsector collapse while we're trying to puzzle this one out.

We lose vital lessons in how to die. And for a nonprofit sector that has a steroidal dose of our culture's aversion to endings, we need all the lessons we can. Arts organizations are a chimeric mashup of corporate structure and will-not-be-contained-creativity that can separate structure from mission better than most nonprofits, and upon the death of the former, release the latter into a new life.

We need arts organizations to live not only for the value they create for communities and society. We need arts organizations to live to guide the rest of us in overcoming our fear of organizational death.

I wrote about it, and Greek monsters (from the Iliad, not the Odyssey), in a new piece on Substack.