Arts Admin Director Burnishes Program’s International Bona Fides with Visits to Brussels and Seoul

As its name implies, the art world is a fundamentally global one. What’s more, globalization continues to play a significant role in shaping it, which is why the BU Metropolitan College Arts Administration program prioritizes developing international perspectives by requiring US-based students to take time to study abroad in places like Barcelona, Spain; Dublin, Ireland; Brussels, Belgium; London, England; and Havana, Cuba.

As the program’s director, Associate Professor of the Practice Douglas DeNatale embraces his role as its international ambassador, as he did with a pair of 2022 trips abroad to represent the College and advance its goals at long-running academic events.

First came Belgium, where, in October, DeNatale visited Brussels to attend the annual European Network on Cultural Management and Policy Congress (ENCATC). After the recent disruption posed by the global pandemic, it was a welcome resumption of in-person proceedings for the gathering, which for 30 years has provided the opportunity to network and explore potential partnerships with European colleagues.

The relationship has long been a fruitful one for BU MET’s Arts Administration program, helping to recruit and make arrangements for speakers to join the international Comparative Cultural Policy and Administration (MET AR 577) course on location to offer their perspectives on, say, the view of arts policy from the vantage of Paris. BU MET has been an institutional member of ENCATC for many years and, in 2014, even hosted a group study trip to Boston.

The event promised future prospective forays into international learning for MET students, including exploratory discussions for a potential partnership with an institution in San Sebastian, Spain, to offer an interdisciplinary travel course to students in BU MET’s Gastronomy and City Planning & Urban Affairs programs.

December saw Professor DeNatale travel to Seoul, South Korea, where he attended the 49th International Conference on Social Theory, Politics & the Arts (STP&A)— the oldest and most respected academic conference in the field of arts management and cultural policy.

It was there that the Arts Administration director presented the initial findings from a longitudinal study he’d led, alongside City Planning & Urban Affairs Director Yesim Sungu-Eryilmaz, into the impact the global pandemic made on employment in arts organizations.

Conducted in collaboration with regional arts service organization ArtsBoston, the study investigated a representative sample of arts organizations in Greater Boston, examining employment trajectories for those who were staffed arts organizations immediately prior to the pandemic outbreak.

Early findings indicate that about half of those laid off during the pandemic have since been able to find employment at other arts organizations. For those who remained within the organizations they were a part of before the outbreak, a significant percentage saw promotions.

STP&A is the founder of the Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, and Dr. DeNatale is a member of its board of directors, having recently been elected to a second three-year term of office. He also serves on the organization’s ad hoc student award committee.

The director’s latest rounds of travel brought even more global authority to the program he oversees. The art world is broad, and its future is in the hands of BU MET Arts Administration graduates.