MBA Program

President
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C.

Strategy. Entrepreneurship. Creativity. Michael Kaiser has taken these qualities from his management consulting practice and applied them to the arts with outstanding results. But his path to arts management was anything but linear.

After seriously considering a career in vocal performance, Kaiser graduated from Brandeis with a degree in economics and pursued economic consulting. He then chose MIT Sloan because of the small size and the quality of the faculty.

“The level of personal attention is incredible. I can’t imagine getting such an education in finance anywhere else,” he says, citing as faculty mentors Bob Merton, Franco Modigliani, and Fischer Black.

Kaiser turned to strategy consulting under the mentorship of strategy guru Walker Lewis, whom he met when Lewis spoke at MIT Sloan. He subsequently founded Kaiser Associates, his own highly successful strategy firm.

‘Great art, well marketed’

Then, barely into his thirties, Kaiser decided to return to the arts. As general manager of the Kansas City Ballet, he retired the financially troubled organization's deficit and developed a specialty in arts turnarounds — for, among others, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Foundation, the American Ballet Theatre, and Britain's Royal Opera House.

He has never run an operating deficit. Along the way, he developed his well–known mantra: “great art, well marketed.”

“When arts organizations run into financial difficulty, their first impulse is to cut back on artistic initiatives and marketing,” Kaiser explains. “They don’t realize that they are cutting the very areas that are most responsible for their success. It's essential to create a sense of excitement about your organization so that the community will want to participate. To do that, you need to program creatively and market aggressively.”

Art: The great healer

Kaiser took up the reins at the Kennedy Center in 2001 and immediately set about making it truly fulfill its role as the nation's cultural center. This mandate, naturally, involves sophisticated marketing.

It also demands new kinds of programming, such as festivals of the work of Stephen Sondheim and Tennessee Williams, creating a U.S. home base for the Kirov Ballet and Royal Shakespeare Company, and bringing the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra to Washington based on Kaiser's belief that “art is a great healer, and a way to bring people together.”

It is little wonder that arts management education is near to Kaiser's heart.

“There is a serious shortage of managers in the arts, and those we have work in more and more difficult environments. In our business, there is no opportunity for productivity improvements — you can’t cast fewer actors or add more seats. So you have to manage well and learn to love fund raising,” he says.

At the Kennedy Center, Kaiser has inaugurated innovative education initiatives.

The Capacity Building Program for Culturally Specific Arts Groups trains leaders in small, high–quality arts organizations with ethnic roots and audiences.

The Kennedy Center Arts Management Institute annually brings a dozen professionals from around the world for intensive work, study, and direct participation in Kennedy Center activities.

Other arts management programs are directed at midsize orchestras, board members, and New York City organizations.

In his capacity as an official U.S. cultural ambassador, Kaiser has instituted arts management programs in Mexico and China and is starting one for Arab arts organizations.

Related links

• The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Top