ABSTRACT
This chapter paints a portrait of two types of artists – one self-directed and the other audience-led – and asks what is practically and ethically at stake for artist managers who work with one or the other. Spotlighting this pair of starkly contrasting artists, it is suggested, throws into sharper focus what might be missing in the prevailing view about artist managers, which emphasizes their traits, qualifications, skills, capacities and functions. Artist managers advance the interests of purely market-driven artists by relying on instrumental reasoning and pursuing profit-maximising goals. They function like managers of for-profit enterprises and are the poster boys of neoliberalism, which valorizes only the economic potential of the arts. Artist managers who work with self-driven artists, however, confront distinctive challenges because they must create the material conditions that enable the latter to live by their choices as well as grow audiences for their artistic output. Such artist managers, it is argued, have a mission and ethic that sets them apart from managers in other fields and from business and social entrepreneurs.
