A body of art is a sum of a 
thousand twisting gears moving 
together 
in 
simultaneous 
harmony. Everything must be 
perfectly in order for the final 
piece to be complete. Among 
the most important gears in this 
elaborate machine are space 
(the location in which the art 
takes place), people to witness 
the art and, most of the time, 
funding for the art to be made. 
While the artists themselves are 
vital to fueling the art machine, 
arts 
administrators 
are 
the 
machine’s main source of power. 
Arts 
administrators 
provide 
the ammunition so the three 
important gears listed above can 
move easily side by side.
“It was thrilling. It was 
terrifying. 
And 
still 
is,” 
Literati Bookstore owner Mike 
Gustafson said about opening 
the store in downtown Ann 
Arbor. The venue is home to 
hundreds of books and monthly 
literature events. When I asked 
Gustafson if he found support 
in the Ann Arbor community 
now, years after he and his wife 
realized their dream of opening 
up an independent bookstore, 
he didn’t hesitate to praise the 
community.
“The 
wonderful 
thing 
about Ann Arbor is, we didn’t 
have to invent the ‘buy local’ 
wheel,” he said, “There was 
and is a very strong ‘buy local’ 
movement and culture here in 
Ann Arbor, and we are one little 
aspect of that. This community 
values local businesses and its 
independent mindset.” Although 
the community values local 
business, that doesn’t mean 
his work is easy by any means. 
“Every year, we have to reinvent 
ourselves internally: staffing, 
communication, our own roles 
as owners. But the original 
passion — to be a bookstore that 
helps people find books that 
can change lives — remains the 
same.” Gustafson’s impassioned 
attitude does not simply apply to 
booksellers and stores. It is this 
passion for the art itself that all 
arts administrators share.
During my interview with 
Mary Steffek Blaske, executive 
director of the Ann Arbor 
Symphony 
Orchestra, 
the 
passion she had for both the 
music and the administration 
behind the orchestra pulsated 
through the room. “You need 
to have both hats. A hat of a 
for-profit with the heart of a 
non-profit. You’re running a 
business,” she said. “It’s amazing 
to work with a spirit that wants 
to be creative and serving people 
that way. You need to have the 
mechanisms that want to make it 
happen. There are so many layers 
— we are all working together. 
Whether it’s the orchestra, the 
musicians on stage, the board 
and the audience. We have to 
be working together. The artists 
know that we can’t do it without 
them and we can’t do it without 
us either.”
Steffek 
Blaske 
smiled 
at 
me, her eyes glimmering with 
confidence 
in 
the 
seamless 
process of art creation. While 
her passion for the orchestra was 
riveting to witness, it also made 

me a bit melancholic. I hear of 
people going to football games all 
the time, but the phrase, “Want 
to go to the orchestra?” isn’t 
tossed around in nearly enough 
of my conversations. When I 
expressed this concern to her, 
she shook her head knowingly.
“Arts 
and 
culture 
in 
Washtenaw County fill up the 
Michigan Stadium more times 
in a season than the football 
does,” Steffek Blaske said. “We 
are hard-wired as human beings 
to make sounds, to make sounds 
together. Even if it’s sitting here 

at a coffee shop hearing the 
music, the voices. Going to a 
concert and watching this story 
happen with sound is beautiful. 
It’s something people don’t want 
to miss out on.”
However, 
bringing 
people 
in to witness the orchestra 
takes a certain type of strategic 
planning. 
Administratively, 
she explained to me that the 
orchestra 
tries 
to 
draw 
in 
people from every stage of 
life. They do this through 
niche 
programming. 
The 
orchestra puts on programming 
specifically 
meant 
for 
elementary, middle and high 
schoolers as well as concerts for 
the elderly and everywhere in 
between.
I asked her to delve further 

into her children’s programs, 
and her face lit up with joy. “It’s 
so important to have artistic 
education engagements. To give 
kids, who are like sponges, this 
gift, which they might have not 
been able to find on their own,” 
she said. “Exposing kids to 
artistic works at an early age has 
the potential to inspire them to 
create art of their own.”
And again, the balancing act 
of a fiery passion or a “non-profit 
heart” overcame Steffek Blaske. 
“It’s about humanity and making 
everybody have a chance to be 
their best selves,” she said. Soon 
enough, though, her “for-profit” 
hat was quickly donned. “And all 
this sounds great but, because 
of the way arts are structured, 
they need to be funded. That is 
why you need the organizational 
savvy of arts administrators,” she 
said. “How do you make the two 
circles, artist and administrator, 
intersect in a Venn diagram? 
This is real meaningful work. 
You need the board to be out 
there letting people know that 
what we do has value.”
Funding is a huge part of arts 
administration and the creation 
of arts in general. As much as 
we’d like to create everything 
our imagination can think of, a 
lot of this can only be done if we 
possess the proper funding.
Mary Cambruzzi, owner of 
Kerrytown store Found which 
features art made from recylced 
materials, told me about her 
attention to funding. “With 
a store this size, you have to 
have enough product turning 
over all the time in order to 
have the numbers work,” she 
said. Cambruzzis focus on the 
numbers allows Found to be 
successful. The store expands 
each year with new products and 
artisans.
Cambruzzi said it can be 
difficult to pursue artists and 
ideas because she is also trying to 
run the business. “At some point, 
I hit a stride about six or seven 
years into it ... Where we were 
constantly evolving what we 
had, I had a good sense of what’s 
going to sell and what isn’t,” she 
said. Similar to the passion of the 
artists whose work she chooses 
to sell in her store, Cambruzzi 
holds a deep sense of passion 
for her work with administering 
arts. “With Found, you have a 
person you can count on to care 
about the stuff they’re putting 
in their space. I care about the 
stuff, whether it’s imported or 
from Ann Arbor, I care deeply 
about the stuff we put in our 
space,” she said. 
Caring deeply is a common 
thread I found in all three 
of these arts administrators. 
Crunching numbers, publicizing 
and strategizing allow the deep 
care to be illuminated for all 
to 
see. 
Arts 
administration 
requires an individual who is 
quick on their toes and who 
has 
great 
personable 
skills. 
And most importantly, who 
cares deeply about the finished 
work. The gears of a piece of 
art are endlessly shifting and 
molding to fit into one another. 
It is under the oversight of arts 
administrators that these gears 
move smoothly in order to 
create a well-oiled final artistic 
machine.

2B — Thursday, January 24, 2019
b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

The machine and gears 
of art and administration

ALLISON ENGKVIST/ MICHIGAN DAILY

B-SIDE LEAD

ALIX CURNOW
Daily Arts Writer

“It’s amazing 
to work with a 
spirit that wants 
to be creative 
and serving 
people that way. 
You need to have 
the mechanisms 
that want to 
make it happen”

B-SIDE

White walls have made way 
for white screens as Instagram 
has replaced the art exhibit 
or high fashion store as the 
public’s primary mode of art 
consumption. While at one time 
the art consumer was forced to 
move from one work to another 
in clockwise fashion around a 
room, the Instagram user can 
take any number of paths from 
one item to the next through 
tags, likes, follow suggestions, 
etc., in a never-ending loop of 
promotion. In this way, the art 
consumer is never independent 
of the material consumer.
One man who was cognizant 
of this long before the days 
of 
Instagram 
is 
Japanese 
artist Takashi Murakami (@
takashipom). 
Throughout 
his 
career, Murakami has taken 
elements 
of 
traditional 
and 
contemporary 
Japanese 
pop 
culture 
and 
incorporated 
them 
into 
his 
recognizable 
cartoon-style graphics (you may 
recognize his work — it first came 
into American consciousnesses 
through 
Kanye 
West’s 
Graduation cover art). These 
graphics have been produced and 
reproduced in so many contexts 
over the years that one begins 
to question where one draws the 
line between art and commodity. 
The only thing that outpaces 
Murakami’s art is his Instagram. 
He’s now made over 7,000 posts, 
and it doesn’t take much scrolling 

to find similarly inclined artists 
on his feed.
One such artist is Virgil 
Abloh, founder of Off-White 
and now creative director of 
Louis Vuitton’s ready-to-wear 
menswear 
collection. 
“My 
brand started in the alleys 
of the internet,” Abloh told 
The Guardian in 2018. Unlike 
Murakami, who came to adapt 
to the newfound power of social 
media, Abloh’s success is solely 
dependent on its capabilities. 
Abloh’s trademark creation to 
date is the addition of bold, all-
caps Helvetica Neue words in 
quotation marks to clothing, 
furniture and art for this brand 
Off-White. While the point of 
this was to highlight the deceitful 
nature of marketing and the 
superficiality of consumerism, 
the internet has powered these 
items to never-before-seen levels 
of hype and blind consumption. 
With nothing but a knack for 
popular culture and a bad social 
media habit (plus a masters in 
architectural design), Abloh rose 
himself up through the ranks 
from being an intern at Fendi to 
being the head of menswear at 
what could possibly be the world’s 
“it” fashion brand. Though he 
may be 38 and married, Abloh 
now flies nearly every day to and 
from offices, DJ sets (you get paid 
to have the aux when you’re head 
of Off-White and Louis Vuitton), 
and fashion shows as one of 
the many entrepreneurs of our 
generation’s catered interests.
To 
supplement 
this 
interconnected online market 

of fashion, art and music are 
companies like Complex and 
Highsnobiety, who make their 
money 
hiring 
20-somethings 
to follow the daily activities 
of influencers like Abloh and 
Murakami 
(seriously, 
what 
must their employees do all 
day?). On top of their main 
Instagram 
accounts, 
which 
tally 3.8 million and 2.6 million 
followers 
respectively, 
each 
has a variety of side accounts 
like @highsnobietydesign and 
@complexsneakers 
that 
tally 
upwards of a million followers 
each 
as 
well. 
These 
pages 
maximize the likelihood that 
you will find these companies 
through some path on the 
internet (like sports? Find @
complexsports on your discover 
feed) and view their posts. 
It 
doesn’t 
matter 
whether 
Instagram indicates that these 
are ads or not.
No matter the reason we follow 
these pages, each and every post 
makes some sort of plug that at 
the end of the day aims to have 
us buy something. Yes, there’s 
always been a tension in art 
between design and commodity, 
but never to the extent that we 
see it today. While the exchange 
of art and high fashion was once 
an activity reserved for the elite, 
it now permeates all levels of 
society. Although it seems that 
creators like Abloh are genuinely 
invested in their designs, we must 
always question the sincerity of 
companies that solely produce 
and share products catered to the 
masses.

GARAGE
Instagram is the newest 
mode for art consumption

BEN VASSAR
Daily Arts Writer

“All I Want”

Broken Social Scene

Arts & Crafts

SINGLE REVIEW: ‘ALL I WANT’

“All I Want,” released Jan. 
22, is the first single from the 
Toronto-based Broken Social 
Scene’s upcoming EP Let’s 
Try the After — Vol. 1. The 
track has a warm, dreamy, 
almost 
oversaturated 
tone 
in 
line 
with 
their 
most 
recent 
album 
Hug 
of Thunder. It bursts with 
urgent creativity, as though 
the band is rushing to fit as 
many ideas as possible into 
a single song. Broken Social 
Scene has always had a 
knack for creating a cohesive 
whole out of bizarre sounds, 
making the dissonant sound 
harmonious. The group has 
not lost its touch on this front 
quite yet, managing to make 

a distortion-heavy track feel 
like a balmy summer day. The 
experimental elements are 
made natural, and the whole 

package goes down easy.
However, 
while 
“All 
I 
Want” is enjoyable, it lacks 
that same gravity that we 
know Broken Social Scene 
is 
capable 
of 
producing. 
Most Broken Social Scene 

songs 
forcibly 
command 
your attention; they grab you 
by the lapels and dare you 
to stop listening. Instead, 
“All I Want” ambles by, 
pleasant and unremarkable. 
It’s not particularly catchy 
or memorable, almost as if 
you spend the whole time 
waiting for the song to really 
kick in. For any other band, 
“All I Want” would be a very 
encouraging single release. 
For Broken Social Scene, it 
feels like stagnation.

— Jonah Mendelson, Daily 
Arts Writer

FABER AND FABER

