Dr. Steven D. Lavine was the President of the California Institute of the Arts for 29 years. In this interview with Marion Brown, he shares some advice about leadership, education, and the arts.
What is your secret to being successful in directing the various departments of a large art school?
The most important thing is to be alert to the world around you in framing what you want your institution to accomplish, and then to listen to the people with whom you work about how to get there. As the leader of an institution, you often encounter a degree of deference or a tendency of those who disagree with you to pull their punches. This can easily lead you to think you know all the answers. You don’t. Actively seek out the opinions of others; don’t take disagreement or criticism personally; look for the common threads in what you learn. Listening takes time, but it will help you make the right decisions.
You mentioned actively seeking out the opinions of others. Whose opinion do you listen to?
First and foremost, my wife, the writer and photographer Janet Sternburg who is the wisest, most intelligent and insightful person I know. And then I turn to people close to the problem. At CalArts, I often found that the students were the best source of advice for solving a problem. Faculty would offer ambitious long-term solutions, while students tended to offer advice about what precisely they needed to get through the current issue so they could get back to their work.
In times like the one we’re in now, art education tends to be seen as a luxury. What do you say to those who feel that way?
Art education done properly involves students learning to think for themselves and then to express their understandings in the most persuasive way their mediums (art, dance, theatre, digital media, music, etc.) allow. In theory, all education should lead in this direction, but in history or the sciences, there is a vast amount to learn before one can arrive at valid independent understandings. Because the arts rely on our individual experiences of the world, we are all accumulating the materials of the arts every day. The challenge is to learn to trust and to express that experience in ways others can appreciate. As cities, states and countries become more complex, we need to be able to hear from diverse voices in charting a path forward together. Thus, not only does each of us stand to benefit from art education him or herself, but we will all benefit from others with different experiences and understandings developing the ability to express themselves in a powerful way. We need everyone to have access to art education.
Do you have any advice for students facing the digitization of their education?
I would urge students to spend additional time with classmates and teachers online but outside of class, to build deeper human connections. And once it is safe to meet in person, students should seek out the teachers from their online courses even if, in the interim, those students have graduated. Strong connections to your teachers can make a huge difference as you go forward with your careers.
You currently consult with various nonprofit organizations. What is the most challenging and, by the same token, I assume, the most rewarding part of that work?
However valuable their work, nonprofit institutions—especially smaller ones—tend to be underfunded and overworked. This means that it is difficult for their staff to make the time to think about how best to organize to accomplish their goals. Equally, there is rarely time for staff to stand back from the pressure of just getting the work done in order to formulate better ways to make their case to potential supporters.
As a consultant with lots of experience facing similar challenges and standing outside the press of an organization’s daily work, I can help leaders and their staff find the path to working more efficiently and to making their case to the world in a way that leads to more generous financial support.
It’s a pleasure to be able to share what I’ve learned over the years and, in a world that can seem awfully grim, it is always encouraging to meet the wonderful, dedicated people doing the work of solving apparently intractable social and cultural problems.
Interviewed by Marion Brown for Epistle News
