The Arts Management Program at the University at Buffalo stands in support of our black and brown students, alums, and community colleagues and condemns white supremacist violence, logics, and institutions. We affirm UB President Satish K. Tripathi’s message in 2020 condemning “intolerance, hatred, and institutional racism.”  While the work of the University and College of Arts and Sciences in this area is strong, we feel a pressing need to address our own practices.  As such, we are committed to (re)shaping our curriculum and our hiring practices to increase diversity at every level of engagement in the arts management field.  Art works do not have one audience; the voices of arts managers must be able to reflect the diverse perspectives and lived experiences of our diverse audiences. 

The UB Arts Management Program is driven by its mission, vision, and diversity statements.  The following core beliefs are central to our decision making processes.

Through its unique blend of critical inquiry, analysis, and experiential learning, the program builds a student's capacity to identify and solve the problems inherent in the areas of arts management, production, and cultural policymaking.

Arts managers matter because they are the ultimate mediators between the arts and its best audience.  Through a comprehensive understanding of social, legal, cultural, and political systems - and also armed with a complete set of practical tools - our arts leaders will create and sustain inclusive arts environments.

Arts are produced in all cultures and around the globe. Supporting the arts requires an understanding of the very different conditions and contexts in which they are produced and shared with various audiences and of art’s differing social functions. The mission of our program is to prepare students to negotiate the increasingly complex cultural, socioeconomic, legal, and political systems that challenge sustainable arts environments. UB’s Arts Management Program understands those environments inclusively, in relation to differences of race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religion, politics, ability, gender, sexuality, and national/international/immigrant status. It also presents the challenges of arts management in critical relation to the dominant European and colonial heritage of institutions of art. Diversity competence is a necessity for good arts management and therefore crucial for our students’ training in the program.

The Arts Management Program is strongly committed to promoting diversity, inclusion, and equity among its faculty, students, and staff, and in our community interactions and pedagogy. It works to foster an intellectual environment that emphasizes the constructed nature of cultural and social differences and the ways in which they contribute to structural limitations on art appreciation and production. We strive to cultivate an environment in which all feel that they are valued and can participate in effective collaboration and the open exchange of ideas. Similarly, we are committed to using strategic recruitment and retention efforts to increase the presence of underrepresented and historically marginalized groups in our program, and encourage the representation of all groups and perspectives in our pedagogy and communication.