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UB to present film premiere
By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer
The Arts Management Program in the Department of Visual Arts and the Humanities Institute, both in the College of Arts and Sciences, are cosponsoring the U.S. premiere of a documentary film by a leader in the "fields of flow movement."
"Masters of Business Art," directed by Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, professor of marketing at the Stockholm University School of Business, will be screened at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo. Hallwalls also is cosponsoring the screening.
Monthoux will lead a discussion of the film immediately after the screening, which is supported by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities. The film had its world premiere earlier this year at the Basel Art Fair in Switzerland.
A distinguished affiliated scholar with the Arts Management Program, Monthoux is a prominent scholar of the "fields of flow movement," which focuses on the influence of aesthetic ideas in both the arts and business worlds.
"Monthoux's research represents a significant contribution to the connections between artistic practice and the business environment," said Ruth Bereson, director of the Arts Management Program. "His film is a documentary that looks at the relationship between arts and management.
"[Monthoux's] craft is an investigation of art in enterprise," said Bereson. "His research is innovative and he presents his findings through music, film and books, providing an artistic, as well as academic, response to the questions that artists and managers are facing."
The term "fields of flow" refers to the exchange of concepts across the traditional boundaries that separate the dual arenas of art and culture and business and industry, Bereson explained. Monthoux, she noted, is interested in the exploration and development of connections and interactions between aesthetics, technology and management.
Although for years business administration has looked to science as a means of learning about life in organizations and enterprises, Monthoux aims to push the spotlight from science to the arts, she said.
The entrepreneurs and leaders of the future must know how to tap into the wellspring of critical impulses and energies whose source comes from art, according to Monthoux. He argues that the next generation entering the field of arts management will require greater overall knowledge of the interaction between the arts and society, particularly business and industry.
Bereson added that the pun on "MBA" in the film's title—"Masters of Business Art"—underscores the message that administrators "must be able to merge aesthetic projects with critical and constructive reflections on management." Monthoux often tells students: "Tomorrow's M.B.A. means Master of Business Art," she pointed out.
"The [arts management] program is committed to bringing to UB researchers who are asking questions about arts management in a complex environment, engaging in questions of the nature of arts and society, cultural policy, management and law," said Bereson. "We are delighted to have such an authority on the subject as a distinguished affiliated scholar to the Arts Management Program at UB."
The screening of Monthoux's film is the first in a series the events organized this fall by the Arts Management Program. For more information, go to http://www.artsmanagement.buffalo.edu/upcoming_events.