>> where did you go to high school? >> new rochelle high school. a lot of washingtonians have been there, gloria borger, andrea mitchell. .

i did ascesis on white of her company should share productions, which they were not doing at the time. i did the deepest which said it made economic sense. -- i did a thesis on why it made economic sense. there was not anything you could say i want to start here in move my way up, because it was a career people fell into rather than the planned for. i did not start immediately in arts management. i started in the business world. >> compares the kind of the arts we have available to us today that we have available to usdo we have more or less? >> much, much more. over the last 50 years, there's been a very strong growth in the regional arts movement, that

is regional opera companies, symphonies, ballet companies, theater companies. we have so many more now than we did in the 1950s. it's a wonderful, wonderful thing that people can live the arts and participate in the arts. >> jumping all the way from and i know you did a master's at mit, but jumping all the way to where you are today, 67 cities, 83,000 miles, meeting all of these groups, 11,000 people that you've found yourself in front of. what was this tour you just completed? and why? >> i did a tour starting about 15 months ago and i did this tour because there were so many arts organizations that were confused about how to handle the current economic recession and i was reading so many stories about arts organizations whose first response to this recession was to cut their programming, either to do less programming or to do less interesting or adventuresome programming. and i knew from my career, running very troubled organizations, that programming

is what creates revenue and when you cut your programming, you cut your revenue not just for this year, but for future years as well. and so i thought it was important to discuss this publicly and so i went around the country to all 50 states and puerto rico and the district of columbia, went to 69 cities and had public forums discussing how do you handle the recession and how don't you handle the recession and in total, we had 11,000 people come to these sessions which was really quite spectacular. >> i want you to -- i know no one likes to play the best stop of all games, but pick a stop where you were surprised. >> i think i would have to say kalamazoo, michigan. kalamazoo, michigan is a town of about 75,000, it's a wonderful town. there's a lot of educational institutions in kalamazoo, but 400 people came to the ballroom of the local radisson hotel and completely filled the ballroom, the mayor came, the city council came, the university presidents

came and it was really quite an outpouring of interest in the arts and pride in the arts in their community and concern for how their arts in their community could survive in this recession in a state which has been so dramatically affected by the recession. >> why were you surprised by that? >> i was surprised by the numbers. i had already done lots of stops and i would say in general i had 150 or 200 people in most cities and i had quite a few more in some of the very biggest cities like los angeles or seattle, but in kalamazoo, michigan which is one of the smallest towns i visited, i certainly didn't expect to have 400 people show up. >> were you disappointed in any town? >> not really. i think that there were some towns where the local organizers had done less of an aggressive marketing effort and i wish there had been some more people, but i really wasn't so interested in how many people, i was interested in having people who i could talk to or where we could have a dialogue and hopefully, i could get some new ideas. and i think that happened in pretty much every city. >> all right. you're in front of all of these

audiences, what's the question that was always asked? >> i think the biggest question that was asked had to do with boards. there was such a tension in bad economic times between the staffs and the boards of so many arts organizations where board members feel that maybe the staffs are not making the right decisions and aren't accommodating the recession enough and the staffs are filled with only the boards who are either a little more generous or worked a little harder to raise money that the organizations could survive in much better shape in the recession. and i think that tension was really evident. we had many board members at my sessions and many staff members and so many on both sides were asking questions about the board/staff relationship. >> therefore, this little book you've got coming out here. >> that's what really prompted me to write my new book called, "leading roles: 50 questions every arts board should ask", which will come out this september and it really was a series of questions that i was asked on this tour and i wrote my answers because i feel

there's so little education of board members. you know no one is educating board members to be good board members. people join arts boards and boards frankly of hospitals or educational institutions or other not for profits with generosity of spirit and generosity of finances and wanting to be helpful and ideas. but no one really trains them how to be a good board member, what makes success in that giving art form and what they need to be thinking about as board members. and so, this book is one attempt to help address that. >> we're sitting in the middle of the kennedy center. what's your job? >> well, as president of the kennedy center, i am ultimately responsible for everything that happens in the center. my main functions i believe are as artistic director; i am responsible for the programming that we produce here. i am very much responsible for paying for that programming and doing the fundraising and the marketing to build audiences to pay for that programming and also responsible for leading our educational programs, which are very substantial.

both educational programs to bring children and adults into the arts, but also our newest venture, which is to train arts leaders to be better arts leaders. >> budget every year is how much? >> it's about $165 million, it goes up or down a little bit depending upon what we produce in our theaters, but right now it's about $165 million budget. >> how much of that comes from the taxpayer? >> that's our operating budget. now the operating amount are the taxpayer is giving us about $20 million to operate the center each year, i'm rounding the numbers here and then about another $15 million for the educational programs we produce around the country because we do education in all 50 states and also the work of our affiliate, vsa arts, which brings arts to people with disabilities around the united states as well. the rest of the money, about $130 million of our operating budget, we have to find either through ticket sales or through our fundraising or through the rental of our facilities, food service, parking, et cetera.

>> how many theaters in this building? >> there are nine stages in the building, including two millennium stages, which are the stages in our grand foyer, which house three performances every day of the year. so at six o'clock every day of the year, there's a performance that's available without a ticket, it costs nothing to come and those performances are also put on the internet live and are archived on the internet because as a national cultural center, we feel we need to create art for everyone even those who can't afford a ticket. >> did you start the millennium stage and what was the reason that you did it? and if you didn't, why do you do these free events everyday? >> the millennium stage was started before i came by our chairman who was my first chairman, jim johnson, who had the vision that we needed as the national cultural center to make art available to everyone and he really had this notion of doing free performances every day and we started them before i arrived. i've worked very hard to improve the quality of what's on the millennium stage and also the relevance to what's on our

main stages and so we spent a great deal of energy and money to make these much better performances and also more tied to what we do, particularly when we do festivals of a given country's art or when we do festivals on a given kind of art, we want the free performances to be part of that activity. >> so what do you say to the taxpayer that says, "i don't want that art stuff. why is my money going to that?" >> i believe there's lots of answers to why money should go from the taxpayer to arts. one, there's a very big economic impact of government subsidy of arts organizations and different studies you read will have different multipliers like the multiplier affects i most believe in is that there's about a six times impact, that is our tax base is increased six times the amount that the government actually pays for the arts. but there's also a big educational reason. you know one of the big challenges that we face in our country is that we are no longer a manufacturing economy, less than 17 percent of our gross

domestic product comes from manufacturing, the lowest level of any developed country in the world. we are a creative economy and if you talk to business leaders, as i do very frequently, they will tell you that we need a workforce that's smart, that is creative, that thinks outside the box, that can solve problems and the arts can play a very big and inexpensive role in educating our children to be different kinds of workforce than we needed maybe 30, 40 or 50 years ago. >> how big is your board? >> our board is 59 people. it is made up of presidential appointees. it is made up of members of congress, 14 members of congress. it is made up of three cabinet secretaries and six ex officio members of our board. so it's quite a large board and it's a board that, thankfully, has been extremely involved and supportive of our work. >> so what's your first bit of advice to yourself on how to deal with 59 people that come from all over the political spectrum? >> most important thing is to do interesting work and if you

do really interesting work and because we do so much work here, we do 2,000 performances a year and a very wide array of educational programs, we do have work that can excite and interest a very broad spectrum of people, not just on our board, but throughout the community. and our job is to be the national cultural center to serve the whole nation and so my focus is to interesting work, but also work that speaks to the whole nation, not just to washington, d.c. >> so what are the little michael kaiser things that are done all the time about board members? what do you do to keep them interested besides interesting things? >> i think the most important thing is to not to treat a board like one monolithic body. that is a board is not the board, a board is a group of individuals with different interests and passions and my job is to get each one excited and involved in one project, not to try and get every board member excited about every project and if i can get board members to buy into one project, to feel really excited about it

and if -- and my staff can be successful getting them involved in that project and learning about it, meeting the artists coming to rehearsals, et cetera, they will start to feel much closer to the mission and the organization. >> in your new book, you know i just got a copy before this started, i just read briefly there where you talked about years ago being asked to serve on the washington opera board, but you got frustrated. >> i did. i got frustrated because i really wanted to be a staff member, not a board member. it was my fault not theirs, but i believe that arts board members frequently get frustrated for a wide variety of reasons. some really don't like the art of the organization and wish it were different. some don't really understand what makes the organization successful, so they feel frustrated. some don't understand financial discussions and when the board discusses finances, don't really understand what's being discussed. there's a lot of reasons why board members get frustrated. i was frustrated because i really wanted to be a staff person. my passion was coming through and this was really what taught

me to become an arts manager and it's this reason i sold my consulting business and moved into arts management was that experience. >> there are a lot of things you've done, kansas city ballet, when did you do that? what did you learn from that experience? >> my first job after selling my consulting business was in kansas city. i was fortunate enough to be hired to run the kansas city ballet which was a very, very good mid sized regional ballet company that was virtually bankrupt and what i had to do was to change the way the community perceived that organization. it was an organization that every two weeks had to call up a group of donors to try and get a few hundred dollars from each to pay the dancers. it wasn't a sustainable business. and i really had to get the community excited about what was truly a very good dance company and so i'd got a local news anchor and put him on the board and he put us on his show four times in a year and i found an early morning talk show on tv, called "good morning, kansas city" and i did that talk show three times a year and i

negotiated debut tour to new york city which made us the first performing arts organization to perform in new york from kansas city. and we did a whole host of activities, we built a relationship with the alvin ailey organization and did a great deal of work by alvin ailey and we really built our presence in the community and the feeling of the community that we were worth supporting and we paid off the deficit in 10 months. >> how long did you stay there? >> i was there about a year and a half. >> you also said that you never want to leave a job when the organization is in debt. have you ever done that? >> no. i have only left organizations when i've paid off the deficit, but once you've done a turn around in a troubled organization and once you've made them healthy, you do have to leave because you remember the bad times. it's like a depression era parent and you don't necessarily have the adventuresomeness and the spirit to take the risk you need to take for successful arts organization. so each time i did a turnaround

at a troubled organization, at the end of that turnaround, i had to leave and that was often very painful because i had become part of the family and i really cared about the artists with whom i worked. >> in kansas city, was there any money coming from the taxpayer? >> there was a very small amount from the city of kansas city and a little bit larger amount from the state of missouri and a small nea grant. it was -- i don't recall exactly the figures, it was less than $100,000 on a $1.7 million budget. >> what was next for you then? >> after i left the kansas city ballet, i actually went to help run the pierpont morgan library in new york city, which is a beautiful jewel of a museum and research library. i was the associate director and i was fortunate enough to participate in the purchase of property next door that has become the expanded morgan library. i realized in that whole venture that i was really meant for the performing arts and not the visual arts, but it was a great place to learn.

>> what -- along the way, i mean i go to museums and all this stuff and i always wonder what it is that most attracts the public. as we watch in a lot of entertainment, things -- i don't want to characterize what other people like, but a lot of people think it's the dumbing down of america. do you think that? first of all. >> no. >> and why not? and what is it that you've found over the years that people are really attracted to as the most popular thing? >> most popular and really being attracted to it are two different things. most popular are typically stories that people have heard before that are comfortable, music that is familiar, that they've heard in other venues and i think it is the reason why "phantom of the opera," "swan lake," "beethoven's ninth symphony" are all very popular and also by the way, very good. but i think what gets people the most interested is when they're surprised and when i asked people around the country to name the one arts experience of their life that was the most meaningful, it's very rarely "swan lake" or "beethoven's

fifth" or "phantom of the opera," it's usually something they didn't expect to like and it totally surprised them and it opened up a new vista for them or a new way of thinking. and that's what i think people are most excited about the arts is when they see something that truly surprises them. >> do you have one of those in your own life? >> i think for me it was probably the first time -- well, i have two. the first time i saw, "sunday in the park with george", a great stephen sondheim musical that i found incredibly surprising and thoughtful. and then the second one is -- will be more surprising i think to people who hear this, which was when i was in pakistan and i was first exposed to sufi music and i went to a festival of sufi music in pakistan with performers, great performers from throughout the muslim world. i had never heard sufi music before and it is both beautiful music, but it's also sung with extraordinary virtuosity, operatic virtuosity and it totally surprised me and totally engaged me.

>> so when you're on your own time, what's the first music you turn on? >> it depends on my mood. i listen to a very wide range of music. i love a very wide range of music. i'm very fortunate to have been exposed and educated about a wide range of arts in general. so i can't say there's one go to thing, although i would say a recording by leontyne price would figure into probably in the highest percentage of what i listen to. >> so what would we be most surprised about that you like? >> baseball and football. i'm a passionate sports lover. i spend an awful lot of my time watching sports and people don't expect that of me. they think i'm an opera geek and they think you know i'm maybe a little bit more aesthetic than i truly am. >> so after morgan, you went to where? >> after the morgan library, i was fortunate enough to be hired by the alvin ailey american dance theater, one of the great arts organizations in

this country. they were in very, very bad shape financially. >> what year? >> this was in 1991, i started january 1st of 1991 and i was there for three years, again doing their turnaround. ailey was a great organization. mr. ailey had been dead for a year. the organization was performing all over the country, all over the world. but shortly after i arrived at alvin ailey, the author alex haley, the author of roots, died and we got hundreds and hundreds of letters of condolence because people thought alex haley was alvin ailey and that taught me that we actually were not quite as famous as we thought we were and that we had to explain who we were to the public. and i went through a year of what i call institutional marketing which is marketing not devoted to getting people to buy a ticket, but marketing devoted to getting people excited about what your organization does and who you are. and we did things like the "phil donahue show", we did president clinton's inaugural gala, i did a big exhibition at the smithsonian and we did a big free concert in central park and we published books about the company.

we had a whole range of activities that over a year got the public much more knowledgeable about our organization and it doubled our fundraising from one year to the next and we paid off the entire historic deficit in that year. >> overall, who funds ailey? again, does that have a taxpayer component? >> very small taxpayer component. they get an nea grant each year. they get a grant from the new york state council of the arts. they get a grant from the city of new york. i don't know the numbers today of what they get, but my guess is in total it's less than $400,000, $500,000 a year and their budget is over $12 million. so it's a very modest amount of money from the taxpayer. it's primarily ticket sales, tour fees because they tour so much and then grants, but one of the big changes we made at ailey and i started to learn about arts organizations of color which has become a big interest and passion of mine, white arts organizations typically will get about 60 to 65 percent of their contributions from individual donors and the rest from corporations and foundations and governments. but the vast preponderance comes from individuals, mostly middle class individuals by the way,

not the super rich. and arts organizations of color tend to get less than six percent of their contributions from individuals and this was true at ailey, as well and one of the things we did very -- worked very hard on at ailey was to get more and more individuals giving money because the problem with institutional givers, foundations, corporations government agencies is number one they're very cyclical; when the economy goes south, their giving drops substantially. but also there tends to be a ceiling to how much any one of those givers will give whereas there's no end of individuals out there to support a large exciting arts organization. so we worked very hard there to build the individual support, they've maintained that and continue to do that today and it's been a theme of my work with arts organizations of color, which i continue to this day, as well. >> why the disparity in your opinion between the organizations of color and the white organizations? >> arts organizations of color their natural constituencies tend to be very generous, but their giving is mostly focused on religions, church and

education and healthcare and not so much on the arts. that's changing gradually, but that has certainly been the case in this country. so that african american population, for example, is an extremely generous population, but their giving has not been focused in the arts, they've been focused in other things. >> by the way outside of the east coast or los angeles or chicago, places like that, what -- and kalamazoo, michigan, what other towns that you've been to have vigorous arts operations? >> oh, all over the country. from smaller towns, like meridian, mississippi to the biggest cities, like cleveland. i went to detroit, seattle and every where in between and i was in salt lake city, which has a very wonderful, rich group of arts organizations and my last city stop was boise, idaho where a couple of years ago one of the wonderful companies -- dance companies in america, the trey mcintyre project, moved to boise and is now headquartered there and are treated like rock stars, the dancers.

so there's vigorous art everywhere. there's interest everywhere, that was what was so wonderful and exciting on this tour. there was concern about how to keep those arts organizations healthy, but there was tremendous passion from board members, from staff members from artists and from elected officials. >> so what's happened like in attendance with all the new media? internet, youtube, all of that? dvds, all the stuff you can watch in your home. what's happened to you here in the way of attendance? >> our attendance has held up very well, but there's a very strong competition that comes from online entertainment and that really forces us in the arts to think about our pricing. ticket pricing has been used to balance our budgets too much over the last 30, 40 years and as a result, ticket prices have gotten too high for a lot of people who have come to think of the arts as irrelevant to them because they feel that they simply can't afford it. you know for two of the best tickets to the major opera companies in this country you can buy a computer and watch leontyne price and maria callas

and joan sutherland on youtube for free forever. that's just for two tickets and so we really have to start to address how much we're charging for our tickets and how do we bring people in to our theaters and in light of this competition. on the other hand, the internet has also become our best friend. we can now communicate with a lot of people for free and we can give much more information that we could afford to give in either brochures or direct mail pieces or advertisements in newspapers. we can now have video clips and audio clips and biographies and a great deal of information to explain less familiar art to people and so i am -- and i believe the internet's our best friend, but we also have to understand that there is competition from online activities and we have to do our ticket pricing accordingly. >> how many people do you have on staff here? >> our administrative staff is just about 400 people, but there are 1,200 employees at the kennedy center, more than half

are ushers who are part time in the main. we also have two full time orchestras here. >> now you have 59 members of the board i think you said, 12 members of congress. >> fourteen. >> fourteen members of congress, three cabinet officers. >> correct. >> do they come to the meetings? >> some do, all send representatives, but frankly, what i need more than their coming to meetings is when i can call them when i need them and talk about what's going on in their state or how we're working in their state. we do so much arts education work, for example, around the country. i've been creating a new program to make arts education affordable and systematic and i'm testing it around the country and when i got to a particular state i can talk to our board member from that state and start to really talk about how we can -- who they know, how we can do this in a smart efficient way and so our congressional members and our cabinet officers are extremely helpful to the kennedy center. >> i read that right after you came here or around that time, there was a plan for a $650

million project here on the plaza, a couple of new buildings, $400 million supposed to come from the federal government, taxpayer. what happened? >> what happened was that this was a project in the middle of 2000s and the country at the time had to substantially cut back the transportation projects that we're being funded by the highway trust fund legislation. about $100 billion were cut from that piece of legislation including our project. it was a project we were very excited about. it would have tied us to downtown monumental washington, it would have allowed us to construct some new facilities, but again we had to turn lemons into lemonade and we used our -- the time since to really focus on our programming, to focus on our national programming, our arts education programming and have been able to fund and focus on new programming in lieu of that construction project. >> what chances do you give if that project will come back? >> i think it could. i think it's a 10 year project,

so it will take a new head of the kennedy center who is excited and willing to embark on that project because one has to make a commitment for a tremendous amount of resources and a tremendous amount of time. >> on a personal note, i noticed that you lost your sister in october of last year, but you had given her a kidney. >> i did in 1988. >> what was it -- what were the circumstances? >> my sister was very severe diabetic. diabetes is the cause of so many challenges to those who suffer from that disease, heart disease, stroke, gangrene, blindness and kidney failure and my sister had complete kidney failure in 1988 and was on dialysis, which was not a sustainable cure for her. and so, i decided to give her my kidney. we were a very, very strong match. it was a very easy decision to make and something i was very pleased to do. >> how long did it take you to make that decision? and was there any time where you hiccupped and said, "i'm not

sure i want to give up one of my kidneys"? >> it took about a minute. i was visiting her; she had just had a stroke. the stroke was going to make it very difficult for her to continue her dialysis, so i said, "what's the options?" and the doctor said, "well, if she -- we could do transplant" and i said, "i'm in." it was not a hard decision to make at all, it was my sister, i loved her. >> how long did it take you to recover? >> i was back at work after 10 days. >> any impact since then? >> i'm not supposed to do skiing and i'm not supposed to car racing, both of which i can give up easily. >> but in almost all of the profiles and i've yet to see anything very negative about you in any of your profiles, do you get tired of reading >> talk to my staff. >> yes. do you get tired of reading the same thing about you in all these profiles? >> i get tired of talking about it. i have to say more like tired of reading about it. i'm on a mission and my mission is to really start to build a

cadre of well-trained arts managers to see to the help of our arts institutions so that they aren't hanging by their fingernails so often. and so i believe that when i can talk about those issues publicly that i'm actually doing something to further my mission so that's why i can continue to talk in the press and why continue to talk about these issues because i do believe that we are making progress. and i do believe that 10, 20 years from now, we're going to have a very different arts ecology in this country and around the world because i'm as interested in what's going on in other countries as well and i am focused on getting the message out that there is stuffed to be learned. you can learn to be a better arts manager and you can learn to be a better board member. >> i've seen a lot of the press when you travelled in the local press around the country. is there an occasion where you would go into a community and they totally ignored in the media that you were there and they didn't pay attention?

>> i don't believe that's true. i believe we had attention virtually every other -- every city. there may have been one and i just can't remember it. it wasn't the focus of my work. >> it was not the focus of >> the focus of my work was not the press. the focus of my work in each city were the people who came to the presentations and lots and lots of people came. and i wanted to make sure they left with a feeling that they have learned something, that they were inspired to continue to really focus on good art and that they were going to start to create better, healthier arts organizations. >> how are you able to do that? do all these traveling over two years and still run the kennedy center? >> i have an astonishing staff. we've been together in the main for 10 years since i've been here. i have lost very little of my senior staff so we can talk short hand to each other and technology. my blackberry is my best friend when i'm traveling. i can communicate with everybody at a moment's notice. and so i -- i was able to do it. i also work hard. i work a lot of hours. i work a lot of weekends. this is not a job you do from 9

to 5, and so i was able to fit it in. it wasn't simple for myself or for my staff, but we all believed it was worthwhile. >> is it true that you wrote a lot of your last book or maybe even this book we have it here on the blackberry? >> this book, yes. i wrote most of it on the blackberry. i would -- i would sit in airplanes because i was in so many airplanes and i was in so many airports waiting for airplanes and so many hotel rooms. and i would write whole chunks in the blackberry and then when i get home, usually in the weekend, i would sit and start to edit and put it together and piece it together and make a book out of it. because of the nature of this book where it's question and answer, it was easier to do that in the blackberry than for a more standard kind of book. >> no carpal tunnel syndrome or anything like that? >> different times my fingers have hurt, yeah. >> did you ever met anybody else that wrote a book on the blackberry? >> no, but i'm sure there are others who have and i'm just one of the whole flock of people, but i haven't met them yet. >> so when you travel and you went to, what you said 69 cities >> that's correct. >> what techniques did you use to get through all that and how long were you out there every

time you would travel? >> usually i'd fly the night before or the afternoon before i get to a city, get to bed early, get up in the morning, go and i have an hour session where i'll meet the people. anyone who comes in the sessions, we do a meet and greet part where i talk to people, have a coffee whatever and then i would do an hour and a half session. half of that was interviewed -- being interviewed by a local moderator. half of it was to ask some questions and then i go to the airport and fly to the next city or i fly home. what got me through it really was having the local moderator and having the audience ask questions and that every session was different. and so it was not that i was doing "the king and i" in every stop, i was having a different kind of session in each location because -- and we set it up this way because we wanted to address thing that were a concern at a local community. and what would be of interest at a local community would be asked by the citizen themselves or by a moderator who knew the community. >> did you ever have an occasion where somebody get up and say why am i listening to you? you sit in washington.

you get that $40 million from the taxpayers. your life is a lot easier than we have out here. >> i heard that all the time. i would answer by saying i don't think arts organizations are that much different region by region, and the fact that i get the government subsidy only increases my obligation to do more work. i still have to raise $72 million of private funding every year, which is very substantial and i have to sell $50 million of tickets every year, which is very substantial. and so i suffer from the same challenges that you suffer from, and you know, no one asked it in an aggressive way, i have to be honest. one person did ask what (parallel) university we live in and that was not so much about where the money came from, that was because i didn't talk so much about not cutting programming. and this arts manager truly felt the only answer to the arts for his organization was to do less and less and less. and i disagreed with him, but he felt so frustrated that i was not acknowledging that

that's the simplest and most reasonable solution is just to do less work. >> you were underwritten on this trip by two people? >> that's correct. >> and first, where did you get the idea to do this and how did you talk somebody into giving what $100,000 -- a couple of hundred thousand dollars to be able to do this? >> yeah, it started with a project that we started in february of last year -- february of 2009 where we decided because of all these organizations that were in trouble to offer free consulting to any performing arts organization in the country that asked for it. and we set up a web site, and my staff was amazing. we did -- i have the idea in 10 days like the web site was up, the marketing was done. it was announced and we had over the course of this last year and a half about 800 organizations asked for free consulting. and we offered consulting -- my staff and i -- with our 18 members of my staff and myself, i had nine organizations, but also we put out a call to anyone who wanted to volunteer to be

helpful. and we've added those people and they helped. it was true grassroots effort. no one got paid. there was no money changing hands. the money that was spent was to create the computer program and to market this project, and then i started to do a couple of public sessions and public speeches. and i realized there were a lot of arts organizations that have questions that they wanted answered, but didn't really want to consult, and that's when the idea for the tour came up. it was a complement to this consulting work and i was fortunate to go to two of my best donors, helen henderson and adrienne arsht, and tell them this is what we want to do. this is the money we need to do it and they were incredibly gracious and each wrote me a check for about $100,000 and we were off and running. >> and who is helen henderson and adrienne arsht? >> helen henderson is a member of our board of the kennedy center, one of our great donors who've been incredibly supportive of the organization. she's been incredibly helpful to me in pursuing some of my biggest projects here like our sondheim festival and all of our international festivals.

adrienne arsht is the treasurer of our board, has been involved with the kennedy center for many, many decades, but has recently come back to town and was again extremely gracious and helpful and said if i want to do it, she was in. >> what's their motivation and what do they tell you the reason is that they want to write you a check for a hundred thousand so you can travel around the united states? >> different donors of all projects, and again, a lot of what i do is fundraising, donors have different motives. they have different reasons for giving and in this case, both of these people were truly excited about the nature of the project. they really believe this was important for the nation. they're both very large arts supporters not just the kennedy center, but to other organizations and i think they saw that what we were doing in this was their money would be leveraged if we can get 11,000 people to learn a lot more about managing arts organizations well. what a good use of a donation -- apart from donations that would get into individual organizations. >> so how did you keep them up- to-date on what you were doing? >> i talk to them all the time. i talk to my board members a lot. i talk to my donors a lot.

again, my belief is that we need to talk to our donors and our board members at that once a month to really keep them up- to-date on what we're doing and we work very hard to do so. >> all right, let's say i had a lot of money, which i don't -- you saw me as you know, here's a hundred million dollar guy, i'm going to go after his money. somebody says he's interested. what's the michael kaiser treatment that i would get? what would you say to me? >> let me say what i wouldn't say first then i'm going to tell you what i do say. many arts organizations do plan their art about a year or two years in advance. if they sit down with someone who is potential to give is they try and interest that person in the next project they're doing because they're so nervous on how they're going to fund that next project. my approach is very different. i plan my art five years in advance. i have a five-year menu in my head. i don't come and try and sell you any project. what i have to do is i ask you what excites you. what is interesting to you? i don't create a project to make you happy.

that's not how -- what i believe is correct to do, but rather when i hear your interest, i think about my menu of projects, the five years of programs i'm planning and i call from that list the one or ones that i think would be more interesting to you. and i start talking about those projects, and i have a sense they'll interest you and then invariably i don't have to ask people for money, they say to me, that sounds so exciting, how do i get involved or what i can do to help you? and then i have them. >> how often has somebody call you direct on your line in your office and said i've been hearing about you, i want to give you some money? >> that's happened. i've gotten some small and big gifts that way, but mostly my first conversations with people are not about money. i don't think that's effective. my first conversations are about the work and i'm trying to get people excited about the work we do and to attract to the organization and what i call the organization family. that the people who think, wow, this work is really interesting. i might buy a ticket to it.

i might become a member of the kennedy center or i might become a major donor, but i'm really excited about the work. my first job is to get someone really interested. >> how often do you attend some of the performances of the 2,000 you have a year in this institution? >> well, i do attend a lot, but i don't attend 2,000 because you're up five a day and that would be very virtually impossible. i go to a lot of performances. i go to parts of a lot of performances because i'll go from one performance to the other very often, but i certainly don't go to everything. i can't. >> what are you most often going to that you like the most? >> anything that's really good. it can be a great performance by the national symphony. it can be a wonderful theater piece. it can be beautiful modern dance. it can be a performance on jazz club. they're all -- i'm attracted to a lot of the work we do here. it has to be someone who really does something that again surprises me and excites me and that's what i want to hear. >> you've been here since 2001? >> correct.

>> when is your contract up and what's your plan? >> i will -- i've just extended my contract so i'm going to be president for kennedy center through 2014 and then we were fortunate enough this spring to receive a great gift from dick and betsy devos of grand rapids, michigan of $22.5 million that they've committed to supporting the arts management training work. so i will then stay for another three years through 2017 running the devos institute of arts management here at the kennedy center. so i'm here for quite a long time still. >> devos family of michigan amway >> that's correct. >> -- people. why -- how did that -- where did you first meet richard devos? >> i first met betsy. betsy was appointed to our board six years ago by president bush and has been a spectacular board member, has chaired events and ran our development committee and was extremely interested in the work we do. she came to my arts and crisis presentation, my tour stop in grand rapids, and i think she started to see the kind of

things i'm trying to accomplish with our arts management training work. there are very large art supporters in several different communities and they realized that by doing this they'd be supporting many more arts organizations and they felt this was i think an efficient way of making this a signature gift to the arts and so i'm very gratified that they felt so much about the work we were doing and were willing to commit so much. >> twenty-two million dollars, what do they get for that money? >> they don't -- i hope they got a lot of satisfaction. >> what are you going to do with that money? >> that money is going to help to pay -- it's both operating -- but mostly it's an endowment that will in perpetuity help support the work we do to train arts managers and board members. we have a fellows program where we train 10 young arts managers year every year. we have an international fellows program that trains about 45 international arts managers from around the world here every summer. we have a program where we teach board members every year and

now we are teaching regional arts management programs in new york, in chicago and washington, and about to start one in detroit and start one in l.a. and seattle and miami. but we're really trying to make a major, major push to train arts managers and board members to create healthier arts institutions. >> what's the best thing an arts manager can do to put themselves in a position to manage the arts? i mean, what do you advise people to do? you started out watching "the music man" when you were 4, but >> right. i think first it starts with being very excited and passionate about the work itself, not the art itself and then you have to learn and you have to put yourself in a situation to learn either through a kind of program that we teach at the kennedy center. many, many, many universities now have arts management programs for undergrad and graduate degrees. i taught at the new york university masters program for six years. but you have to learn the techniques of being a good arts manager and you need a mentor who can really teach you how to do this well.

>> who was your mentor? >> i didn't really have a mentor in arts management. i've had mentors in the corporate world. i unfortunately came up exactly i don't think you should. i have no training to do my job. i had to learn it all by making mistakes and hopefully having some successes, but i didn't have any training to do this work and i don't think that's the way it should be. >> biggest mistake you've ever made? >> my father thinks it was even goldman sachs when i was employed there before i went into the arts -- >> is your dad alive? >> yes, he is. both my parents are alive. >> so he still thinks it was a mistake. >> i think he's pretty excited about what i do. i made a lot of mistakes along the way. for example, the kansas city ballet, when i was there, i misdirected marketing funds and i tried to do a marketing program that we really didn't have the resources to do well and it had no impact. i had made lots of errors along the way, which i've learned from i hope and try not to repeat them. >> but when you -- you're

sitting at your desk now and you think about all the experience you've had, what are the mistakes you see people often make? and you earlier talked about don't cut, but there are other mistakes you must see people make. >> i think a lot of arts organizations don't really understand the nature of marketing the arts. they think marketing is what gets people into the seats. they forget that marketing also has a huge impact on fundraising and so i'm focused on two kinds of marketing. and i do them both very aggressively and i work very hard at both, but they are very different from each other. one is aimed at getting people to buy tickets and one is aimed of getting people to want to be associated with my organization and that takes a very specific kind of marketing. >> as you sit here in the kennedy center and people bring you and say, here's our possibility, what we can bring in here? what always works? >> nothing always works. >> nothing. >> there are surprises all the time. some things that i couldn't imagine selling well sell brilliantly and some things that i thought were a sure fire hit

-- >> can you give me an example? >> "frost/nixon," great play, great cast. it was here two years ago. i was convinced in washington, d.c. what could be better "frost/nixon." very hard for us to sell that. >> was that -- the movie come out or was it before or after the movie? >> it was just as the movie was coming out, but i don't believe it was the movie that kept people away. i think partly it was right after the election -- the presidential election i think there was a little hangover effect that people maybe want to break from politics. i really can't tell you. i thought that was a sure fire hit. >> what's one that you didn't expect to be a hit that was? >> goodness. a lot of our modern dance work here. we've worked really hard to build our dance audience. when i arrive in the kennedy center, our subscribers for modern dance were about 116 people and now virtually everything sells out in modern dance. and very often it's (esoteric) work, but i didn't think the public really would want to see. >> you ran the royal opera >> i did. >> house in london? >> correct. >> what years?

>> 1998 through 2000. >> what you'd learn there? and what do you -- when you walked in there, how much in debt were they? >> $30 million deficit, one of the big deficits in arts history. it was the true turnaround challenge. they had been so pummeled by the press in england that's been pretty vitriolic anyway for the five years that there was a tremendous loss of confidence within the organization and outside the organization. they were building a new opera house. they didn't have the money to finish it and their music director was threatening to quit. they'd had four ceos in four years. it was really a very, very serious situation and yet, it was -- they were building one of the great opera houses in the world, rebuilding. they had the largest arts education program in europe. they had the royal ballet and the royal opera, two great institutions. this was an organization that was so important to the arts world not just to that country and yet, it was really a national joke at that time and i had to restore the excitement in the institution, in the new

building. raise a ton of money, we had to raise about $100 million in about 18 months, which in england was a very big challenge. but we did it and the organization now flourishes. >> how did you know that there was a job there and why did you want it? >> i just finished up running american ballet theater. i was doing their turnaround. we had turned that organization around and again, i had to leave. and at that point, i really thought to myself as the turnaround person and that was what i did, and so i was looking for more large challenges and this was the largest one out there. so i went after it, i wrote a letter and said will you hire me. >> so what technique did you use in turning that around? >> i had to get the country and both the donors and the audience member not thinking about the challenges of the past and promise of the past, but excited about the new opera house and the new work we were going to do so i stopped talking about problems. one of the problems of troubled arts organizations have is they so often talk and talk and talk about the problems publicly

thinking that somehow that's going to solve the problem. it doesn't, it pushes people away. donors want to support organizations that are successful not ones that are about to fall apart. so i completely changed the conversation from the last five years of problems to the next five years of artistic achievement in the new opera house, and i got people excited. >> you've lived in kansas city, in new york, in london and washington, other places? >> that's pretty much it. >> ok, i was getting at this, what's the difference in the atmosphere in washington for someone trying to run an organization that's dealing with the arts compared to the other places? >> washington is obviously a city that has a tremendous focus on politics and is tremendously interested in politics, but it also is an international city and gives us a platform to talk to the politicians, talk to the country and also talk internationally. we do an awful lot of international work here at the kennedy center bringing unusual art to this country and educating our audience about art around the world, but also the

training work we do outside of our country so this city is a perfect city to have that kind of platform. it's very different working in the united states than living in london or working in london where the government has played such a more significant role. the government funds arts organizations in england and certainly the rest of the world much more than this country. we were founded by the puritans and the puritans thought music and dance were evil and that has affected i believe government support for the arts in this country versus the other nations. the challenge is that government support is fickle and so example right now, the new conservative government in england is projecting cuts for the arts between 25 and 40 percent. well if the government is your largest funder and that kind of cut can be catastrophic so there are pluses and minuses to working in systems where the government is such a large donor. what i did at the royal opera house was to try and build the cadre of private donors. we were successful doing that. and it sort of shocked that

country that so much money could be raised. my nomenclature in the press was always "michael kaiser, the crass american." that was what i was called because i was out there raising so much money. if you now look at england, which is about 10 years later, england now raises a lot more private money not just the royal opera house, but every organization because it was clear that private money is needed to supplement what the government can give. >> how much of the royal opera house budget was supplied by the government? >> it was less than a third. it was about -- between a quarter and a third of the budget, which is substantially less than continental europe where 50, 60, 70 percent of the budget would come from the government. so england falls between the united states and the rest of europe. >> what do you -- i know you've been around the world, what do you find in other parts of the world? is there any other place in the world where they support it more than they do in europe? >> it depends on the country. there are south american countries. there are asian countries,

which i've been -- where the government has been a majority funder, but that's changing. almost every country in the world -- in almost every country in the world, the government is looking to cut its funding levels. and there's a tremendous panic because arts leaders around the world don't know how to supplement the government funding. they don't have the experience with private funding if they have a culture of giving that we have in this country. and so there's a tremendous interest and excitement in learning how we do things. it's one of the reasons why the teaching we do around the world is in such great demand because countries all over are saying what are we going to do if our government cuts 5, 6, 10 percent a year? the french government is cutting each year. the german government, the italian government, governments in africa, governments in asia, what do you do? well, you need to learn different techniques for supporting your organization and that's what we teach. >> so with all your experience over the years, we want to get a little guide book, the michael kaiser guide book to good arts and entertainment, i want you to name today some of the -- i

don't care what it is, whether it's music or broadway or dance whatever that you would suggest people go to if they want to get a good, you know, primer on the arts? name the events that you like the most. >> you mean art forms or specifics? >> well, i mean, specifics, just for, you know, michael kaiser's top five or 10. >> i'll name some, but they're probably won't be the ones that people have heard of the most because i think one of the mistakes that people make is that they think that all the good art is in chicago, new york, los angeles and where there's incredibly good art in other communities as well. the philadanco, one of the great african-american dance company in philadelphia is just one of the great companies to watch. hobart dance in chicago, i love. there are great symphonies all over this country to listen to. the opera company in st. louis is one of my favorites as is the glimmer glass opera in upstate new york.

i love going to hear those companies because they do such interesting productions. there's great art throughout this country and what i think a lot of arts organizations haven't done well enough is to make their case outside of their home communities so they can start to build support for their organizations outside of their home communities. the kennedy center raises 60 percent of the private contributions outside of the d.c. area. we have built a visibility outside of our home community that allows us to raise funds and therefore to expand our activities in washington and around the country and around the world. there are great arts organizations all over this country. i'm hoping that they can start to build their profiles and that was a very important part of my message because i believe they have a claim on resources in their communities, but also outside of their communities. >> let me ask the question again. i'm talking about your favorite broadway shows. >> my favorite broadway show, i mentioned "sunday in the park with george" before. it's certainly one of my

favorites. i go back to "oklahoma." i was in "oklahoma" so i love that. i love "oliver." i love a very wide range of broadway musicals. it's hard to pick one and say that's the one -- >> favorite classical music? >> i'm a big fan of wagner's operas and i was just listening to "die walküre" yesterday. it's one of my favorites, but i'm also a huge mozart fan. don giovanni, i think, is one of the great creations of the world. i've -- in my singing when i was trying to sing, i was a cara torre bass and so i sang an awful lot of bach. bach was just an unbelievable genius, and his music is so glorious. but i also love jazz music and i did a big project with dizzy gillespie at alvin ailey that was one of the great projects of my life. so i'm a jazz fan. it's really hard for me to narrow it down. i'm so happy i don't have to in my life. i've got to see so much. >> what about ballet?

>> goodness, well, you know, one of the interesting things about ballet is that as ballet dancers have started to cross borders, ballet companies now look more and more alike. there used to be a russian style, a french style, an english style -- that doesn't exist anymore. i love the two young dancers of the bolshoi ballet, osipova and vasiliev, who are now, i think, about 20 years old. they're just astonishingly good and we're lucky to have them here every year at the kennedy center -- the bolshoi -- because they have these two young dancers who are so extraordinary. so i love seeing those companies, but i also love the miami city ballet. i think it's just an unbelievable company and the pacific northwest ballet in seattle run by peter boal, is a beautiful, beautiful company. there are great ballet companies around the country that i truly enjoy. and in modern dance, i love a gamut. i mentioned philadanco. obviously alvin ailey's close to my heart. paul taylor's company is fantastic. but i like some of the less

well known companies, national companies like odc, which is in san francisco run by brenda way is a wonderful company. there are great dance companies everywhere. >> you say you're going to be here until 2014 and this year is $165 million budget. you have 14 members on your board. there are members of congress, three cabinet officers. do you look to them? are they expected to go back to the congress and get more taxpayer money for this? >> no, that's not how we use them. we really use them as we want to do work in their communities. so we have a relationship with the appropriations committees that we work with and the authorizing committees in the house and the senate, and we do our annual hearings and we make our proposals and we work with omb. but we don't really use our congressional numbers to lobby on our behalf in that way. >> why not? >> because i don't think it's necessarily appropriate. i think really why are those people in our board is because we are a national institution.

we need to serve the nation and we need the input of these members and of their staffs to help us as we try and service their communities well. >> what is your position about the future of the arts based on what you know, have come through this bad period financially. what it's going to look like in the next 10 years? >> i'm concerned, you know, people always say audiences are so old because what tends to happen in the arts is children participate in the arts typically until they're in their teen years and then a lot of people, young people move away from the arts. they start dating. they start thinking about their careers. they may go to college and they may build a family. and for about 30 years most people have very little discretionary time and discretionary money and they don't participate in the arts as much and then they tend to come back into the arts when they're 45, 50, 55 year old. their children maybe growing their careers, may have done well and they start to find their way into the arts audience members or board members or volunteers as donors. we now have a generation coming

up who didn't really have the arts very much as children and didn't have the arts in the public schools certainly. these are now the 20 years olds. i'm very concerned about that group of people because it's not clear to me that when they get to be 40, 45, 50 that they're going to come to the arts. and i do worry about where our board members and our donors and our audiences are going to come from 20 years from now. so i've been working a lot to try and create some programming just try and bring that generation into the arts, maybe at time when it's not "normal" past their school years, but to try and excite them about the art so that they do become our leaders in the future. that is a great concern to me. >> michael kaiser, president of the kennedy center since 2001 here until 2014. thank you for your time. >> thank you so much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

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