July 10, 2025

Leadership vs. Stewardship: What the Arts Need Now

by Emil J. Kang

In the American cultural sector, we confuse management with vision. We reward stability over courage. We elevate stewards and call them leaders.

I write this not as a provocation for its own sake, but as a call to rethink how we define—and more importantly, recognize—leadership in the arts.

For too long, our major institutions have selected executives who preserve inherited structures rather than reimagine them. They maintain budgets, sustain relationships, and deliver season brochures on time. These are not insignificant tasks—but they are not, in themselves, leadership. They are stewardship.

Leadership, by contrast, is imaginative. It is willing to risk comfort for truth. It invites disruption when the systems in place no longer serve the people they claim to represent. It asks deeper questions: Whose stories are being told? Whose communities are being served? Whose future are we building?

The problem isn’t just individual. It’s systemic. We have built a field in which boards hire familiarity. Search firms propose only the known quantities. Donors reward the calm hand, not the bold voice. And so, we recycle the same names, celebrate the same résumés, and wonder why the public grows more distant from our institutions.

We live in a time of cultural reckoning—across race, economy, democracy, and history. And yet, much of our leadership continues to operate as if we are managing orchestras in 1995, museums in 1985, or foundations in 1975. We perform inclusion, but fund the same ideas. We announce equity, but protect legacy. We say we want change, but reward continuity.

I’ve spent the last 30 years working across philanthropy, higher education, performing arts institutions, and government. I’ve witnessed firsthand how impact is often sidelined in favor of optics. I’ve watched leaders who challenged the status quo be passed over for those who promised “stability.” And I’ve seen the slow erosion of public trust in cultural institutions that no longer speak to the urgency of people’s lives.

This is not cynicism. It’s clarity.

The next chapter of the arts will not be written by those who simply inherit buildings. It will be authored by those who are brave enough to tear down walls—metaphorical and literal—and build anew. The leaders we need now will not be afraid of ambiguity, discomfort, or dissent. They will embrace them as part of the creative process of institutional reinvention.

We must recognize and reward these leaders. We must fund them. Appoint them. Trust them. Because without them, the arts will continue to drift—safe, familiar, and increasingly irrelevant.

It’s time to stop mistaking stewardship for leadership.

The future demands more.

🟦 Published

  • (7/10/2025) Leadership vs. Stewardship: What the Arts Need Now
    Why vision, courage, and impact must replace inherited authority in arts leadership.

🟨 Coming Soon

  • The Veneer of Equity
    When Inclusion Is Performance and Not Power

  • Culture Is Civic Infrastructure
    Why the Arts Belong in Policy, Not Just on Stages

  • The Courage to Lead
    Why the Arts Need Risk-Takers, Not Risk-Managers

  • The Pipeline Is a Lie
    The Real Barriers to Diverse Leadership in the Arts

  • We Don’t Need Another Season
    Rethinking the Purpose of the Performing Arts Institution

Essays + Provocations

Thoughts on power, equity, and the future of cultural leadership.