Arts Professional Story: Kate Lorenz, Hyde Park Art Center

Like most good things in life, my career in the arts has happened largely by accident.  When asked to give advice on how to get a job in the arts, I usually tell people to find ways to spend time doing what interests them and opportunities will present themselves. This advice draws from my own experience, so take it with a grain of salt.

My career path is a classic story, really: Corporate sellout (no offense to all my corporate sellout friends!) realizes her job is boring and purposeless and that the high salary, corporate perks, and promise of a stable, comfortable future is no match for the lure of a dynamic, creative job surrounded by artists and actively immersed in the creation of culture.

After having this epiphany, I entered the Art History Masters program at the University of Chicago, applied and was thankfully accepted for a work-study internship at the Hyde Park Art Center, and though I didn’t know it at the time, my career was off and running. As an intern, I spent 10 hours per week entering data, writing letters, stuffing envelopes, entering more data, and most importantly, paying attention to everything that was going on around me. I quickly realized that by doing these seemingly mundane tasks, but surrounded by action (and artists!), I was learning as much, if not more than I was in graduate school, where I spent most of my energy reading about artists.

At the same time, the Art Center, like all arts organizations, always had more things that needed to be done than time or people to do them, which meant that by simply being around and acting eager, I was able to engage in more and more activities. At the time, the Art Center was anticipating its capital campaign and move to a new facility and received funding from the Chicago Community Trust for a new position—a Director of Development. Development was not anything I had ever thought about doing before, but had spent a fair amount of time doing over the course of my internship and had accidentally enjoyed it. One thing led to another, and I was hired as the Center’s first Director of Development, a position I started one week after finishing graduate school.

Since then, we at the Art Center have completed a $6 million capital campaign, renovated and moved into our new facility, have more than doubled our budget, expanded our staff, and have become an entirely new kind of institution, serving a community of more than 40,000 people a year. My job has also evolved, particularly with our move and staff expansion, and has grown to include program oversight, internal staff coordination, strategic planning, PR and Marketing functions, and public programming. I was named Associate Director in 2006—a change I affectionately call my promotion with no change in responsibility or pay. In any case, if there were a terminal degree in Arts Administration, I would have earned several of them by now, and I think there’s no more satisfying and educational experience than working for a small, dynamic organization as it evolves.

Indeed, the best way to learn, in my view, is by working with talented people and putting yourself in situations that force you to think creatively to figure things out. I think we, in the arts, are spoiled in that these two things are inherently part of our days. And I have certainly been spoiled at the Art Center in this regard.  It is a place where experimentation, creative thinking, trial and error, and good ideas are central to the culture. The board and staff are among the smartest and hardest working around (if I do say so myself) and my colleagues have all been incredible mentors. Now that I think about it, we as administrators aren’t that different from the artists who inspire our work. We succeed based on many of the same traits—the willingness to experiment, the ability to think in new ways, the openness to others’ ideas, the desire to work hard and consistently over a long period of time, and the resourceful ability to figure things out. It’s no wonder we have an affinity for each other.

Also in my, albeit biased, view, Chicago is an ideal city to be in our field. First, there is a wealth of organizations and activity, fueled, of course, by the wealth of artists living and working here and the audiences that want to see their work. Second, it truly is a friendly city and the arts community is incredibly collegial. If you want advice, many are willing to offer it. If you want help, just as many are available to share their time, talents, and insight. There is none of the cut-throatedness that I hear exists in (ahem) other cities. It is, however, a close-knit community which necessitates the task of getting to know people.

So, my advice to those looking for jobs or with projects they’re interested in starting is to spend time at organizations and places that interest them and get to know the people involved there. I think the best way to do this is to volunteer, though it’s certainly not the only way. My other piece of advice is to be patient. Making connections and seeing them bear fruit involves not only having the right attitude and intentions, but being in the right place at the right time. You never know when that place or time will be – so stick it out and learn all you can along the way.

In the end, I go back to my original advice. Find ways to do what interests you, immerse yourself in those environments, be patient, work hard, and the rest will follow. Winston Churchill, who I just learned was a dedicated and accomplished painter himself, said that while planning is essential, plans are useless. Though we may not know what the future will bring, we can put ourselves in the best possible position to make the most of the opportunities that will arise.

Kate Lorenz is Hyde Park Art Center’s Executive Director and has been with the Art Center since 2002 when she started as an intern. A native of Nashville, TN, she earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in 1999.  She has been fully converted into a Chicagoan and can’t see why anyone would ever live anywhere else.  She has a BA in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences and Psychology and received her MA in Humanities at the University of Chicago (MAPH).  She has served on the Auxiliary Board of High Jump Chicago and has been a docent at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago since 2000.  She is also on the board of the Development Leadership Consortium.  Past experience includes working as a Management Consultant for PwC Consulting in Chicago.