Linda Essig is Provost of Baruch College of the City University of New York after serving as Dean of the College of Arts & Letters at California State University, Los Angeles 2018-2021. She previously was director of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Programs for the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, including the Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship. She was the founding director of the School of Theatre and Film at ASU where she also served as Artistic Director of the school’s MainStage Season from 2004–2010. She previously served as Director of University Theatre and chair of Theatre & Drama at University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2012, she launched Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, the first-ever research journal in the field. Her articles have been published there as well as in Cultural Trends, Entrepreneurship Research Journal, Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, Theatre Topics, Stage Directions, Theatre Design and Technology, and elsewhere. Formerly a professional lighting designer, Essig’s design for the ASU production of Suzan–Lori Parks’s “Venus” was part of the USA National Exhibit of Scenography at the Prague Quadrennial in 2007. She has designed for theatres throughout the country including Cleveland Playhouse, Milwaukee Rep, Missouri Rep, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Skylight Opera, La Mama ETC, Pioneer Theatre, and others. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on both arts entrepreneurship and lighting design, and three books: Lighting and the Design Idea, The Speed of Light: Dialogues on Lighting Design and Technological Change, and The Arizona Arts Entrepreneur Toolkit. At ASU, Essig taught courses in Arts Entrepreneurship, Arts Management, and Arts Policy. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Association of Arts Administration Educators. You can download her 2021 CV here.
The opinions expressed on Creative Infrastructure are her own and not those of CUNY Baruch College, Cal State LA, ASU, or their programs.
Linda started this blog to share her thoughts on arts entrepreneurship, arts education, and arts policy, three aspects of the creative infrastructure needed for the arts to flourish. You can follow her on twitter @LindaEssig, The site is a work in progress as is all it’s content, so come back and visit often!
All material on Creative Infrastructure is copyrighted by Linda Essig and licensed 
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Creative Infrastructure 
Linda,
I’m doing a bit of research about the LC3 designation and stumbled onto your site and post about the topic. Any recent developments? I’m managing a new arts startup and trying to determine the best structure as we grow. Thanks.
Clay Myers-Bowman
Managing Director
The Arctic Cycle
http://www.ArcticCycle.org
Clay: I’m not an attorney, and you will want to consult one in your state if you’re thinking of incorporating as an L3C. Although there was a lot of hype about the form at first, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence from the field that there are advantages for small arts organizations to incorporating as an L3C versus an LLC. My state (AZ) approved enabling legislation for B-corps last spring. It will be interesting to see if that form proves useful.
Thanks. Of course I’ll consult legal counsel, but wanted to check to see if there was any conclusions yet about whether L3C was advantageous or not. I’m also checking with Fractured Atlas, our fiscal sponsor. I know Adam the CEO participated in a few discussions about it.
Clay: Adam was on our Pave speakers series in 2012, with a talk titled “New Business Models for Artists.” If you go to this link and scroll down, you can access the video of his talk: http://theatrefilm.asu.edu/initiatives/pave/fall_series1112.php
In a later panel discussion at Columbia University on the L3C and the arts, he expressed ambivalence. There was a lot of good info in that session. Video here: http://www.livestream.com/newplay/video?clipId=pla_728700a0-97c5-4bfe-a227-7bb9a80624d7
That’s awesome! Thanks for the links. FYI: if you want to delete this comment thread from your “About Linda” page, I totally understand. Not exactly relevant here, but I appreciate your thoughts.