Arts and Creative Enterprise Leadership

The Bolz Center is committed to training leaders who are curious, life-long learners. Through focused curriculum, discussion, research, and analysis of arts and cultural nonprofit management, the Bolz Center refines our collective understanding of what it means to manage and lead in this challenging, rewarding, and ever-changing field. The Center also serves as a model for exploration through consulting projects, national initiatives, and experiences that engage our alumni and colleagues around the world.

This one-year, full-time program helps you build on your creative skills and background to prepare for a career as an innovative arts administrator, nonprofit executive, or social entrepreneur. You will develop a portfolio of strategic abilities rooted in business practice and learn from experts spanning decades of experience in arts and cultural training and leadership.
The MA in Arts and Creative Enterprise Leadership is a 30-credit accelerated program. Our curriculum combines the tools of business: management, marketing, finance, accounting, and operations, with the tools of community building: fundraising, development, education, and outreach.

In addition to coursework, one of the highlights of the Bolz Center is intentional hands-on experiences that complement the formalized classroom experience. Students participate in applied learning activities, including trips to arts and cultural spaces, attending performances, and pairing with a local organization or municipality on a capstone consulting project. Longtime partnerships with Madison-based organizations provide opportunity to engage with leaders and practitioners who work in museums, orchestras, theaters, dance studios, public media, and city and county governance.

Upon graduation, students find successful employment in Marketing and Communications, Educational Outreach, Events Management, Consulting, and Fundraising & Development.

Visit our website website to learn more about the Master of Arts-Business: Arts and Creative Enterprise Leadership Program.

As part of a shared initiative, the Bolz Center will be relocating from the Wisconsin School of Business to the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, anticipated Fall 2027.
This new home places the arts administration academic program alongside the largest number of student arts majors on campus including: Art, Art Education, Dance, and Theatre and Drama, and leverages expertise and resources to best support a robust suite of arts management and arts entrepreneurship efforts. This positioning will include a proposed new graduate program in arts management, offered by the School of Education, in partnership with the Wisconsin School of Business. Please direct all admissions questions to Bolz Center Associate Director, Rebecca Buckman.

Prospective candidates apply directly through the Wisconsin School of Business Specialized Master’s Program Office and indicate Arts and Creative Enterprise Leadership as their specialization of choice. Detailed admissions requirements can be found on our website .