Maren Brown

Principal

Brown works with a variety of clients nationwide on their arts management consulting and training needs.  She has consulted on strategic plans and evaluations for a variety of state and regional arts agencies, including the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Mid America Arts Alliance, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Delaware Division of the Arts, New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, Tennessee Arts Commission, New England Foundation for the Arts, and Vermont Arts Council. She has also worked extensively with state and regional arts agencies, national service organizations and foundations to meet their consulting and training needs, including the Barr Foundation, Western States Arts Federation, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Americans for the Arts, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (National Arts Partnerships Program), Illinois Arts Council, Massachusetts Cultural Council, New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, Arkansas Arts Council, Wisconsin Arts Board, Connecticut Office of the Arts, California Arts Council, Washington State Arts Division, and Tennessee Arts Commission, among others.

Brown is the co-founder of the National Arts Policy Archive and Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is responsible for securing collections from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, and Americans for the Arts, among others.  She co-founded the arts management degree program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in collaboration with the University Without Walls, which is the only degree program in the nation that focuses on adult learners who wish to obtain a bachelor’s degree in arts management.  Brown developed and taught courses in arts programming, financial management, arts marketing, and introduction to arts management.

Brown is the co-editor of the 5th and 6th editions of the foundational text, Fundamentals of Arts Management, used in 45% of the arts management degree programs in the nation, and is the co-author of the working paper, Leveraging Change: Increasing Access to Arts Education in Rural Areas, and two workbooks on partnership development in the arts, Partners in Creative Economy Planning and Re-imagining Resources Through Partnership Development.  She has delivered numerous training programs around the nation for arts management practitioners in subjects ranging from strategic planning to program evaluation, and has also taught business skills to artists of all disciplines.

Brown has over 30 years of experience in the field of arts management. She draws upon these decades of experience as both an arts management practitioner (where she worked in museums, performing and visual arts centers, and a funding agency) and as an artist (egg tempera painter) in her arts management consulting and education work.  Brown is a nationally-certified Human Subjects Researcher. She has an M.B.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.