| Sumario: | Although there are calls for more reflection on the practice of arts management (DeVereaux 2009), there is a widely shared and rarely challenged certainty about the practice itself. Arts managers are perceived as financial caretakers in the realm of the arts and as dutiful, but artistically uninvolved, enablers of artists and the arts. This article argues that this account gives only a vague notion of what arts managers actually do and that it misapprehends their functions and practices in several ways. The following is an empirical and sociological attempt toward a more accurate perception of arts managers. First, it identifies essential features of the common view of arts managers held by members of the academic discipline itself, by practitioners of arts management, and by sociological researchers of the topic. Second, it presents a possible research design, arguing that a qualitative empirical approach combined with an analytic perspective focusing on the sociological concept of functional differentiation allows for a more adequate perception of arts managers. Third, it demonstrates this by introducing and analyzing empirical data and results from a research project1 on music managers.
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