- DataArts News
Meet Michael DeWhatley, SMU DataArts’ Newest Research Fellow
- Posted Oct 14, 2025
We are excited to welcome Michael DeWhatley as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender Studies in the Arts. In this role, Michael will bring his expertise and energy to advancing gender studies in arts and culture across multiple SMU DataArts projects.
Michael recently earned his Ph.D. in Theatre, Performance as Public Practice from UT Austin, where he completed his dissertation on executive leadership transition in nonprofit theaters. During his studies, he published multiple peer-reviewed articles and built a strong foundation in arts leadership and governance. Before Austin, he received a B.A. in Theatre from Wake Forest University and worked in roles ranging from culture and arts education specialist at Zilker Botanical Garden to production manager for theatres in Louisville.
Michael will collaborate with the DataArts team to integrate gender-focused inquiry into the organization’s research, contribute to DataArts projects, and help drive new insights at the intersection of arts, equity, and data. We are excited to welcome him aboard and look forward to the impact his work will bring. This fellowship is supported by Every Page Foundation.
Can you tell us a little about your background and what drew you to the field of arts research?
Michael: I worked in technical theatre production throughout college, finding it a welcoming place of support and camaraderie. I worked professionally as a production manager after graduating, and I realized that I was more deeply interested in the infrastructural contexts that shaped artmaking than the aesthetic or technical craft itself. I noticed that many of my fellow staff members and artists employed by large nonprofit theatre companies struggled to further equity, transform their organizational culture, and develop better understandings of how their work could be artistically innovative and socially impactful.
After a decade of work in nonprofit theatre, I felt that the questions I had about the systemic factors that influence artmaking could only be answered through more rigorous study than I’d have access to as a working production manager. At UT-Austin, my doctoral research focused on the relationships between board members and staff at nonprofit theatre companies during moments of executive leadership transition as a direct result of my lived experience serving on an artistic director search committee at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Studying arts and cultural governance has illuminated for me how power and community service impact the formation of artistic leadership. Now, I’m committed to finding and refining tools artists can use to better perceive the river down which they’re rafting and make choices about how to navigate those tricky waters.
What’s one piece of research or an insight from your career that has significantly impacted the way you think about the arts and culture sector?
Michael: I first read Donna Walker-Kuhne's 2005 book, Invitation to the Party, while I was working at summerstock theatre companies in college (her 2025 book, Champions for the Arts, is currently glaring at me from my bookshelf, demanding attention). Invitation documents Walker-Kuhne's journey to being one of the most significant voices in the country for audience development and community engagement, but her research is broader than personal memoir. She talks about arts and culture as a celebration of human meaning-making, an ongoing project that creates a better society through collaboration and participation. The key to that participation, she argues, is a strategic and holistic commitment from organizations and artists to attract new audiences to arts and culture; an invitation to the party.
I grew up in a middle-class family that always put a strong value on arts and culture; my father majored in theatre and my parents fell in love while working on shows in college. For me, art always felt important and accessible. Walker-Kuhne showed me that I was making assumptions about how comfortable everyone might feel about participating in arts and culture, and that professional artists and administrators might break down those barriers to create a bigger and better arts party (which I assume involves face painting, dance marathons, and just incredible pastry towers).
What aspects of your upcoming research are you most excited about, and why?
Michael: Before I started, SMU DataArts embarked on a project, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in partnership with the League of American Orchestras (LAO) and financial sustainability for orchestras. I’m now the research lead on that project, working with the LAO to develop the metrics we want to use to highlight 15 orchestras that have managed to endure and even thrive in the midst of incredibly challenging times for the arts over the last seven years. Our hope for this project is that it might point us to promising new business practices and replicable financial strategies for orchestras of all types (did you know that according to the LAO’s 2024 Orchestras at a Glance report, there are around 2,200 orchestras in the U.S., and that 77% of them have annual budgets under $300,000?).
Much of arts research right now is (understandably) painting a bleak picture of our present and projected circumstances. This project promises to test my skills at qualitative and quantitative research while celebrating the places where music-making is finding new financial footing. We can all use some good news.