Since 1976, Pentacle has been an innovative business model for arts administration, with a mission to free performing artists to focus on what they do best—create art and engage with audiences and communities.
Providing an array of management support services and programming to artists as an alternative to the traditional model of staffing all infrastructure needs in-house, Pentacle works as partners with performing artists/organizations to build successful professional lives and sustainable businesses. Critical to realizing Pentacle’s mission is nurturing generations of arts workers and leaders to support a robust workforce of non-performing partners. Pentacle works with artists/companies and stakeholders based in New York City and across the United States.
WHAT PENTACLE DOES
We believe that providing artists with individually tailored support contributes to the dynamic flow of ideas so necessary for a healthy, equitable society. Pentacle supports artists and arts organizations by serving as their business partners, providing them with basic operations support leading to sustainability and growth, so they can focus on what they do best: create art and engage with communities.
Pentacle’s multifaceted programming currently focus on the following three areas:
Production/Presentation/Distribution of Work: creating pathways for both established and emerging performing artists/companies from diverse backgrounds and with distinct artistic practices to bring their excellence to audiences while also engaging with communities through The Roster and Tour Ready Lab.
Financial Services: empowering artists with the financial tools they need for success through programs that fit every size and business type. These include options that provide artists/organizations with confidence and understanding in the administration of their finances: full flexible Fiscal Services for incorporated arts nonprofits, and Fiscal Sponsorship. Unique Projects (UP) a basic regranting service; and Foundation for Independent Artists (FIA), a comprehensive fiscal sponsorship offering full fiscal administration and a true corporate home for unincorporated artists and arts entities. In addition to these core fiscal support programs, Pentacle provides financial consulting and mentoring.
Career & Professional Development: supporting generations of arts workers at all phases of their careers. Aligned with its mission and bringing to life its role as a “business partner” for the performing arts, Pentacle has designed CPD programs to nurture arts workers throughout their careers and provide small and mid-sized arts nonprofits (primarily dance companies) with trained and capable non-performing partners who support the production and distribution of their creative endeavors. Pentacle’s Arts Admin Fellowship, provides mid-career arts workers holistic, nonjudgmental financial support and nonhierarchical mentorship aimed at enabling them to remain and thrive in the arts sector. Since 2009, Pentacle’s Arts Administration Internship Program, has allowed over 200 college students, post-graduates, and young people over the age of 18 to gain hands-on experience in arts nonprofit business practices and gain professional development to jumpstart their careers.
Pentacle centers diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA) as core principles of our programming to fulfill our mission and operationalize our values. Pentacle strives to ensure the most vulnerable artists among us, those that have been routinely marginalized or shut out of traditional models of support, are able to access resources needed to persist with their art. Pentacle is committed to belonging, and welcomes and champions DEIA through its programs by offering unique opportunities, new models of support, and mentorship to artists who are low-income, Black and/or Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC), disabled, and/or members of the LGBTQ community. Pentacle produces programs and offers services to the widest array of artists and performing arts stakeholders possible, including those of varying abilities. We do not discriminate or tolerate discrimination based on disability, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, economic status, or religion.