How To Become An Artistic Director: What It Is and Career Path

What is an artistic director and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

2 min read

Quoted Expert

Frances Zhu

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being an artistic director. For example, did you know that they make an average of $34.98 an hour? That's $72,755 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 4% and produce 4,700 job opportunities across the U.S.

What general advice would you give to an Artistic Director?

Frances Zhu

Assistant Research Professor, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Get competing offers and negotiate a higher salary. Foster skills that lend to higher salaries. For example, even though marine biology may not pay the highest, if you have some coding experience, you will be one of the higher paid marine biologists in the field.

ScoreArtistic DirectorUS Average

Salary

5.7

Avg. Salary $72,755

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

7.9

Growth Rate 4%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

4.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.72%

Asian 7.32%

Black or African American 4.41%

Hispanic or Latino 14.70%

Unknown 5.71%

White 67.13%

Gender

female 51.70%

male 48.30%

Age - 39

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 39

Stress Level

7.9

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

9.2

Complexity Level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

4.0

Work Life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become an artistic director

Explore artistic director education requirements

Most common artistic director degrees

Bachelor's

68.2 %

Master's

18.4 %

Associate

6.3 %

Start to develop specific artistic director skills

Skills	Percentages
Artistic Vision	21.34%
Community Outreach	12.27%
Non-Profit Organization	8.21%
Press Releases	6.07%
Public Speaking	5.85%

Complete relevant artistic director training and internships

Accountants spend an average of Less than 1 month on post-employment, on-the-job training. New artistic directors learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as an artistic director based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real artistic director resumes.

Research artistic director duties and responsibilities

Manage and develop the art & photography school programs along with maintaining the retail art gallery.
Manage content effectiveness, ROI, media orders, ad confirmations, production requests and discrepancy notices.
Choreograph and produce contemporary dances in NYC and Albany venues.
Recruit mid-career and establish artists to curate a collection for the gallery.

Get artistic director experience

Generally, it takes 4-6 years to become an artistic director. The most common roles before becoming an artistic director include director, director of music team lead and instructor.

Prepare your artistic director resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your artistic director resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on an artistic director resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Artistic Director Resume templates

Build a professional Artistic Director resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your Artistic Director resume.

Apply for artistic director jobs

Now it's time to start searching for an artistic director job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams