Art education remains a subject in many school districts which is at risk of being cut due to low funds. In order to maintain arts in schools, stakeholders must see the many benefits that art provides for students. Those in art education also face issues with limited resources and lack of respect. Thus, it is essential to have an effective advocate for the arts at the district level to limit the disparities between the arts and other core subjects. The purpose of the current study was to provide research illustrating leadership competencies needed as related to the effective art administrator, what competencies are assessed in the hiring process, and the need of an arts administrator as an advocate in a district. In this mixed methods study, visual arts administrators from the state of Texas were surveyed in order to determine if leadership competencies are important to the selection of a visual arts administrator, if the competencies were assessed during the hiring process, and if the competencies chosen differed based on the fine arts background of the visual arts administrator. The qualitative data was collected through three open ended questions on the survey and through interviews with seven visual arts administrators. The quantitative data was collected and analyzed using SPSS while the qualitative data was collected and analyzed using NVivo. The data indicated that visual arts administrators find the leadership competencies important although they are not all assessed during the hiring process. There was also a difference between the important competencies and the fine arts background of the respondents. There were many themes found which shared the importance of needing an art administrator in a district. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]