NATIONAL ARTIST
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Joseph V. Melillo (Chair), Executive Producer,
Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York
Joseph V. Melillo, executive producer since 1999, is responsible for the artistic direction of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). In the years that he has held this role, BAM has enjoyed increases in both programming and audience attendance in its Harvey Lichtenstein Theater, Howard Gilman Opera House, Rose Cinemas, and BAMcafé. In addition to continued critical acclaim, BAM was awarded a special Obie Award in 2003 in recognition of a body of work in international programming, and a special Drama Desk Award for bringing works of distinction from around the world to New York audiences. Over the years, Melillo has fostered the work of emerging artists such as choreographer John Jasperse, director Anne Bogart, and musician/composers David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, while continuing to provide an artistic home for BAM regulars such as choreographer Pina Bausch, directors Jonathan Miller and Sam Mendes, and composer Steve Reich. DOWNLOAD FULL BIO
Dr. Anthony Bannon, Director, George Eastman House
Dr. Anthony Bannon is the Director of George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. He has held that position since 1996, previously serving as director of the Burchfield-Penney Arts Center, and director of Cultural Affairs on the campus of the State University of New York at Buffalo, both located in Buffalo, N.Y.
Dan Cameron, Founder/Curator, Prospect New Orleans
Dan Cameron is Founder and Artistic Director of U.S. Biennial, Inc, a not-for-profit (501c3) organization that produces Prospect New Orleans, a new international biennial whose first edition opened in November 2008 at multiple sites around the city, and ran through January 2009. Since 2007 Cameron has also served as Director of Visual Arts for the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, which is the principal venue for Prospect, and where he has presented solo projects by artists Luis Cruz Azaceta, Tony Feher and Peter Saul, as well as the group exhibitions Something from Nothing, Makeit-Right, Previously on Piety and Hot Up Here. DOWNLOAD FULL BIO
Michael Bigelow Dixon, Director of Studio Theatre Programing, Gutherie Theatre
Michael Bigelow Dixon was Literary Manager and, in his last year, Associate Artistic Director at Actors Theatre of Louisville from 1985 to 2001. He then worked for six years as Literary Director and Director of Studio Programming at the Guthrie Theater and after that was Resident Director at The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis for two years. He has directed numerous world premiere productions of plays by Julie Marie Myatt, Lee Blessing, Steven Dietz, Jessica Goldberg, Melanie Marnich, Kelly Stuart and Naomi Wallace. Mr. Dixon has written more than 20 published and produced plays, most with Val Smith, and has edited 35 volumes of plays and criticism with Amy Wegener, Tanya Palmer, Liz Engelman, and Michele Volansky. He launched a creative retreat, Tofte Lake Center, in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, and he is currently Assistant Professor in the Theatre Department at Goucher College.
Kenneth Fischer, President, University Musical Society
Ken Fischer is the president of the University Musical Society of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has been a member of Arts Midwest's Performing Arts Advisory Committee, a recipient of funding from our Heartland Arts Fund, Performing Arts Touring Fund, Dance on Tour and Meet the Composer, and a host site supervisor for Minority Arts Administration Fellows in 1992 and 1994. Ken currently is on the board of directors of Interlochen Center for the Arts, National Arts Strategies, Cultural Alliance of Southeast Michigan, and Ann Arbor SPARK. He has been an active arts advocate in Michigan, and maintains a variety of community and national affiliations. He is a highly skilled performing arts presenter, has a strong background in fund-raising, marketing and public relations, has been a consultant to a number of corporations, associations and foundations, and has background as a producer of large, revenue-generating educational conferences.
Franklin Sirmans, Department Head and Curator of Contemporary Art, Los Angles County Museum of Art
Franklin Sirmans is the Terri and Michael Smooke Department Head and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. From 2006 to 2010, he was the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection in Houston,TX, where he organized several exhibitions including NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, Maurizio Cattelan, Steve Wolfe: On Paper and Contemporary Conversations:John Chamberlain. DOWNLOAD FULL BIO
Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York
Joseph V. Melillo, executive producer since 1999, is responsible for the artistic direction of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). In the years that he has held this role, BAM has enjoyed increases in both programming and audience attendance in its Harvey Lichtenstein Theater, Howard Gilman Opera House, Rose Cinemas, and BAMcafé. In addition to continued critical acclaim, BAM was awarded a special Obie Award in 2003 in recognition of a body of work in international programming, and a special Drama Desk Award for bringing works of distinction from around the world to New York audiences. Over the years, Melillo has fostered the work of emerging artists such as choreographer John Jasperse, director Anne Bogart, and musician/composers David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, while continuing to provide an artistic home for BAM regulars such as choreographer Pina Bausch, directors Jonathan Miller and Sam Mendes, and composer Steve Reich. DOWNLOAD FULL BIO
Dr. Anthony Bannon, Director, George Eastman House
Dr. Anthony Bannon is the Director of George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. He has held that position since 1996, previously serving as director of the Burchfield-Penney Arts Center, and director of Cultural Affairs on the campus of the State University of New York at Buffalo, both located in Buffalo, N.Y.
Dan Cameron, Founder/Curator, Prospect New Orleans
Dan Cameron is Founder and Artistic Director of U.S. Biennial, Inc, a not-for-profit (501c3) organization that produces Prospect New Orleans, a new international biennial whose first edition opened in November 2008 at multiple sites around the city, and ran through January 2009. Since 2007 Cameron has also served as Director of Visual Arts for the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, which is the principal venue for Prospect, and where he has presented solo projects by artists Luis Cruz Azaceta, Tony Feher and Peter Saul, as well as the group exhibitions Something from Nothing, Makeit-Right, Previously on Piety and Hot Up Here. DOWNLOAD FULL BIO
Michael Bigelow Dixon, Director of Studio Theatre Programing, Gutherie Theatre
Michael Bigelow Dixon was Literary Manager and, in his last year, Associate Artistic Director at Actors Theatre of Louisville from 1985 to 2001. He then worked for six years as Literary Director and Director of Studio Programming at the Guthrie Theater and after that was Resident Director at The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis for two years. He has directed numerous world premiere productions of plays by Julie Marie Myatt, Lee Blessing, Steven Dietz, Jessica Goldberg, Melanie Marnich, Kelly Stuart and Naomi Wallace. Mr. Dixon has written more than 20 published and produced plays, most with Val Smith, and has edited 35 volumes of plays and criticism with Amy Wegener, Tanya Palmer, Liz Engelman, and Michele Volansky. He launched a creative retreat, Tofte Lake Center, in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, and he is currently Assistant Professor in the Theatre Department at Goucher College.
Kenneth Fischer, President, University Musical Society
Ken Fischer is the president of the University Musical Society of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has been a member of Arts Midwest's Performing Arts Advisory Committee, a recipient of funding from our Heartland Arts Fund, Performing Arts Touring Fund, Dance on Tour and Meet the Composer, and a host site supervisor for Minority Arts Administration Fellows in 1992 and 1994. Ken currently is on the board of directors of Interlochen Center for the Arts, National Arts Strategies, Cultural Alliance of Southeast Michigan, and Ann Arbor SPARK. He has been an active arts advocate in Michigan, and maintains a variety of community and national affiliations. He is a highly skilled performing arts presenter, has a strong background in fund-raising, marketing and public relations, has been a consultant to a number of corporations, associations and foundations, and has background as a producer of large, revenue-generating educational conferences.
Franklin Sirmans, Department Head and Curator of Contemporary Art, Los Angles County Museum of Art
Franklin Sirmans is the Terri and Michael Smooke Department Head and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. From 2006 to 2010, he was the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection in Houston,TX, where he organized several exhibitions including NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, Maurizio Cattelan, Steve Wolfe: On Paper and Contemporary Conversations:John Chamberlain. DOWNLOAD FULL BIO
Linda S. Golding, Founder / Director, The Reservoir
Linda Golding has spent more than 20 years in the practice of management in the performing arts and doing business with the spirit of entrepreneurial undertaking. Experience includes 10 years as President of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., the North American affiliate of the UK based international classical music publishing firm developing innovative new works commission and marketing strategies, and 11 years as Associate Music Administrator and then Director of Production Coordination with the New York City Opera. Currently Ms. Golding is the founder of The Reservoir, an idea mentoring and coaching practice designed and structured to assist performing arts professionals identify and remove the obstacles to developing, clarifying and implementing their creative ideas and objectives. DOWNLOAD FULL BIO
Christopher Merrill, Director, International Writing Program, University of Iowa
Christopher Merrill has published four collections of poetry, including Brilliant Water, and Watch Fire, for which he received the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; translations of Aleš Debeljak's Anxious Moments and The City and the Child; and four books of nonfiction. His work has been translated into 25 languages, his journalism appears in many publications, and his awards include a knighthood in arts and letters from the French government. He is the book critic for the daily radio news program The World. He has held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and now directs the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa.
Christopher Offutt, Novelist
Christopher John Offutt is an American writer, born in Lexington, KY in 1958. Offutt, the son of author Andrew J. Offutt, grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, a former mining community of 200 people in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Kentucky. He quit high school to join the army, but failed the physical. He attended Morehead State University and graduated with a degree in theater and a minor in art. He later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has received awards from the Lannan Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Whiting Foundation. Offutt was also named one of the twenty best young American fiction writers by Granta. His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, Men's Journal, Oxford American, and on National Public Radio.
Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, Executive Director, Arizona State University Gammage
Colleen Jennings-Roggensack has been presenting the performing arts for the past 33 years. She is currently Executive Director of Arizona State University Gammage and Assistant VP for Cultural Affairs with artistic, fiscal and administrative responsibility for two cultural facilities, with additional responsibility for Sun Devil Stadium and Wells Fargo Arena for non-athletic activities including concerts as well as commencement and convocation exercises. Colleen was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the US Senate to serve on the National Council on the Arts. Colleen worked with the NEA and Department of Education on the Goals 2000 Arts Education Action Planning Process. She has been on the Board of Directors of the American Arts Alliance and has testified before Congress on behalf of public funding for the arts. DOWNLOAD FULL BIO
Barbara Shepherd, Director of National Partnerships - Education, The Kennedy Center
Barbara Shepherd is the director of National Partnerships for the Education Department at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. These programs include several participants that support state-level collaborations to strengthen arts education statewide, and the Any Given Child initiative, in which the Kennedy Center works across communities to build arts education programs. Shepherd also facilitated the National Conversation on Artist Professional Development, which led to the publication of Creating Capacity: A Framework for Providing Professional Development Opportunities for Teaching Artists, for which she is a contributing author. Shepherd earned her master’s of fine arts in acting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Linda Golding has spent more than 20 years in the practice of management in the performing arts and doing business with the spirit of entrepreneurial undertaking. Experience includes 10 years as President of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., the North American affiliate of the UK based international classical music publishing firm developing innovative new works commission and marketing strategies, and 11 years as Associate Music Administrator and then Director of Production Coordination with the New York City Opera. Currently Ms. Golding is the founder of The Reservoir, an idea mentoring and coaching practice designed and structured to assist performing arts professionals identify and remove the obstacles to developing, clarifying and implementing their creative ideas and objectives. DOWNLOAD FULL BIO
Christopher Merrill, Director, International Writing Program, University of Iowa
Christopher Merrill has published four collections of poetry, including Brilliant Water, and Watch Fire, for which he received the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; translations of Aleš Debeljak's Anxious Moments and The City and the Child; and four books of nonfiction. His work has been translated into 25 languages, his journalism appears in many publications, and his awards include a knighthood in arts and letters from the French government. He is the book critic for the daily radio news program The World. He has held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and now directs the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa.
Christopher Offutt, Novelist
Christopher John Offutt is an American writer, born in Lexington, KY in 1958. Offutt, the son of author Andrew J. Offutt, grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, a former mining community of 200 people in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Kentucky. He quit high school to join the army, but failed the physical. He attended Morehead State University and graduated with a degree in theater and a minor in art. He later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has received awards from the Lannan Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Whiting Foundation. Offutt was also named one of the twenty best young American fiction writers by Granta. His non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, Men's Journal, Oxford American, and on National Public Radio.
Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, Executive Director, Arizona State University Gammage
Colleen Jennings-Roggensack has been presenting the performing arts for the past 33 years. She is currently Executive Director of Arizona State University Gammage and Assistant VP for Cultural Affairs with artistic, fiscal and administrative responsibility for two cultural facilities, with additional responsibility for Sun Devil Stadium and Wells Fargo Arena for non-athletic activities including concerts as well as commencement and convocation exercises. Colleen was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the US Senate to serve on the National Council on the Arts. Colleen worked with the NEA and Department of Education on the Goals 2000 Arts Education Action Planning Process. She has been on the Board of Directors of the American Arts Alliance and has testified before Congress on behalf of public funding for the arts. DOWNLOAD FULL BIO
Barbara Shepherd, Director of National Partnerships - Education, The Kennedy Center
Barbara Shepherd is the director of National Partnerships for the Education Department at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. These programs include several participants that support state-level collaborations to strengthen arts education statewide, and the Any Given Child initiative, in which the Kennedy Center works across communities to build arts education programs. Shepherd also facilitated the National Conversation on Artist Professional Development, which led to the publication of Creating Capacity: A Framework for Providing Professional Development Opportunities for Teaching Artists, for which she is a contributing author. Shepherd earned her master’s of fine arts in acting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
NATIONAL ARTIST
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
(EMERITUS)
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
(EMERITUS)
Philip Bither, Curator of Programs, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
George Steel, General Manager / Artistic Director, New York City Opera
