National Endowment for the Arts Celebrates 40th Anniversary With Two-Day Symposium


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The National Endowment For The Arts: 40 Years Of Leadership In The Arts - Panelist Biographies

Panel on Arts Education

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

Dr. Sarah Cunningham has been director of arts education at the NEA since September 2005. Specific projects in which she is involved are NEA Jazz in the Schools, The Big Read, Teachers' Institute, and Summer Schools in the Arts.

From March 2004, Ms. Cunningham, was the director of the Education Assessment and Charter Accreditation Program at the American Academy for Liberal Education where she supervised a program to assess and accredit liberal arts-oriented charter schools. From March 1999 to February 2004, Dr. Cunningham was the first academic dean and dean of students at the Oxbow School, a visual arts high school in Napa, California. She helped found the school, designing curricula that integrated the visual arts with academic courses. With Oxbow, she also served as an administrator, managing professional development, admissions, student life, and curriculum decisions.

Dr. Cunningham has held teaching positions at a variety of institutions, including assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Maine in Orono (August 1997 – August 1998); Burke Teaching Fellow in Aesthetics at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee (January – May 1997), and philosophy instructor at Belmont University, Nashville, Tennessee (September 1995 – May 1997).

GUEST SPEAKER

Warren Newman serves as a consultant in arts education, specializing in the fields of program evaluation, action research, and teaching teachers and administrators to integrate the arts into their curricula. He has done consulting work since 1973 for such organizations as the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the U.S. Department of Education, and the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. From 1987–1990 he was director of arts education for the NEA. During this time, Mr. Newman administered the only federal arts education program, oversaw the National Arts Education Research Center, helped to reintroduce arts assessment back into the National Assessment of Education Progress program, and oversaw the writing of Toward Civilization and its distribution to every school district in the nation.

From 1984 to 1987, Mr. Newman served as superintendent to the South Pasadena Unified School District in California and from 1973–1981 he worked as administrator of the LA County Superintendent's Office of Program Evaluation, Research, and Student Services. Mr. Newman has also taught grades 3–12 and at the post-graduate level.

Panel on Dance

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

Douglas C. Sonntag has served as the director of dance for the NEA since 1997. In addition, he is director of the Office of National Initiatives where he oversees several signature Endowment programs including Shakespeare in American Communities and American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius. Previously, he served as program administrator and senior program specialist for the NEA dance program.

From 1981–1986, Mr. Sonntag was general manager of the Repertory Dance Theatre in Salt Lake City, Utah as well as an associate instructor for the University of Utah's Institute of Arts Administration, and a staff specialist for the Department of Ballet. From 1980–81, Mr. Sonntag was the project director of the Utah Playwriting Conference, a joint project of the Sundance Institute and the Utah Arts Council. He has served as a judge for the American College Dance Festival/Dance Magazine Awards, and as a panelist for the Utah Arts Council, the Jerome Foundation, and the Carlisle Project.

GUEST SPEAKER

Rachel Moore is executive director of American Ballet Theatre, having danced with the company's corps de ballet from 1984–1988. From 2001–2004, Ms. Moore was director of Boston Ballet's Center for Dance Education, North America's largest professional ballet school.

Prior to Boston Ballet, Ms. Moore held several positions including executive director of Project STEP, a classical music school for students of color in Boston; managing director of Ballet Theatre of Boston; director and coordinator of the Center for Community Development and the Arts with Americans for the Arts, and development officer for the National Cultural Alliance. She was an Arts Administration Fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts in 1990. In addition, she has served as adjunct faculty in the Dance Department of Emerson College and taught non-profit finance in the Graduate Program in Arts Administration at Boston University.

Ms. Moore was named a White House Presidential Scholar and has served on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Arts Council; was an advisor to the Diversity Committee of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; and continues to serve on the board of Project STEP. She currently serves on the board of the National Foundation of Bermuda and the Advisory Committee of Dance/NYC.

Panel on Design

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

As director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, Jeff Speck is responsible for all grant-making as well as two leadership initiatives, the Mayors' Institute on City Design and Your Town, both of which teach design skills to community leaders nationwide. He has also created a new initiative, the Governors' Institute on Community Design, which is bringing smart growth principles and techniques to state leadership.

Prior to joining the Endowment, Mr. Speck spent a decade at Duany Plater-Zyberk and Co., Architects and Town Planners (DPZ), where he was director of town planning. DPZ is a leader in the international movement called the New Urbanism, which promotes alternatives to suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment. With Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Mr. Speck is the co-author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.

GUEST SPEAKER

Hugh Hardy is the founder of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, known for design of distinctive new buildings, restoration of historic structures, planning for the public realm, and architectural interiors.

Among his most celebrated projects are the new New York Botanical Garden Leon Levy Visitor Center (Bronx, NY); the new 12-courtroom United States Courthouse (Jackson, MS); the Alice Busch Opera Theater, for Glimmerglass Opera; the reconstruction and addition of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (Cooperstown, NY); new and restoration work for Vassar College Libraries; restoration of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 1908 façade (Brooklyn, NY); restoration of Radio City Music Hall (New York, NY); a new development plan for LMDC, Greenwich Street South, adjacent to the World Trade Center site; a master plan study for Santa Fe Opera; and the transformation of Bryant Park (New York, NY).

Hardy has won multiple awards for projects as varied as Two River Theater (Red Bank, NJ), Packer Collegiate Institute (Brooklyn, NY), and Central Synagogue (Manhattan). National awards include the 2001 Placemark Award from the Design History Foundation and the 2000 Commissioner's Award for Excellence in Public Architecture from the U.S. General Services Administration.

Panel on Folk and Traditional Arts

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

Barry Bergey became director of folk & traditional arts at the NEA in January 2001. He came to the NEA as a senior arts specialist in 1985 after having served as the state folk arts coordinator in Missouri. He co-produced I'm Old But I'm Awfully Tough: Traditional Music of the Ozark Region and served as a curator of a touring exhibition The German Housebarn in America: Object and Image.

His writing has included a chapter on music and public policy for the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music and, with others, "Institutions and Processes Affecting Music in the United States" in Music Cultures in the United States (Routledge, 2005). From 1995-2000 he served as a consultant to the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange for their Joint Plan on Yunnan National Cultures Project.

His involvement in international arts policy issues has included serving on the U.S. delegation for the UNESCO Intergovernmental Meetings of Experts to Draft a Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage and acting as head of the U.S. delegation to the first meeting of the Inter-American Committee on Culture of the Organization of American States in 2003. In 2005, Mr. Bergey was a member of the U.S. delegation to UNESCO involved in drafting a proposed Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

GUEST SPEAKER

Dr. Daniel Sheehy is the director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, and curator of the Smithsonian's Folkways Collection. He served as director of Folk & Traditional Arts at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1992 to 2000 and as staff ethnomusicologist and assistant director from 1978-1992. Dr. Sheehy supervised the National Heritage Fellowship awards and grants programs, providing approximately $4 million annually for projects in the folk and traditional arts across the United States and its territories. A Fulbright Hays scholar in Veracruz, Mexico, he earned his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from UCLA. He served as co-editor of the South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean volume of the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music and authored Mariachi Music in America: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture, published by Oxford University Press in 2006.

Panel on International Cultural Exchange

MODERATOR

Philip Kennicott is the culture critic for the Washington Post, which he joined in August 1999. In 2000, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for editorial writing. He has also covered city politics and urban development. He served as classical music critic for the Detroit News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, were he also worked for two years as an editorial writer.

Mr. Kennicott has served as senior editor of Musical America and editor of Chamber Music Magazine, which he redesigned and expanded from a quarterly to bimonthly publication. He is a reviewer and former columnist for Gramophone. His introduction to the University of Nebraska publication of Music and the Fiction of Willa Cather was published in 2001. In recent years, his collaboration with videographers from WashingtonPost.com has taken him to Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, and Azerbaijan. He received a Cine Golden Eagle for his latest video, Fueling Azerbaijan's Future. Mr. Kennicott graduated summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy from Yale in 1988. Prior to Yale, he spent two years at Deep Springs College in California and worked on a sheep ranch in New Zealand.

SPEAKERS

Frank Hodsoll is currently a consultant to government and private interests on federal management and policy and cultural matters. He is an at-large member of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and chairs the Commission's World Heritage Sub-committee. He is also assisting the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities with its Symposium on Film, Television, Digital Media, and Popular Culture in Los Angeles He was chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1981–1989. Mr. Hodsoll was the first deputy director for management of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and chief financial officer of the U.S. Government from 1989–1993.

In February 2002, Mr. Hodsoll co-chaired the 100th American Assembly of Art, Technology, and Intellectual Property. In May 1997, he co-chaired the 92nd American Assembly on the Arts and the Public Purpose, as well as meetings in 1998 and 1999 on the relationship between the for-profit and nonprofit arts. Before his work in the Reagan and Bush administration, Mr. Hodsoll was a career foreign service officer, a lawyer, the principal of a trading company in the Philippines, and an infantryman in the U.S. Army. He has received numerous management and arts awards, including an Oscar for the Arts Endowment, an Emmy Special Award, and two honorary doctorates.

Michael M. Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., oversees the artistic programming and financial health of the organization. Under Mr. Kaiser, the nation's center for the performing arts has increased its broad educational efforts and established cross-disciplinary programming. Mr. Kaiser founded an institute for arts management and has arranged for annual visits for a period of 10 years by the ballet and opera companies of Russia's Kirov/Mariinsky Theater. The unprecedented Sondheim Celebration, with six productions of Stephen Sondheim's works, the exclusive United States presentation of the Bolshoi Ballet and Opera on a single stage, and a five-year annual commitment by London's Royal Shakespeare Company are among his programs. Mr. Kaiser also works closely with National Symphony Orchestra Music Director Leonard Slatkin and its Board of Directors.

Named a cultural ambassador by the U.S. Department of State in 2003, Mr. Kaiser advises performing arts organizations around the world on building institutional strength through marketing, strategic planning, and fundraising. Mr. Kaiser has also served as executive director of London's Royal Opera House, American Ballet Theatre, and the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Foundation; associate director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, and general manager of the Kansas City Ballet. As founder of Kaiser Associates, he was a corporate management consultant, and has authored three books.

Peter C. Marzio has served as director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston since 1982. During his 24-year tenure, attendance at the museum has increased from 300,000 to 2 million, membership from 7,000 to more than 40,000, the operating budget from $5 million to $41 million, the endowment from $25 million to $950 million, and the permanent collection from 20,000 works of art to 54,000.

Mr. Marzio is a member of the Association of Art Museum Directors, of which he served as president from 1988–1989. From 1997–2000, he was chairman of the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities. He also is a board member of The Wallace Foundation in New York City. From 1978–1982, Mr. Marzio was director and C.E.O. of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. From 1969–1978, he served as curator of prints and chairman of the Department of Cultural History at the Smithsonian Institution. He has been awarded numerous scholarships and academic prizes, including a Senior Fulbright Research Fellowship to Rome in 1973–1974.

Panel on Literature

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

David Kipen joined the NEA as the director of literature in September 2005. Among his responsibilities, Mr. Kipen leads the agency's national leadership initiatives in literature including the Big Read and Poetry Out Loud.

Beginning in 2000, Mr. Kipen was the book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle where he reviewed six to eight books each month. He was also a book critic and essayist for National Public Radio's "Day to Day" program and presented Santa Monica station KCRW-FM's weekly commentary and podcast "Overbooked." In addition to his work in print and broadcast, Mr. Kipen served on prize juries for the National Book Critics Circle (where he was also a board member), the Commonwealth Club of California, and PEN West.

Mr. Kipen joined the San Francisco Chronicle in 1998 as editor for the paper's Sunday "Book Review." Prior to working with the Chronicle, he was the senior editor with Buzz magazine. He is the editor and author of the recently published book The Schreiber Theory: A Radical Rewrite of Film History from Agee to Zaillian.

GUEST SPEAKER

Jonathan Franzen was born near Chicago in August 1959, and grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1981, he studied at the Freie Universität in Berlin as a Fulbright scholar and later worked in a seismology lab at Harvard University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Mr. Franzen is the author of three novels - The Twenty-Seventh City (1988), Strong Motion (1992), and The Corrections (2001) - and a collection of essays, How to Be Alone (2002). His honors include a Whiting Writers Award in 1988, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, the American Academy's Berlin Prize in 2000, and the National Book Award (for The Corrections) in 2001. He writes frequently for The New Yorker and lives in New York City.

Panel on Local, State, and Regional Arts Organizations

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTORS

Patrice Walker Powell, director of the Local Arts Agencies program also serves as director of the Challenge America Fast-Track initiative. From 2001–2003, she served as the agency's acting deputy chairman for grants and awards. She joined the NEA in 1991, as director of the Expansion Arts Program and since that time has also been responsible for directing several national initiatives, including ArtsREACH and Positive Alternatives for Youth.

Ms. Powell has held staff positions with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Texas Commission on the Arts, which she joined as a performing arts specialist and was promoted to deputy director. She has worked as an artist representative, media production manager, and an artist-in-residence, serving a diverse clientele of artists and cultural programmers.

John E. Ostrout was appointed as the director of state and regional partnerships for the National Endowment for the Arts in July 2004. Previously, he served for more than a decade as the executive director of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. During that period, Connecticut's national ranking in per capita state arts funding rose from 44th to first as a result of a campaign for bipartisan support to use the arts to revitalize cities and towns.

Mr. Ostrout was an elected officer of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies from 1997–2002, and a board member of the New England Foundation for the Arts from 1990–2002. He was appointed to serve as the director of cultural tourism in Connecticut's Department of Economic and Community Development from 2002 until arriving at the NEA.

GUEST SPEAKERS

Mona Abadir, chair of the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts since 2002, was first appointed to the Council in 2001. She is currently the chief operating officer and a co-founder of Honu Group, Inc., a property development and management company specializing in retail and mixed-use projects, as well as the C.E.O. of Honu Group Marketing. Previously, she served as Vvce president of Retail Design, Development and Merchandising for Sony Signatures and as general merchandise manager for The North Face. Other retail development and merchandising positions were with Pebble Beach Resorts, Anne Klein & Co., and I. Magnin & Co. Ms. Abadir sits on the executive board of the Contemporary Museum, the Hawaii Theatre Center, and the advisory council of PBS Hawaii. She also serves as board president of the Hawaii Capital Cultural District.

Diane L. Mataraza is president of Diane L. Mataraza, Inc., an independent arts management-consulting firm incorporated in Florida in 2001. From 1999–2001, Ms. Mataraza was senior vice president of ArtsMarket, a national consulting firm specializing in cultural planning and marketing. From 1997–1999, she served as executive director of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Foundation (the Grammy Awards), based in Santa Monica, California. She was director of the local arts agencies program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1992–1996. During the chairmanship of Jane Alexander in 1997, Diane served as senior advisor to the deputy chairman. Prior to the NEA, Ms. Mataraza directed the Alliance of New York State Arts Councils, the lead advocacy organization for the arts in New York State.

Executive director of the South Carolina Arts Commission in Columbia, South Carolina since 1994, Suzette M. Surkamer began her career with the Commission as dancer-in-residence in 1974. As executive director, she is responsible for the total operations of the state agency, which has a budget of over $5 million and a staff of 30. Currently a member of Clemson University's President's Advisory Board and Winthrop University's Board of Visitors, she also serves on the South Carolina Rural Development Council, and is the past chair of the Southern Arts Federation and current treasurer of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

Panel on Media Arts

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

Ted Libbey is the director of media arts programs for the NEA and in that capacity supervises the panel selection and grantmaking process for media arts (film, television, and radio). Prior to joining the NEA in September 2002, Mr. Libbey was a well-known commentator on National Public Radio's Performance Today.

In 1992, he was a programming consultant and coordinator for the John F. Kennedy Center's Tribute to Germany, a multi-venue festival of German music, theater, dance, and film. From 1984 to 1996, Mr. Libbey was a consultant to the United States Information Agency's Artistic Ambassador Program and received the USIA's Award for Outstanding Service in 1988.

Mr. Libbey has served as an editor of Schwann Inside, High Fidelity, and Musical America magazines, and as a music critic for the New York Times and the Washington Star. His published works include The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection; Symphonic Portraits: A Classical Portfolio; Isaac Stern: A Carnegie Hall Tribute; histories of Carnegie Hall and the National Symphony Orchestra. His latest book, NPR Encyclopedia of Classical Music, was published in April 2006.

GUEST SPEAKER

For over three decades, Jac Venza has been a pioneer of non-commercial television in America and a major figure in harnessing the power of television to achieve international recognition for America's leading performing artists. Beginning with the Great Performances series in 1972, Mr. Venza created a new framework for the performing arts on PBS, launching the sub-series Theater in America and Dance in America to initiate television collaboration with performers and artistic companies throughout the country. Great Performances' vast program collection has garnered virtually every major television honor, including 58 Emmy Awards. In honor of the series' 25th anniversary season, Mr. Venza was awarded the primetime Emmy Award, the New York Emmy chapter's Silver Circle Award, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Ralph Lowell Award. Mr. Venza also received a Personal Peabody Award.

In 1997, Mr. Venza became Thirteen/WNET's director of culture & arts programs; the department's co-productions for PBS include Sir Richard Eyre's six-part history of the English-language theater, Changing Stages (2001). In October 2000, Mr. Venza launched the new theater showcase Stage on Screen with the live telecast of The Man Who Came to Dinner from the Roundabout Theatre in New York City. Mr. Venza retired in January of 2005 after the production and telecast of Broadway: The American Musical, the 2004, six-part chronicle of American musical theater, which won two Emmy awards.

Panel on Museums and Visual Arts

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

Robert Frankel has been the director of museums and visual arts at the NEA since 2002. A museum professional with more than 30 years experience working as an educator, curator, and administrator, Mr. Frankel began his career in the Education Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He served as assistant director of the Phoenix Art Museum and as director of the Delaware Art Museum, the Center for the Fine Arts in Miami, Florida, and the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia before moving to Santa Barbara. During his tenure at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Mr. Frankel oversaw a steady growth in attendance and membership, the construction of an addition to the building, an extensive exhibition and education program, and an increase to the collection of approximately 4,000 objects.

The varied exhibitions organized under Mr. Frankel's supervision include the work of Nam June Paik, Carrie Mae Weems, Robert Henri, Louise Nevelson, Beatrice Wood, and Pablo Picasso, as well as the presentation of works from the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest and the Vatican Library.

GUEST SPEAKER

Mimi Gardner Gates joined the Seattle Art Museum as director in May 1994. She began her career at the Yale University Art Gallery in 1975, serving in curatorial positions in the Asian art department through 1987 and as director from 1987 to early 1994. Under her direction, the Yale University Art Gallery dramatically expanded its collections and added a department of European and Contemporary art. At Yale, Gates helped organize numerous Chinese art exhibitions, and contributed to several publications including Bones of Jade, Soul of Ice: The Flowering Plum in Chinese Art (1985), The Jade Studio, and The Communion of Scholars: Chinese Art at Yale (1981).

At the Seattle Art Museum she co-curated the exhibition and co-authored the publication entitled Porcelain Stories, From China to Europe (2000) and worked with curator Jay Xu to organize the groundbreaking exhibition Ancient Sichuan: Treasures from a Lost Civilization (2001). Ms. Gates has led the Seattle Art Museum forward with ambitious exhibitions and capital projects, including the establishment of a conservation studio, renovations to the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park, creation of the Olympic Sculpture Park, and plans for an expansion that will triple the downtown museum's size.

Panel on Music

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

Wayne S. Brown is the director of music and opera for the National Endowment for the Arts, a post he has held since 1997. Prior to his affiliation with the Arts Endowment, Mr. Brown served as producer of music programs for the Cultural Olympiad in Atlanta, Georgia, where he managed music events associated with the 1996 Olympic Games.

Mr. Brown was the executive director of The Louisville Orchestra and a founding member of the Magic in Music Advisory Committee for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. He has served on advisory boards for the Mellon and Ford Foundations, is a former vice chairman of the American Symphony Orchestra League, and served as a member of the American Arts Alliance Board.

He began his role with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as an administrative manager, and subsequently was named an assistant manager. In 1979, Mr. Brown was instrumental in bringing about the first Classical Roots Concert in Detroit, an initiative that is now being celebrated by several communities throughout the nation.

GUEST SPEAKER

Henry Fogel is president and CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL). He chaired the board of ASOL from 2001-2003 and served a previous ten-year term as a league trustee. From 1985-2003, Mr. Fogel was president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is a member of the Illinois Arts Alliance, which he has served as both president and chairman. He is a member of the Board of Trustees for WTTW-Channel 11 in Chicago, the Board of Overseers of the Curtis Institute, the Executive Committee of the Avery Fisher Artists Program, the Board of the College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, and the Honorary Board of the Institute for the Study of Black Music at Columbia College.

He teaches a course in orchestral studies at Roosevelt University's College of Performing Arts, and has judged conducting competitions in New York, Helsinski, and Tokyo. Mr. Fogel is a record reviewer for Fanfare magazine, has contributed to Contemporary Composers and The Harvard Dictionary of Music, and writes a column for Auditorium, the leading music magazine in South Korea. In addition, he produces radio programs for Chicago's WFMT, and has acted as producer and broadcast host for more than 100 radiothons for 26 different orchestras. Mr. Fogel served as executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra from 1981-1985, and from 1963-1978 as vice president and program director of WONO radio in Syracuse, New York.

Panel on Opera

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

Wayne S. Brown is the director of music and opera for the National Endowment for the Arts, a post he has held since 1997. Prior to his affiliation with the NEA, Mr. Brown served as producer of music programs for the Cultural Olympiad in Atlanta, Georgia, where he managed music events associated with the 1996 Olympic Games.

He began his work with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as an administrative manager, and subsequently was named an assistant manager. In 1979, Mr. Brown was instrumental in bringing about the first Classical Roots Concert in Detroit, an initiative that is now being celebrated by several communities throughout the nation.

GUEST SPEAKER

Marc A. Scorca joined OPERA America in 1990 as president and CEO. Under his leadership, OPERA America administered two landmark funding initiatives in support of the development of North American operas and opera audiences that led to the establishment of a permanent endowment, The Opera Fund. At the same time, Mr. Scorca has supervised the introduction and expansion of numerous core programs. Since 1990, the OPERA America membership has grown from 100 opera companies to nearly 3,000 organizations and individuals. Affiliated offices have been established in Toronto (Opera.ca) and Brussels (Opera Europa). Through OPERA America Online, educational resources and biweekly news bulletins reach 13,000 subscribers.

Mr. Scorca has led strategic planning retreats for opera companies and other cultural institutions across the country, and he has participated on panels for federal, state, and local funding agencies as well as for numerous private foundations, and serves on numerous boards and advisory committees. He appears frequently in the media on a variety of cultural issues. A strong advocate of collaboration, Mr. Scorca coordinates several cross-disciplinary projects, including the Performing Arts Research Coalition and National Performing Arts Convention.

Panel on Philanthropy

MODERATOR

Felicia Knight has been director of communications for the National Endowment for the Arts since March 2003. Before coming to the NEA, Ms. Knight worked on Capitol Hill where she was communications director for U.S. Senator Susan M. Collins (R-ME) and led communications for the senator's 2002 re-election campaign. Prior to joining Senator Collins's office, Ms. Knight worked with WGME-TV, a CBS/CNN affiliate in Portland, Maine. From June 1988 to December 1998 she was the anchor/senior political reporter, overseeing the station's political coverage and moderating all political debates. Ms. Knight was also analyst/arts reporter at the station and received a special commendation from the Maine Arts Commission for raising the public profile of the arts in the state.

She has received awards and honors from the Maine and New Hampshire Associations of Broadcasters, the National Association of Television Programming Executives, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences New England Chapter, and the Museum of Broadcasting in New York City, among others.

SPEAKERS

As senior director for the Paul G. Allen Foundations, Susan Coliton manages six family foundations which support the arts, music, health and human services, forest protection, medical research, and technology for learning. Prior to her tenure with the Allen Foundations, she served as the director of the San Francisco Cultural Facilities Fund Program, which provides technical assistance, grants, and loans to cultural organizations conducting facility projects. She has also been a visual arts consultant for the Gap, Inc. Foundation, a visual arts program specialist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and director of the Aperture Foundation in New York. A trustee of San Francisco CameraWork and Los Angeles Side Street Projects, she has served on review panels for the Corporate Council on the Arts in Seattle, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Nevada State Council on the Arts.

As executive director of Mid-America Arts Alliance, Mary Kennedy McCabe leads the organization, overseeing a 30-member staff and cultivating strong relationships with Mid-America's board, state arts organizations, and funders. Ms. McCabe became executive director in 2002, after serving as director of programs, director of visual arts and humanities, and curator of exhibitions. Prior to joining Mid-America in 1989, Ms. McCabe was assistant director of the Kansas Arts Commission (1988-1989), where she managed major grants programs, the rural arts program, and the artist fellowship and professional development programs. She also served as curator of a private photography collection in Beverly Hills, California; a research assistant at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; and a photo-history instructor at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth.

Panel on Presenting

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

Mario Garcia Durham joined the NEA as director of presenting and multidisciplinary programs in June 2004. Since April, he has been the acting director of theater and musical theater. Prior to coming to the NEA, Mr. Durham was founder and executive director of Yerba Buena Arts & Events in San Francisco, California. As executive director, Mr. Durham produced the annual Yerba Buena Gardens Festival that featured more than 150 free presentations per year and attracted a diverse audience of more than 100,000 people.

Mr. Durham served as Yerba Buena Arts & Events assistant artistic director from 1992–1996, performing arts manager from 1996–-1997, and performing arts curator from 1997–2000. He was a member of the executive committee of the board of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and on the board of the American Arts Alliance. In San Francisco he served on the boards of Galeria de la Raza, Dance Art, Inc., and People In Plazas Concerts.

GUEST SPEAKER

Stephanie Hughley has been the executive producer of the National Black Arts Festival since 1999. From 1987–1992, she served as founding artistic director of the festival where she developed the artistic content for each festival incorporating eight artistic disciplines. Ms. Hughly was the theatre and dance producer for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games Cultural Olympiad.

Prior to her move to Atlanta, she was the general manager of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City, where she mounted 12 original productions as well as four national and international tours. From 1995–1999, she was vice president for programming at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Earlier in her career, Ms. Hughly was general manager and company manager for a number of Broadway shows including Ain't Misbehavin' and Bubbling Brown Sugar. She was also a professional dancer performing with Dance Theater of Boston and with the African/Caribbean company and ballet company of Boston's National Center of Afro-American Artists at the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts.

Panel on the NEA’s report Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

Mark Bauerlein was director of research at the NEA from June 2004 to September 2005. He is currently a professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, a position he held prior to coming to the NEA.

Mr. Bauerlein's work has spanned many fields. His first book was a study of Walt Whitman's poetry. From there he proceeded to 19th-century American philosophy, mainly Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce, and to a second book, The Pragmatic Mind: Explorations in the Psychology of Belief. Other books include a general study of literary criticism, a historical account of the 1906 Atlanta riots, and two co-authored volumes, one an encyclopedic chronicle of civil rights for African Americans and the other a handbook of literary terms. He has also published essays and reviews in the Wall Street Journal, Times Literary Supplement (London), The Weekly Standard, Yale Review, Partisan Review, and many scholarly journals.

Panel on Theater

NEA DISCIPLINE DIRECTOR

Mr. Durham served as Yerba Buena Arts & Events assistant artistic director from 1992 to 1996, performing arts manager from 1996 to 1997, and performing arts curator from 1997 to 2000. He was a member of the executive committee of the board of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and on the board of the American Arts Alliance. In San Francisco he served on the boards of Galeria de la Raza, Dance Art, Inc., and People In Plazas Concerts.

GUEST SPEAKER

Goodman Theatre Executive Director Roche Edward Schulfer is celebrating his 25th season in his current position. During that time, he has supervised over 300 productions and over 100 world or American premieres. Mr. Schulfer inaugurated the Goodman's annual production of A Christmas Carol, which has become a Chicago holiday tradition for the past 27 seasons. During his tenure, the Goodman has received numerous awards for excellence, including Tony Awards for Death of a Salesman, Long Day's Journey Into Night and for Outstanding Regional Theater. In 2003, Time Magazine named the Goodman Theatre the Best Regional Theater in the U.S. Mr. Schulfer is a founder and current chairman of the League of Chicago Theatres, and has served on grant panels for the NEA, the Illinois Arts Council and the Department of Cultural Affairs. He currently teaches at the De Paul Theatre School. Mr. Schulfer is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and was the chairman of its cultural arts commission.

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