AAAE 2017

Does Curating Have a Role in the Arts Administration Curriculum?
Sandra Lang

Often so much emphasis is placed on acquiring business and technical skills in arts administration programs that the art form is overlooked. The arts manager should know his or her discipline, but to what degree should that be a part of the curriculum? In the visual arts field, knowledge of curatorial history, methods for interpreting exhibitions, and installation and display techniques are essential. Given the nature of arts organizations today, - how their cultural roles have changed, the importance of public engagement, the influence of technology and the impact of globalization, - understanding the variety of exhibition types and the process of organizing visual presentations is an important component for any emerging visual arts manager. Comprehension of the curatorial context behind an art exhibition, be it in a museum, gallery, biennial, art fair, or alternative space, is achieved through studying the theory and practice of making exhibitions and developing critical assessment skills. This presentation explores how the role of the curator can be addressed in the visual arts administration curriculum.

Bill T. Jones & The Creative Proposition
George Sampson

Artists in Residence programs are an important method by which students of Arts Administration at the University of Virginia advance this year’s conference theme of New Places, Spaces and Faces: Exploring Possibilities and Crossing Borders. I propose to lead a session that will illustrate UVA’s transdisciplinary approach to arts administration through a discussion and film screening of an extended artist residency with two-time TONY awardee and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, choreographer Bill T. Jones. The film is a 28-minute PBS-broadcast film by Kartemquin Films called The Creative Proposition. The film, unavailable online, tells the story of a week-long residency in 2008 which crossed the borders of UVA’s campus by assembling a company of 90 students and community members who joined the 10 professionals. At Bill’s request, the company was diverse by gender, race, age, dance experience and town/gown affiliation. Bill was thus able to try out choreographic ideas for what became his 2009 piece Fondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray, created for the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, commissioned by the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, Il. Kartemquin Films was part of the commission and the film is an inside look at the intense, 3-day creative process by which Bill and the troupe created 100 Migrations, a locally-staged re-creation of the Civil War in dance. In the Southern town of Charlottesville, Virginia, ten days after the election of Barack Obama as 44th President of the U.S., this was an incredibly powerful experience and the first half of the film captures it well. The film’s second half continues the story of UVA’s involvement with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company over three visits in 2011, when Bill and Company developed and rehearsed a subsequent work called Story/Time. A product of the vision of then Vice Provost for the Arts Beth Turner, these return visits illustrate how broader institutional goals/outcomes can grow from one residency. Outcomes included the engagement of a UVA music professor as composer for Story/Time, the power of Bill’s studio visits with architecture, engineering and art students, in dialogue with medical students & employees, with the Board of UVA’s Art Museum and elsewhere. The discussion session following the screening will align and extend the conference and the film’s mutual themes of crossing borders to explore possibilities and utilize new places, spaces and faces.