A Creative Conversation: “How Do We Create a Future for the Arts Through Education?”

(L-R) Nathan Sensel, Tim Lord, Katherine Gressel, Catherine Fukushima

WHEN: Monday March 1, 2010
WHERE: WNYC’s Jerome L. Greene Space, 44 Charlton Street, Manhattan

When we talk about the challenges of sustaining our arts institutions and a place for the arts in our cultural landscape, we regularly return to the importance of education–in terms of creating new audiences, fostering artistic development, and training new leaders in the field. At the beginning of a new decade we asked which topics today will become the backbone of arts education in the future.  This conversation featured three NYC leaders in arts education challenged to consider ‘hot topics’ in the field of arts education.

Listen to the podcast:


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See images from the event here.

Our guests included:
Catherine Fukushima, Independent Consultant: Arts, Culture, Arts Ed
Katherine Gressel, Freelance Artist & Consultant, Public / Community Art
Tim Lord, Co-Executive Director, DreamYard Project
Nathan Sensel (Moderator), Associate Educator, Museum of Modern Art

More info on the panel discussion and panelists …

Some questions we asked were:

What will a successful arts education initiative in 2020 look like? What is the role of digital media in the future of learning strategies and audience engagement? How can local community engagement through the arts result in a deeper national investment in the arts? How will funding priorities – public and private – in arts education continue to shift? When do we invest in general arts appreciation and when do we focus on audience development for a specific organization? How will the increasing focus on assessment and evaluation change the way we learn about and participate in the arts?

Panelist bios:

Catherine Fukushima is both an experienced arts administrator with a background developing programs for two major art museums; and a strategic grantmaker, having managed philanthropic investments in the arts across the county for the New York-based Wallace Foundation.  As a senior program officer for Wallace, Catherine was responsible for advancing two initiatives: the Wallace Excellence Awards that sought to build participation in the arts, and Arts for Young People that helps cities make systemic improvements to enable them to provide high quality arts education on a more equitable basis.

Prior to joining Wallace, Catherine was a museum educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art where she oversaw programs and publications for K-12 teachers. Before joining the Met, she was Manager of School, Youth and Family Programs at the Brooklyn Museum. She began her museum career at the American Folk Art Museum.

Ms. Fukushima has served on the board of the Museum Association of New York. She has been an active member of the Development Committee of the National Art Education Association’s Museum Education Division. Additionally, she served for several years as a Steering Committee member and then chair of the New York City Museum Educator’s Roundtable. From 2000 to 2006 she was an adjunct professor in the Museum Professions program at Seton Hall University. Ms. Fukushima holds a B.A. in Art History from Connecticut College and an M.A. from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Tim Lord co-founded DreamYard in 1994 with Jason Duchin. He is a graduate of Brown University, from which he received a B.A. in Political Science.  Tim also received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) in San Francisco, California. He was a member of the acting company at A.C.T. before moving to New York City.  Since co-founding DreamYard in 1994, Mr. Lord has taught in public schools, in after school programs and in social service organizations.

Tim was a 1993 echoing green fellow with his Co-Director, Jason Duchin.  Tim has spoken on education reform panels at the Harvard Business School and for echoing green, serves on New York City Chancellor Joel Klein’s Task Force on Quality Arts Education and has served on funding panels for the New York State Council on the Arts and the Center for Arts Education.  DreamYard recently received a three-year research grant from the Ford Foundation to learn from and measure best practices in its Bronx Arts Learning Community schools.

Katherine Gressel holds a B.A. in Art from Yale and M.A. in Arts Administration from Teachers College/Columbia, and has worked in diverse arts education settings as both a teaching artist and arts administrator.  Katherine currently serves as Program Manager for the young nonprofit Arts to Grow, planning and implementing visual and performing arts education programs in out-of-school-time settings throughout NYC and northern NJ.

Prior to ATG, Katherine worked as Director of Partnerships and Development at the Urban Assembly School of Music and Art (UAMA), a small arts-based public high school. At UAMA, she served as the primary liaison to partners in the arts and business communities, coordinating special events and spearheading UAMA’s first major public relations and fundraising campaign as well as new after-school and internship programs.

Katherine is also a founding board member and regular volunteer at Starting Artists, Inc., a Brooklyn-based nonprofit training teens in media arts and entrepreneurship.  She has worked as a teaching artist and muralist with Groundswell Community Mural Project, San Francisco’s Precita Eyes Muralists, the Brooklyn Museum, CityKids Foundation, Community-Word Project, and Hester Street Collaborative, among other organizations. Most recently, she was awarded for a 4-week travel grant through CEC Artslink to lead collaborative public art projects in Krasnoyarsk and St. Petersburg, Russia.

Her scholarly writing on socially-engaged collaborative art has been presented in the CUNY Graduate Center’s online journal and in the 2007 Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts conference at NYU, and she is also a contributing editor and writer to the recent art publication Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo.

In Fall 2009, Katherine founded Brooklyn Utopias?, an original exhibition and programming series inviting artists, youth, and community groups to respond to local environmental and social issues.  Katherine’s work can be viewed at www.katherinegressel.com

Nathan Sensel (Moderator) is Associate Educator for Teen Programs at the Museum of Modern Art, coordinating a leadership program that cultivates communication, community and awareness through the arts for the city’s youth. As the Assistant Director for ARTime, an independent arts and education organization, he is devoted to providing access and information about contemporary art and creates online content for www.ARTimeNY.com. He is also an artist who has had work shown in a group drawing exhibition at the Lexington Art League.

Thanks for a great event!
–The 3/1/10 CC Team (Stephanie Pereira, Lisa Lurie, Erin Eisenberg, & Selena Juneau-Vogel)