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Center
Announces New Leadership CONTACT: KEITH DONOHUE 202.783.5277 February 5, 2002, Washington, D.C. - The Center for Arts and Culture announced today its appointment of Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, former director of the White House Millennium Council, as Center President and Chief Executive Officer. The Center also announced that Bill Ivey, Branscomb Scholar at Vanderbilt University and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, will join the Center as its Senior Fellow in February, 2002. Margaret J. Wyszomirski, Professor of Public Policy and Art Education at Ohio State University, will be named Senior Fellow in 2003. Center Board Chair Frank Hodsoll, former Reagan Administration National Endowment for the Arts Chairman, said, "We are very fortunate to have Ellen McCulloch-Lovell lead the Center in the period ahead. She brings knowledge, experience, wisdom, and vision. Ellen combines uniquely a love of the arts and humanities with the balance, common sense, and energy to get things done that make a difference. I remember with great pleasure working with her when she was Director of the Vermont Arts Council, the only private state arts council in the nation, and then appreciating her fine work with the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Her deep commitment to the preservation of America's culture, as demonstrated in her leadership of President Clinton's Millennium Council and of the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project, has made a real difference." Ellen McCulloch-Lovell will continue to direct the Veterans History Project at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, a national project to collect oral histories and documents from veterans and civilians who served in war time. Lovell said, "Every day, policy makers - in both public and private sectors - make critical decisions that either encourage or stifle the development of the nation's cultural life. As an independent organization, the Center promotes examination and provokes discussion about the policies that affect our future creativity, productivity, and the enjoyment of artistic and scholarly work. I am eager to shine a light on such issues as copyright as cultural policy; preservation of America's cultural resources; and globalization, cultural diplomacy, and cultural conflict." Board Chair Hodsoll added, "We are also fortunate to have Bill Ivey and Margaret Wyszomirski joining us as senior fellows. Bill brings the strength of his national perspective and his deep knowledge of both the not-for-profit and commercial worlds of culture. He served with distinction as chair of our folk arts panel when I was at the Endowment and developed real bi-partisan support for the NEA when he was Chair during the Clinton Administration. Margaret Wyszomirski is one of the pioneers of the field of cultural policy and has a national and international reputation. She particularly distinguished herself as staff director of the Independent Commission on the NEA during the first Bush Administration and has proved an invaluable resource in two American Assemblies I have had the privilege of co-chairing." The Center for Arts and Culture was founded in 1994 in Washington, D.C. as an independent think tank to broaden and deepen the national conversation on culture. Its mission is to enlarge the public vision of the centrality of the arts and culture in everyday life. It functions as a commons for the discussion of cultural issues. Through its programs in research, publishing, field building, and convening, the Center adds new voices, perspectives, and knowledge, to inform public and private decision-making that affect the arts and culture. The Center for Arts and Culture's Art, Culture, and the National Agenda project recently published 10 essays in 2001 on topics such as copyright as cultural policy; preserving our heritage; strengthening communities through culture; globalization and cultural diplomacy; and creativity, culture, education, and the workforce. It has through the New Press published two books: a cultural policy reader entitled The Politics of Culture (2000) and a set of essays on the relation of religion and the arts in the United States entitled Crossroads: Art and Religion (2001). Through its public listserv at www.culturalpolicy.org, the Center provides the latest news on arts and culture as well as a cultural commons for exchanging ideas, research, and information among policy makers and professionals in the cultural community. The Center also regularly conducts public discussions on a variety of cultural topics. The Center began its work by establishing the Cultural Policy Network, a confederation of scholars working on cultural policy research at 28 colleges and universities. Frank Hodsoll currently chairs the Center's Board of Directors. Mr. Hodsoll heads his own consulting firm in the field of government management and policy and is currently co-chair of The American Assembly on Art, Technology, and Intellectual Property. Vice-Chair of the Center is Marcia Sharp, CEO of Millennium Communications Group, a strategy firm in Andover, MA, serving the philanthropic sector, and a fellow of the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. The Treasurer is James Fitzpatrick, a partner in the law firm of Arnold and Porter in Washington, D.C. and an advisor to numerous U.S. and international arts organizations. Ellen McCulloch-Lovell is the former director of the White House Millennium Council under President and Mrs. Clinton. Ms. Lovell also served as director of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities from 1994 to 1997. The committee advised the president and first lady on public and private support for cultural life in the U. S. and published the widely recognized study, Creative America. Prior to joining the Clinton administration, she served as chief of staff to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont for 10 years. She began her career at the Vermont Council on the Arts, the state arts agency, which she led for eight years, creating such programs as Artists-in-the-Schools, Touring Aid, and the Governor's Institute for the Arts. Bill Ivey will become Senior Fellow in February 2002. He is the Branscomb Scholar at Vanderbilt University, where he will create a new policy center. He was appointed Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts by President Clinton, and served from 1998-2001, where he initiated the Challenge America program to increase public access to the arts in America, and gained an increase in appropriations to the agency. Before coming to the arts endowment, Ivey directed the Country Music Hall of Fame for 25 years. He was twice chairman of the board of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the organization that produces the Grammy Awards. He also chaired the grants panel for the NEA's Folk Arts program. Ivey is a trained folklorist, college professor, and writer. Margaret Jane Wyszomirski will be named Senior Fellow in 2003; she is director of the graduate program in Arts Policy and Administration at the Ohio State University and is a professor in both the Department of Art Education and the School of Public Policy and Management. In 1990, she served as staff director for the Independent Commission on the National Endowment for the Arts, and from 1991 through 1993, she was the director of the Office of Policy Planning, Research and Budget at the National Endowment for the Arts. Co-chair of the Steering Committee for the 1997 American Assembly project on "the arts and the public purpose," she is part of the leadership team for its current project on "the arts, technology and intellectual property." She has edited/co-edited and contributed to six books including The Public Life of the Arts in America. #
Center for Arts & Culture
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