Syracuse University and SUNY Oswego are also in the arts presenting
business. While the programs use different approaches to infuse the arts
into campus life, each is led by a dynamic arts presenter: Carole
Brzozowski at Syracuse and Mary Avrakotos at Oswego.
Avrakotos has been coordinator of ARTSwego for the past 10 years.
Brzozowski was appointed SU’s arts presenter in 2008. Avrakotos is more
traditional in her approach, producing a series of events and pushing
the arts into the curriculum. Brzozowski has been focused on bringing
artists to campus who often commit to short residencies and workshops
that engage students in the creative process. “My job is to find artists
who are new to Syracuse and who are interesting not just to me but also
to a wide variety of people,” Brzozowski says.
Avrakotos has her roots in business, combining her love of the arts
with her management skills. With a degree in anthropology from New York
University, Avrakotos got her first job in the National Museum of
African Art in Washington D.C., and then in the development office of
the Textile Museum.
After moving with her husband to Oswego, she became the founding
director of Harborfest, the wildly popular summer event. Under her
five-year leadership, Harborfest grew from a seedling to 300,000
visitors. But the job was so time-consuming that Avrakotos eventually
decided to step down. She then established her own public relations and
events planning firm with a friend but after a few years decided the
profits did not match the effort involved. Then she came to work at SUNY
Oswego.
“Marketing and public relations are kind of second nature to me,”
Avrakotos says. “I know how to market things.” She has actively applied
her marketing skills to the job of arts presenter. At the start of the
school year, she had already designed the posters, prepared the
postcards, sent out e-mails and readied an advertising campaign for her
events.
The 2010-2011 series offers great variety, embracing tenor Nicholas
Phan, the Quartet of Happiness, musicians from the Syracuse Symphony
Orchestra, the Israeli Aviv Quartet, and the Gallim Dance group. She
began the school year with a free performance by the renowned
step-dancing group Step Afrika.
Avrakotos has a strong sense of mission. “Creativity is very
important and it’s a core value,” she says. “It is not just important
for people in art, but it’s also important if you’re in mathematics, or
engineering, or business. What students learn from engaging in the arts
goes well beyond the arts.”
Avrakotos believes she has the responsibility to make sure the
university is cultivating adults who are “imaginative in their approach
to their lives and their work.”
Overcoming Challenges
Brzozowski’s training is both artistic and academic. “I grew up
knowing I had a beautiful voice and I could sing,” she says. From the
stage as a performer, interacting with audiences, she witnessed the
impact of the arts on people. “When I sing in church or on stage, I can
look out and see the moment something’s changed.”
Her long career as a staff member at the College of Visual and
Performing Arts at SU culminated in an eight-year term as dean. With the
blessing of SU Chancellor Nancy Cantor, she chose to switch hats and
become the university’s first arts presenter. In that role she has the
same goal as a singer: create life-changing encounters for students with
great art and artists. “To bring to campus artists who need support and
who do really incredible work, that’s just as exciting for me as
popping a high C in public.”
Of all the performances Avrakotos has presented, the oratorio in celebration of the life and work of Charles Darwin, titled The Origin,
was perhaps most significant. The project started in 2004 when the
Grammy Award-winning composer Richard Einhorn presented the multimedia
production “Voices of Light: The Passion of Joan of Arc” at SUNY Oswego
and talked to Avrakotos about his idea to write a piece on Darwin’s
life. Avrakotos raised the funds and brought the production to fruition.
The piece was presented in 2009 in the 500-seat Waterman Theatre.
Eighty of the 200 performers were students at SUNY Oswego.
The year 2009 also proved to be a successful one for Brzozowski. She
brought to campus Shen Wei, the principal choreographer of the Beijing
Olympics who was recognized as “one of the great artists of our time” by
The Washington Post. In a lengthy residency Shen Wei developed and then presented a triptych entitled Re- in the Landmark Theatre. All SU freshmen and many faculty members attended, and much classroom discussion followed.
In addition to Shen Wei’s art, Brzozowski believes he introduced the
subject of cultural diplomacy to the campus dialogue. Indeed, she says,
people talked about Shen Wei for the whole year. “I would be in a
grocery store and people would say: ‘You’re the one who brought Shen
Wei, thank you!’ I never saw anything like that,” Brzozowski recalls.
In the 2010-2011 season, students at SU will benefit from a new
partnership with the SSO. Music Director Daniel Hege has been hired as
an adjunct professor by the School of Music. Brzozowski has also
arranged for free concerts by the SSO on campus. “My role in the
partnership,” Brzozowski says, “will be working with Daniel and faculty
across the campus to find programming that meets the needs of the
classroom.”
While their work is both vital and impressive, it didn’t come easily.
At Oswego, Avrakotos has a budget provided by the Student Arts Fee of
$135,000. She raises another $100,000 or so through grants, box office
revenue, school participation fees and a 4 percent draw from a
quasi-endowment operated through the Oswego College Foundation. The
largest grant she has ever received is $95,000 from the New York State
Music Fund for The Origin. Most grants are in the range of $4,000.
Venue is another challenge. The largest auditorium at Oswego is the
Waterman Theater with 500 seats. “Say you’re trying to bring in Yo-Yo
Ma,” Avrakotos says. “That would be very difficult to present because
you can only sell 500 seats. If you’re talking about trying to sell
enough tickets to offset the cost to bring somebody like that, it’s not
possible with 500 seats.”
Moreover, she doesn’t always get to use the Waterman. “I can only
book it after the theatre department and the music department,” she
explains.
Brzozowski faces challenges, too. The budget she receives from the
chancellor is only enough to support the day-to-day operations of her
office. For every project she needs to find separate funding. Further,
she has no dedicated venue of her own, and no prospect for one in the
near term. As a result, she has had to make her itinerant status into a
virtue. “It’s really forced me and other people to look at the whole
landscape and use pockets of the city and interesting boutique spaces in
ways you wouldn’t have to do if we had the perfect auditorium,” she
says.
She is particularly excited about an event for this coming year that
capitalizes on the very absence of a dedicated performance space. “I
can’t announce it yet, but I’ll tell you that it’ll happen in 10 to 12
different venues around the city over the course of a year.” Some of the
venues will be on campus, but the real surprise will come when
audiences see some of the performances in unexpected places.
Avrakotos tries to engage the entire campus through two particular
initiatives. One is “Arts Across the Curriculum.” The college adopts an
interdisciplinary artistic theme every other year that encourages the
engagement of all departments on campus.
The other is “Telling Tales: The Arts and Discovery.” Supported by a
generous planning grant from the Association of Performing Arts
Presenters, this two-year project intends to engage all SUNY Oswego
students and faculty members in the process of building a creative
campus. Five resident artists, including the Bessie Award-winning
writer, composer, singer, and performer Cynthia Hopkins and Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, will encourage students to
explore the act of telling tales
Avrakotos and Brzozowski have both served on the board of the
Cultural Resources Council and have become friends. They constantly
compare notes. Both express a willingness to combine efforts to extend
their reach. “Mary and I would be very interested in attempting a
large-scale project to bring someone to our schools that neither alone
can bring,” Brzozowski says. “I don’t know who that would be—maybe U2!”
Xueying Wu earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the Beijing
Foreign Studies University. She is interested in animation and comics
as an art form.
