“The Juilliard School reached outside academia for its next leader: It announced on Wednesday that it had selected Damian Woetzel, the former New York City Ballet star, to be its seventh president,” writes Michael Cooper in Wednesday’s (5/10) New York Times. “Mr. Woetzel, who now directs the Aspen Institute Arts Program and the Vail International Dance Festival, has never worked in academic administration…. The Juilliard board of trustees was impressed, said Bruce Kovner, its chairman, by both his artistic background, and his post-ballet career: He has injected new life into the Vail festival, earned a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, taught as a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School, and served on President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, where he worked to bring arts to public schools. The appointment … is to take effect in 2018… [Woetzel] studied dance as a teenager in the Juilliard building…. ‘I walked into Juilliard,’ he recalled of his first class there, ‘and you heard music in the halls, and it was this kind of magical place.’ … Mr. Woetzel will become president-designate at Juilliard next school year, giving him the chance to work with its outgoing president, Joseph W. Polisi.”
Posted May 10, 2017
