Resources
In a time when audiences for NGO arts in the United States are dwindling, artists and organizations are working diligently to build audiences for the future. These efforts are at their best challenging old models, embracing technology and changing the composition of arts audiences. The idea of “audience,” however, focuses attention on one particular kind of relationship. How do we encourage non-arts professionals to support and participate in the arts beyond attendance? Is this the responsibility of the organization or of the artist? What would be the benefits of cultivating non-attendance behavior? What are the obstacles the arts community must overcome? And how must we think differently if we are to move forward in this new millennium? Join Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Arts Program Director Ben Cameron as he shares the evolution and discoveries being made in building demand for NGO arts.
Ben Cameron- Program Director for the Arts, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
BEN CAMERON, is Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Previously, he served as the Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national service organization for not‐for‐profit theaters, from 1998. Between 1993 and 1998, he had been active in corporate philanthropy, first as senior program officer at the Dayton Hudson Foundation and subsequently as manager of community relations at Target Stores in Minneapolis, MN. From 1988 through 1992, he worked for the National Endowment for the Arts, serving as director of the theater program from 1990, a role he undertook after seven years of working in not‐for‐profit professional theaters around the country as a director and dramaturg. He has taught at Yale School of Drama, UNC‐Chapel Hill, and Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, and is currently a member of the adjunct faculty at Columbia University in addition to Yale. He received a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; an MFA in dramaturgy from Yale School of Drama in 1981; honorary Doctorates in Humane Letters from DePaul University in Chicago in 2001 and Goucher College in Baltimore in 2010; and in 2003 an honorary MFA in Acting from American Conservatory Theater. He appeared annually on the Metropolitan Opera Saturday afternoon quiz feature for fifteen seasons, lectured on theater on the Queen Mary 2, twice ridden a bicycle from Minneapolis to Chicago to raise money for AIDS, and is a member of the Tony Awards Nominating Committee.