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February 23, 2005
  Articles on this page: • Follow the leader
Follow the leader Last year, 2004, was a milestone year for the arts in terms of changes in leadership in five of the area's most prominent arts organizations. The choice of James Levine to succeed Seiji Ozawa as music director of the Boston Symphony was announced in 2001. But a genuine milestone was reached on Oct. 22, 2004, when Levine, who also is music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, mounted the podium at Symphony Hall in Boston for the first time as the BSO's music director in a performance of Mahler’s massive Symphony No. 8 -- the "Symphony of a Thousand." Levine and the orchestra will reprise that work when the maestro makes his Tanglewood debut this summer on July 8. Rees joins WTF Gathering almost as much public attention was the announcement in November that actor-director Roger Rees had been named artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The appointment ended a yearlong search to replace festival producer Michael Ritchie, who left Williamstown at the end of the festival's 50th anniversary season in August to take over as artistic director of Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. This not only will be Rees' first season at the helm of the Tony Award-winning festival, it will be WTF’s first season in the spanking new '62 Center for Theater and Dance at Williams College.
At the time of his appointment, the 60-year-old Rees characterized WTF as one of this country's great theaters. "Prominent for me is the thought that ever since 9/11 art is important," Rees told the Berkshire Eagle in a Nov. 4 interview. "Theater, being in a room, telling stories to people -- I want us to do that as eloquently as we can.” Guiding Shakespeare & Co. Change also was in the wind at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, which, for the first time in its nearly 30-year-history, hired a full-time executive director. He's Mark Jones and he comes to Shakespeare & Company after having served 12 years as executive director and producer of José Limon Dance Foundation in New York. He also spent four years as director of planning and development for Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y., and nine years as associate producing director for the late Lyn Austin’s Music-Theatre Group, a New York-based organization that produced new work in Stockbridge in the summer until the late 1990s. The 56-year-old Jones, who officially started Aug. 3, has been charged with completely reorganizing and overseeing Shakespeare & Company's structure and operations. "I'm here to facilitate, guide, focus issues and make the tough decisions that need to be made," Jones told the Eagle on June 24. "Everything is being looked at," he said, "buildings, governance, staffing, how we report our financial figures and especially this property [70 Kemble St.] and how it is being used which, in turn, affects the artistic side. "I don't want to meddle in the artistic product, but I do need to know enough about it so I can point out possibilities to [founding artistic director] Tina [Packer]. My job is to find alternatives and never paint us into a corner." 2004 began with three Berkshire County art museums -- Williams College Museum of Art, Chesterwood and Berkshire Museum -- and Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield needing to fill their respective top post. By the end of the year, Berkshire Museum and Hancock had succeeded. Shaker Village welcomes Spear Hancock Shaker Village named Ellen Spear, a veteran manager of nonprofit organizations, to succeed Lawrence J. Yerdon as president and executive director. Yerdon left in September to become president of Strawbery Banke, a museum in Portsmouth, N.H., on the site of one of the earliest English settlements in New England.
Her husband, Brad, is the voice of WAMC-FM's Friday and Saturday night broadcasts from Tanglewood and she was, at one time, program director for WGBH-FM in Boston. In a Nov. 11 article announcing her appointment, Spear told the Berkshire Eagle that increasing the village's endowment would be among her highest priorities. She also said she was looking forward to an extensive series of collaborations with other area cultural organizations. "Hancock Shaker Village is a special place," she told the Eagle. "Its settings, buildings, collections and programs have important stories to tell about the American search for utopia and the Shaker influence on how we think about design, technology, ethics, justice and our relationship to the environment.” A 'happy place' The Berkshire Museum ended a more-than-yearlong search for a replacement for Ann Mintz, who resigned in November 2003, by hiring Stuart A. Chase, director of membership and community affairs at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, as its new director. Chase, who lives in Lanesboro with his wife and daughter, had been with the Clark nearly two years. Before he came to the Clark, Chase was executive director of the Rockwell Museum of Western Art in Corning, N.Y. and director of the Raynham Hall Museum in Oyster Bay, N.Y.
He said he would like the museum to become "the Berkshires' premiere cultural attraction, [a place] that rises above the surface of the water and sparkles."  RETURN TO TOP |
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