Thursday, January 21, 1:00-4:30 p.m.
Navigating Uncharted Waters Without Losing Your Way in 2021

We begin a new year inspired by the hope of a COVID-19 vaccine, even as we continue to weather extreme pressures and uncertainty for the orchestras we lead. In the face of seemingly impossible dilemmas, how do we safeguard not only the financial viability of orchestras, but also the meaning and purpose of our work?

In our opening session, Diane Ragsdale, Director of Cultural Leadership, Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, and Sanjit Sethi, President, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, will share actionable frameworks for making strong, more holistic decisions that deliver on mission, uphold core values, and maintain fiscal responsibility. Jamie Bennett, the former Executive Director, ArtPlace America, will moderate this interactive conversation, which will include both plenary presentations and breakout discussions.

Panelists: Diane Ragsdale and Sanjit Sethi
Moderator: Jamie Bennett

Friday, January 22, 1:00-2:30 p.m.
The Leader’s Role in Advancing Racial Equity Work

At this moment of profound change, threat, and opportunity, your leadership could not be more crucial to your orchestra’s progress in advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Join us for a candid conversation with four orchestra executives who have engaged deeply in this work during this past year of COVID-19 and racial reckoning. Each will share the successes, setbacks, and learnings that have defined their orchestra’s journey so far. And together we will explore tactics for initiating and sustaining your own orchestra’s EDI work in the year ahead.

The executives include Linda Edelstein, Executive Director, Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra; Mieko Hatano, DMA, Executive Director, Oakland Symphony (CA); Blake-Anthony Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, Chicago Sinfonietta; and Matías Tarnopolsky, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Philadephia Orchestra Association. The panel will be moderated by Pratichi Shah, Founder and CEO, Flourish Talent Management Solutions LLC (Washington D.C.) and a League Board Member.

Panelists: Linda Edelstein, Mieko Hatano, Blake-Anthony Johnson, and Matías Tarnopolsky
Moderator: Pratichi Shah

Jamie Bennett

Former Executive Director, ArtPlace America

Jamie Bennett is former Executive Director of ArtPlace America, a ten-year fund that supports artists working as allies in equitable community development. ArtPlace has invested over $100 million in supporting projects in rural, suburban, tribal, and urban communities of all sizes across the United States, as well as in sharing knowledge from that work in ways that are useful – and actually used – by practitioners. ArtPlace convenes and connects people who are committed to this work in order to help build a strong and ongoing field of practice. Previously, Jamie worked at the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the Agnes Gund Foundation, Columbia University, The Museum of Modern Art, and the New York Philharmonic. He currently lives, works, worships, and plays in Brooklyn, NY, and has been sober since 2009.

Diane Ragsdale

Director of Cultural Leadership, Banff Center for Arts and Creativity

Diane Ragsdale is a speaker, writer, researcher, lecturer, and advisor on a range of arts and culture topics. She works with a number of institutions including, at the moment, as director and co-lead faculty of the Cultural Leadership Program at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity. In June 2020 she completed an appointment at The New School in Manhattan, where she successfully launched, built, and directed a one-of-a-kind MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship for performance-based artists and designed and launched a new graduate minor in Creative Community Development. She teaches an annual workshop series on Aesthetic Values in a Changed Cultural Context for Yale University’s Theater Management MFA. She previously worked as a program officer for theater and dance at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; was managing director of the contemporary performing arts center On the Boards, in Seattle; led a turnaround at the Festival at Sandpoint in Idaho; and worked for the Sundance and Seattle film festivals, as well as for Peter Gabriel’s music festival WOMAD USA and Seattle’s Bumbershoot. She began her arts career as a theater practitioner. She holds an MFA and is a doctoral candidate at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, where she lectured from 2011-2015 in the cultural economics program.

Sanjit Sethi

President, Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Sanjit Sethi has two decades of experience as an artist, curator and cultural leader. Sethi’s previous positions include Director of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University; Director of the Center for Art and Public Life, Barclay Simpson Professor, and Chair of Community Arts at the California College of the Arts; and Executive Director of the Santa Fe Art Institute. Additionally, Sethi has taught at the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Sethi received a BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, an MFA in Ceramics from University of Georgia, and an MS in Advanced Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sethi has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships, including a grant from the Robert Rauschenberg foundation, and a Fulbright fellowship in India.

As an artist and curator, Sethi’s work has spanned different media and geographies. Past works include the Kuni Wada Bakery Remembrance; Richmond Voting Stories; and the Gypsy Bridge project. Recent curatorial projects have included Spiked: The Unpublished Political Cartoons of Rob Rogers and the upcoming exhibition, 6.13.89 The Cancelling of the Mapplethorpe Exhibition. Additionally, Sethi is currently working on the Portland Hospice Potters Network and a body of paintings and drawings called the Delta Series.

Sanjit Sethi is the 19th President of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.