In her concluding address last fall as the Center’s Visiting Scholar, Kristy Edmunds discussed what she observed as Philadelphia’s interest in collaboration and the significance of meaningful, interdisciplinary engagement among arts and cultural organizations. In Philadelphia and beyond, Edmunds has found that there exists “a voracious appetite to collide in service to something better than trying to uphold an infrastructure solely on one’s own,” she said.
The executive and artistic director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Edmunds served as a “catalyst in residence” for 18 months, through a series of visits and conversations with Center staff, constituents, and other field leaders. Watch Edmunds discuss why it is important for an arts ecology to extend beyond the local.>>
Edmunds is the executive and artistic director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, and served as the Center’s first Visiting Scholar. She is recognized for innovation and depth in the presentation of works by contemporary artists, with a particular emphasis on contemporary performing arts. She began serving as artistic and executive director of the UCLA Live performance series in 2011, and has worked as the consulting artistic director for the newly formed Park Avenue Armory in New York since 2009. Edmunds was the Center’s Pew Fellowships panel chair in 2012 and 2013. This farewell address took place at the Center on October 2, 2015.
