In her concluding address as The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage’s Visiting Scholar, Kristy Edmunds discussed the importance of providing a platform for national and international artists alongside local artists, while acting as a broker for artistic exchanges that allow us to “stretch ourselves” and be “open to the discovery of that which is ‘other,’” she said. “If a local system only talks to its local system, the currency of those ideas becomes…so hyperlocal that it’s difficult to penetrate any mobility outside of that,” she continued.
The executive and artistic director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Edmunds has served as a “catalyst in residence” over the last year and a half, through a series of visits and conversations with Center staff, constituents, and other field leaders.
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.
