Ms Mary Lou Aleskie, Director, Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College

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Howard L. Gilman ’44 Director of the Hopkins Center for the Arts

 

Aleskie assumed her role at Dartmouth College in April 2017. She is charged with leading the advancement of the Hopkins Center and arts and creativity at Dartmouth.  She came to Dartmouth from New Haven, Conn., where, since 2005, she was the director of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. As director, she produced critically acclaimed performances that fostered local as well as international engagement. Under Aleskie’s leadership, the 15-day series of performing arts, lectures, and public conversations was cited by the National Endowment for the Arts as one of the top five arts presentations in the nation. It is considered the largest international multi-disciplinary festival in New England, and one of the only festivals in North America that blend performances from around the world with dialogues among leading thinkers.

 

From 2002-05, Aleskie served as President and CEO of La Jolla Music Society, San Diego’s premier presenter of world-renowned orchestras, dance companies, and soloists and producer of the award-winning chamber music festival, La Jolla SummerFest. For the decade prior Aleskie was Executive Director of Da Camera of Houston, the ensemble music presenter and producer in residence at the world renowned Menil Collection.

 

Aleskie is an internationally known advocate for the power of the arts to bring people together, not only within local communities, but around the globe. She is chair of the board of the International Society for the Performing Arts, a New York-based global association for performing arts leaders that has 500 members from 60 countries. She was also recently a speaker at the China Shanghai International Arts Festival Forum focused on the UNESCO Convention on Promoting and Preserving Diversity of Cultural Expression where her paper, “From The Many, One: A Festival Of Worlds” was published and presented, and she serves on the Arts Advisory Committee of the Yale-China Association. Appointed by the Connecticut State Senate Majority Leader, she served on the State’s Planning Commission for Higher Education and is an Associate Fellow of Branford College at Yale University and was a lecturer in theater management at the Yale School of Drama.