President Obama Appoints NYU Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell as Vice Chair of President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities

Tisch School Deans’ Council Member and Theatrical Producer Margo Lion Named Co-Chair

New York University’s Mary Schmidt Campbell, dean of the Tisch School of the Arts, has been appointed by President Barack Obama as vice chair of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. The appointment was announced yesterday (Sept. 16) in a press release issued by the White House. At the same time, the President announced that Tisch School of the Arts’ Dean’s Council member and theatrical producer Margo Lion would serve as co-chair.

President Obama said, “My administration is committed to […] investing in the future of arts and the humanities, and these individuals will serve my team well as we work to accomplish these goals. I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.”

The White House announcement went on to state these distinguished appointments are exemplary of this Administration’s belief that the arts and humanities are at the core of a vital society. And that both individuals bring to the President’s Committee a wealth of experience in the arts and humanities and have, throughout their varied and illustrious careers, demonstrated a deep and abiding commitment to these fields.

Campbell has been dean of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts since 1991. She began her career in New York as the executive director of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Under her leadership, the Studio Museum in Harlem emerged as a major national and international cultural institution and a linchpin of the economic revival of Harlem. In 1987, Mayor Edward I. Koch invited Campbell to serve as Commissioner of Cultural Affairs of the City of New York. Campbell holds a B.A. degree in English literature from Swarthmore College, an M.A. in art history from Syracuse University, and a Ph.D. in humanities, also from Syracuse. She is co-author of Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1987) and Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden, 1940-1987 (New York: Oxford University Press & The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1991). She is the co-editor of Artistic Citizenship: A Public Voice for the Arts (New York: Routledge, 2006.) She is currently working on a book on Romare Bearden for Oxford University Press, (2011 expected publication date). She sits on the board of The American Academy in Rome and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In the fall of 2001 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She served in the voluntary position of chair of the New York State Council on the Arts from 2007-2009. She also serves as the chairman of the Board of Tisch Asia, the Tisch School of the Arts Singapore campus.

Margo Lion is an adjunct professor and a member of the Dean’s Council at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her career has spanned theatre, politics, and education. In 1977, Lion began producing theater for the not-for-profit company, Music-Theater Group/Lenox Arts Center, and in 1982 began her work as a commercial theatre producer. Her shows on Broadway include: Hairspray; Caroline, or Change; and Angels in America. Lions’s productions have garnered 20 Tony Awards, four Olivier Awards, and one Pulitzer Prize.

The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities was created under President Reagan and is a non-partisan advisory committee to the President of the United States on cultural matters. The First Lady is the Honorary Chairman of the Committee and its members are both private citizens — artists, scholars, educators, and patrons of the arts and humanities — and the heads of the federal agencies with a cultural role, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the Library of Congress, the Departments of Education, the Interior, and State, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Gallery of Art, among others. The President’s Committee proposes, develops, and supports special projects that further the White House’s cultural priorities and those of its primary cultural partners, the NEA, the NEH, and the IMLS, and works on promoting public/private partnerships in the area of the arts and humanities.