NYU President John Sexton and Provost David McLaughlin today named Allyson Green – a respected professional artist, curator and educator in the performing and visual arts, and an associate dean at Tisch since 2012 – as the new dean of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, effective June 1.
As dean, she will lead one of the most vibrant, revered, and storied schools of the arts, whose faculty, students, and alumni/ae annually capture the highest honors in the world of film/TV, theatre, dance, dramatic writing, design for stage and film, musical theatre writing, photography, recorded music, game design, interactive telecommunications, and performance and cinema studies, among other fields.
John Sexton said, “The presence of the Tisch School adds so much to the University, and vice-versa: its students, faculty, and administrators contribute a jolt of incredible creativity and innovation to the NYU community, and being part of a research university with a global presence gives the Tisch community a connection to scholarship and a front seat at the leading edge of knowledge creation in a wide range of disciplines of interest to artists.
“In choosing a successor to Mary Campbell, whose stewardship of Tisch these past 23 years will be remembered as one of the school’s most successful and important periods, we needed to find someone who would be at home in a unique community of artists, who could see ways to take the greatest advantage of Tisch’s setting in a research university, in New York City, and as part of an unequalled global network, and who had a vision for where Tisch should go in the future. And we found just such an individual in Allyson Green.
“Already a well-established, highly regarded artist, she also impressed the search committee with a range of qualities that make her just the right person to be Tisch’s next dean: an understanding of and love for the Tisch community; quiet, confident leadership; a strategic vision about the role of an arts school in a research university; a reflex for thorough and effective faculty consultation and collaboration; a deep commitment to the welfare and nurturing of students; an understanding of the challenges and opportunities posed by a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive job market; and strong consensus-building skills.
“We are so pleased that Allyson has chosen to accept this assignment. On behalf of the Tisch community and the entire NYU community, I offer her our congratulations. I want to thank all the members of the search committee for their hard work and discernment, and, in particular, its chair, Sarah Schlesinger. And I ask everyone to join me as well in thanking Mary Campbell for her two plus decades of exceptional service to NYU and to Tisch.”
Mary Schmidt Campbell, the current dean of Tisch, said, “The search committee has made a excellent recommendation. We saw something special in Allyson when we recruited her to Tisch as the Associate Dean of the Institute of Performing Arts two years ago, and the search committee saw it, too. Tisch is not an easy school: to be a member of this community, you’ve got to have the real goods: talent and open-mindedness and a love of the creative process. Allyson has all of this. Tisch has been my home for over 20 years, and it’s very close to my heart. I know its future will be in good hands with Allyson.”
Allyson Green said, “I am thrilled and honored to become the fourth Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts. Integrating creative development, education, and collaborative community building - both locally and globally - has been the focus of my career for more than 25 years. It has shaped my belief in an arts education that includes a wide and diverse study of knowledge, alongside a deep discipline of learning by doing, in order to foster creativity and innovation. There is no finer place to do this than with the outstanding students, alumni, faculty and staff of Tisch, within the global network of NYU. In the past two years of teaching and service, I have been inspired by the commitment to excellence in the education of the next generations of arts students that unites a long-standing community at Tisch. With their support, I will strive to lead that community into the future, and to foster collaborations across the school, the university, the professional fields, and the global network, that will emphasize the value of creative research in a great research university.
“I would like to thank President Sexton and Provost McLaughlin for their commitment to sustaining the excellence of Tisch, and Dean Campbell who, during her visionary tenure at the helm, brilliantly navigated the School into the standard-bearing arts institution it has become. I would also like to acknowledge the previous deans, David Oppenheim and founding dean Robert Corrigan, for the establishment of this innovative school.”
Allyson Green joined NYU in 2012 as Associate Dean of Tisch’s Institute of the Performing Arts, and oversees Tisch Art and Public Policy, Tisch Open Arts, and Tisch Global Curriculum; she is also a full professor in the department of Art and Public Policy. Prior to coming to NYU, she was a full professor of theatre and dance at the University of California at San Diego (in partnership with La Jolla Playhouse), where she served as department chair from 2008 to 2012. A devoted arts educator, she has designed BA, BFA, MA, and MFA curriculum that developed new areas in performing arts training such as aesthetics and criticism, arts citizenship, arts management, arts entrepreneurship, somatics, and the intersection of arts and technology.
Based in NYC from 1986 to 2001, Green had a distinguished career as a performer in numerous dance companies, and as a choreographer of her own company, Allyson Green Dance. She has created over 100 dance theatre works that have been presented in 18 countries and throughout the United States since 1993. She also has extensive training in the visual arts and music; she was the creative director of Allyson Green Design from 1986 to 2003, and received awards for her design work in print, television and dance film.
As an arts curator Green has produced numerous national and international showcases and festivals that focus on the development of new artistic work, as well as highlighting issues of diversity, social justice, art and technology, and the environment. From 2003 to 2005 she was the Artistic Director of San Diego’s only National Performance Network-designated interdisciplinary theatre and gallery, Sushi Performance and Visual Art, where she produced dance, visual art, music, performance, literature, and theatre programming and exhibitions, and international cross disciplinary festivals.
Green received her MFA in choreography from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 2001, and her BFA in graphic communications and painting with University Honors from Washington University in St. Louis.
She is the recipient of many awards, honors, and fellowships, including a Jacob Javits Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities; and was named graduate student of the decade by the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Her choreography has been supported by the Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals, the U.S. Department of State, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trusts, CEC ArtsLink, the Rockefeller Foundation, and 10 fellowships from the Suitcase Fund, with major support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.
About NYU
New York University, founded in 1831, is one of the world’s foremost research universities and a member of the selective Association of American Universities. The first Global Network University, it has degree-granting university campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai; has a dozen other global academic sites; and sends more students to study abroad than any other U.S. college or university. Through its 18 schools and colleges, NYU conducts research and provides education in the arts and sciences, law, medicine, business, dentistry, education, nursing, the cinematic and performing arts, music and studio arts, public administration, social work, engineering, and continuing and professional studies, among other areas.
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Correction: A previous version of this release erroneously stated that David Oppenheim was the founding dean of the Tisch School of the Arts. The original dean of the school was in fact Dr. Robert Corrigan We regret the error.