News
George Trudeau Named Director of Center for the Performing Arts
George Trudeau, who spent 18 years as director of performing arts at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, an internationally recognized fine arts center in Utica, N.Y., assumed the directorship of the Center for the Performing Arts in July.
“I
am very excited to be [at] Penn State. The Center for the Performing Arts has a stellar reputation for artistic
excellence and I’m honored to become its director,” says Trudeau. “I’m impressed with
the CPA staff, which has an excellent reputation in the performing arts field. I look forward to working with
them, as well as with the superb community advisory council, dedicated supporters, Dean Durst and my new colleagues
at Penn State.”
Trudeau’s plans include finding ways to further engage the center with both the University and State College communities and increasing the center’s involvement in commissioning works. “A major university like Penn State has an obligation to work with artists to cultivate new works. Certainly, we have the resources to bring to bear,” he says.
While at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Trudeau directed an annual program of more than 150 arts and cinema presentations, including extensive educational activities in five venues. He greatly increased the number of annual presentations and expanded the offerings to include multicultural and international presentations, in addition to performance series for children and families, leading to significant growth in the institute’s performing arts patron base. He established educational components of presentations, developed an extensive artist residency program, directed project planning and major renovations to the institute’s auditorium, and implemented a complete redesign of the institute’s outdoor performance space.
Trudeau is a member of and has served in leadership positions for the International Society for the Performing Arts. He co-chairs the society’s Global Engagement and Capacity Building programs. His other professional leadership positions include service for the New York State Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour. Trudeau has been a member of the New York State DanceForce and is founder and director of the Mohawk Valley Dance Partnership in central New York.
The Association of Performing Arts Presenters honored him with the Harold Shaw Award for excellence in recital programming and presentation. The Rotary Club of Utica gave him its Paul Harris Fellow Award in recognition of his contribution to Rotary’s humanitarian and educational programs, plus his elevation of the arts in the community.
Trudeau, a former classical trombonist, received a bachelor of arts in music from Western Washington University and a master’s of music from New England Conservatory of Music. His wife, Debra, is a violinist with Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and associate concertmaster of Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y. She and their 17-year-old twin sons, Benjamin and Matthew, are staying in New York while the teens finish their last year of high school in 2004–05.
Art Education Faculty to Retire
Brent Wilson, professor of art education, and Marjorie Wilson, associate professor of art education, will both retire from Penn State in December.
Brent Wilson has been on the art education faculty since 1974. From 1983 to 1985 and from 1989 to 1999, he was professor-in-charge of the Art Education program, and from 1983 to 2002, professor-in-charge of the graduate program in art education. During his 30 years at Penn State, he has chaired 42 doctoral committees, in addition to being involved in numerous professional activities outside the University. He served as the primary consultant to the first National Assessment of Educational Progress in Art; drafted Toward Civilization: A Report to the President and Congress (on the status of arts education in the United States); and evaluated professional development programs of the Getty Education Institute for Arts, which culminated in the publication of The Quiet Evolution: Changing the Face of Arts Education.
His research includes studies of children’s artistic development, the influences of popular visual culture on children’s drawings, children’s graphic narratives, Japanese and Taiwanese teenagers’ dojinshi/manga, and children’s interpretations of artworks. Wilson has authored or coauthored six books, 27 book chapters, 90 monographs and evaluative reports to agencies, and 60 articles in refereed journals. With Marjorie Wilson, he received the Manuel Barkan Award for their outstanding contribution to the literature of art education. He also received the Edwin Ziegfeld Award for contributions to international art education and research and the Lowenfeld Prize for his studies of children’s art. Wilson received his Ph.D. from Ohio State (1966), an M.F.A. in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art (1958) and a B.S. in art and education from Utah State University (1956).
Marjorie Wilson, who received her doctorate from Penn State in 1977, taught at Florida State, Frostburg State College in Maryland and the State University of New York–College at New Paltz before returning to teach here in 1986. She has taught in the art education graduate and undergraduate programs, as well as the honors program. With technology as a focus of her research, she received a Penn State computer grant to develop a unique hypertext program and an interactive organizational model for an art education program in which students would (1) develop their own structured computer webs for teaching and learning, and (2) use the developed structure in the creation of units of instruction for teaching. She also developed and taught the first technology courses for art education and a graduate hypertext theory course, titled “Hypermedia,” in which graduate students studied the theory of hypertext as it relates to postmodern literary theory. She has delivered numerous papers on hypertext and hypertext theory and was subsequently invited to present papers related to hypertext and art education at various state conferences, as well as conferences in Denmark and Taiwan. Most recently, she has pursued her profound interest in contemporary art forms and has developed and taught courses in performance, installation and video and their relationship to teaching.
Marjorie Wilson was a researcher for the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, Calif., and the author of a series of guides for teachers, published and distributed with print reproductions of major works of art, pointing to the cultural, historical, philosophical and critical aspects of those works. With Brent Wilson, she authored three books and was awarded the Educational Press Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award, given for excellence in educational journalism (for a series of three articles published in School Arts), and the Manuel Barkan Award for outstanding contribution to the literature of art education.
Graphic Design Program Moves to Department of Integrative Arts
Penn State’s nationally respected Graphic Design program, previously located in the School of Visual Arts, has a new administrative home in the Department of Integrative Arts, effective fall 2004. The move was part of an ongoing effort to bring together a number of different areas of design in the Department of Integrative Arts, ultimately leading to a major in “Digital Art: Design and Fabrication.”
According to department head Bill Kelly, the move is an opportunity for graphic design faculty and students to build new alliances and relationships in the design field, especially in the areas of digital design and photography. “Similarly, this move will open graphic design to students in other areas of design and allow for greater crossover and cooperation than was possible in the past,” he adds.
The graphic design studios will remain in the Visual Arts Building until the College of Arts and Architecture takes over Borland Lab, scheduled for sometime in 2007. For more information on the Department of Integrative Arts, refer to the article on the history of the department that appeared in the fall 2003 issue of this newsletter.
