• Shannon Jackson

  • Rob Bailis

Curating the Performing Arts in the Age of Performance with Shannon Jackson and Rob Bailis

Partly as a response to the desire for participatory models, museums and other arts organizations have begun to incorporate performance into their curatorial programming. How is this contemporary interest in performance affecting historic performing arts organizations—theaters, dance companies, symphonies, and presenting organizations? How are categories such as dance, theater, and music maintained or altered as we welcome new experiments? How are performing artists thinking about the goals and techniques of their medium? UC Berkeley's Shannon Jackson and Rob Bailis discuss issues of curation in this evolving context.

Shannon Jackson is associate vice chancellor for the arts and design, Cyrus and Michelle Hadidi Chair in the humanities, and professor in the Departments of Rhetoric, and Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Arts and Humanities Outstanding Service Award. In addition, she serves on the advisory boards of several journals and arts organizations and has been a plenary speaker at a variety of distinguished venues, including, most recently, the Venice Biennale.

Rob Bailis is associate director at Cal Performances. He is a professional clarinetist and has extensive experience in arts organization management, as previous director of ODC Theater. He has commissioned more than thirty new works in a variety of genres and has served as a panelist and program and policy consultant for foundations and arts funding organizations including MAP Fund, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, SF Arts Commission, and the Center for Cultural Innovation, among many.