Long before her appointment to the Green Center production team began, Suzanne had developed a devotion to advocating for artists—from rounding up fellow grad students to help save funding for the arts in Austin, Texas, to later posts as Putnam County Arts and Culture Director and as DePauw School of Music’s marketing and publications manager.
Her interdisciplinary training in both the visual and the performing arts, with a B.F.A. degree in Art+Design (University of Illinois), and master’s in Theatre History and Criticism with an emphasis in opera (UT-Austin), will serve the Center well as it transitions into the home of the new Creative School.
Career highlights for Suzanne, who recently began a two-year term as president of the Greencastle Arts Council, include research at the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University for work in conjunction with international stage director and designer Robert Wilson and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. And in 2010, she completed an NEA fellowship at Columbia University in New York City under the direction of cultural historian Joseph Horowitz and NPR VP Anya Grundman.
“As a kid, I loved books,” Suzanne recalls. “I wanted not only to make the pictures but also to write the words. So, it’s not surprising that I grew up to spend my life writing and designing things about art and music.”
“The NEA fellowship in NYC was undoubtedly the most intensive learning experience of my life,” she continued. “I loved every waking minute of it, but my heart and home is in the Midwest. My goal at DePauw is to make the Center as accessible and welcoming to as wide an audience as possible and to support professional performance practices at as high a level as possible as we prepare the next generation of arts administrators, educators and performers to take the stage.”