Six years ago, I was looking for a job on the East Coast, something that would allow me to continue directing plays and stay connected to community-based art. When the “Press and Marketing Coordinator” position at Wesleyan came up in the job listings, I passed it by even though it was in my neighborhood, because I didn’t see myself fitting into the culture of a presenting organization at a university. I had a lot of assumptions … and one of them was that a university presenter would not be connected to the off-campus community, would not feature the kind of performing and visual artists who interest me, and if they did, they would only be accessible to undergraduates and professors.
A coworker of mine who was a Wesleyan alumnus persuaded me to take a second look at the job, and within a month I was working there, because of one person: Pamela Tatge. Pam Tatge is the director of Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts and the embodiment of the term “artistic administrator.” During my time at Wesleyan, she helped create the Green Street Arts Center, orchestrated a citywide dance festival which danced its way up the hill and onto campus, broke the mold of the first-year-students’ common reading program and instead co-created a residency based on the performance “text” of Bill T. Jones.
Consistently, Pam Tatge challenges convention and asks where and how art can be a more essential part of everyday life and learning. I rarely saw her press a vision onto a project that excluded the ideas of others—rather, she created structures wherein artists could work with students, cultural groups, city leaders, neighborhood families, professors and the administrative team at the CFA to launch creative endeavors that included many people, in many ways.
Pam transformed my idea of what an artistic administrator can achieve, and how universities and communities can work together—which is why I was so excited to learn that this year she was honored with the William Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence from the National Association of Performing Arts Presenters. It is always thrilling to see someone get the recognition they deserve.
And speaking of recognition, the whole Center for the Arts team—Barbara, Adam, Camille, John, Kristen, Mark—are pretty incredible. Congratulations to all!
