Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts Director Pamela Tatge Named New Executive Director of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival
Named New Executive Director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival
Middletown, Conn., January 12, 2016 — Pamela Tatge, who has served as Director of Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts since 1999, will join Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival as Executive Director in April 2016.
At Jacob’s Pillow, Tatge will set the artistic vision and strategic goals for the organization, including programming America’s longest-running international dance festival, and overseeing education, preservation, and audience engagement programs, as well as marketing and development.
For the past 16 years, Tatge has overseen robust programming in music, dance, theater, and visual arts in an eleven-building complex and across the Wesleyan campus. She has supported the realization of faculty and student work in the arts and spearheaded the development of the University’s Creative Campus Initiative with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; an initiative that includes Feet to the Fire, an annual campus-wide exploration of environmental issues. She also led the development of the University’s Green Street Arts Center, a community arts center established in 2005 to serve as an anchor to revitalization efforts in Middletown’s North End. In 2010, together with former Jacob’s Pillow Director Samuel A. Miller '75, she co-founded Wesleyan’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP), the first post-graduate program of its kind. Other accomplishments include the inauguration of the Breaking Ground Dance Series, DanceMasters Weekend, and the Outside the Box Theater Series.
“We wish Pamela Tatge all the best as she takes the helm at Jacob’s Pillow,” said Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth. “Pamela’s leadership of Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts has been widely recognized for its educational and artistic adventurousness, and her ability to engage with diverse communities has inspired respect, affection, and joy. Although we will miss her at Wesleyan, we look forward to following her work at the Pillow.”
“Wesleyan has been an extraordinarily generative place for me," said Pamela Tatge. "Since I first set foot on the CFA Theater stage as a first-year student and aspiring actress in 1980, to my present role as a parent of a Wesleyan senior, the University has been one of the most active, vibrant, and important parts of my personal and professional life. As the Director of the CFA, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with faculty, students, and staff in the arts and across the campus to re-imagine the role of a university arts presenter. I’ve had the great privilege of also bringing hundreds of brilliant artists from around the world to share their work with our campus and community. I’m so grateful for all of the support that Wesleyan, my alma mater, has given me, and I’m deeply appreciative to the staff of the CFA who for sixteen and a half years has worked tirelessly with me to envision and create such a robust university arts program. I will have many, many friends on campus, in our audience, and in the Greater Middletown community whom I will miss greatly, but I encourage them to visit me at Jacob’s Pillow this summer.”
Tatge is the recipient of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters’ 2010 William Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence and Sustained Achievement in Programming. Prior to her work at Wesleyan, Tatge spent a decade as the Director of Development and Long Range Planning at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. She holds a B.A. in History (class of '84) and an M.A.L.S. (class of '10) from Wesleyan University.
Jacob’s Pillow is a National Historic Landmark, recipient of the National Medal of Arts, and home to America’s longest-running international dance festival, which includes more than 50 national and international dance companies and hundreds of performances, talks, tours, classes, exhibits, and events annually. For more information about Jacob's Pillow and their 84th festival in 2016, please visit http://www.jacobspillow.org.