Kristy Edmunds and the Visiting Scholar Program

In January 2014, the Center established the Visiting Scholar Program, inviting Kristy Edmunds, executive and artistic director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, to act as a “catalyst in residence.” The Visiting Scholar Program operates within the Center’s knowledge sharing and capacity building initiatives, and enables us to work closely with influential practitioners from outside the region on questions of mutual interest and to the benefit of our community and the field.

During her 18-month tenure, Edmunds participated in a series of visits and conversations with Center staff and constituents, as well as other field leaders. The former artistic director of the Melbourne Festival and the Park Avenue Armory in New York, Edmunds is recognized for innovation and depth in the presentation of works by contemporary artists, with a particular emphasis on contemporary performing arts. Over the course of her tenure at the Center, Edmunds explored a pressing “question of practice” vital to the Center’s work and that of our constituents: the curation of performance across platforms and disciplines. This collaborative research informed a variety of outputs, among them commissioned writing and a series of public conversations with performance curators Limor Tomer (General Manager of Concerts and Lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Philip Bither (Senior Curator of Performing Arts at Walker Art Center), and Claire Tancons (an independent curator, writer, and researcher based in New Orleans, whose work focuses on carnival, public ceremonial culture, and popular movements).