Last week, the DeVos Institute of Arts Management officially moved to the University of Maryland. The Institute was created at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2001, was named the DeVos Institute in 2010 and will now reside at the University of Maryland. Brett Egan and I are both deeply indebted to our colleagues at the Kennedy Center who helped shape the work of the Institute; the Kennedy Center was a perfect home for the development of this Institute devoted to teaching arts management and consulting to arts organizations across the globe.
With our move to the University of Maryland, we are offered the opportunity to join a major teaching and research institution and to expand our work. While we have focused on teaching practicing arts managers through fellowship programs and two-year, city-specific programs, we will now be able to teach students, at the undergraduate and graduate levels as well. We will initiate a series of arts management seminars on campus this autumn and also plan to introduce a Master's program in Arts Management at the University in the coming years.
Residing at a major university also encourages us to do substantive research into arts management issues that challenge our field. We will be working together with UMD faculty on two initial research projects: one that focuses on the challenges facing African American and Latino arts institutions throughout the United States today and a second that addresses the ways new technologies are affecting arts institutions including the way we make our art and the ways we market our programs.
In developing these new projects, and in all we do, we will have the resources of a great university to call upon. We are excited to have access to a remarkable faculty, to work with many student interns, to draw upon the technological capabilities of the institution and to collaborate with its dynamic leadership team.
Our basic philosophy will not change: We still believe that while nations spend billions of dollars to train singers and dancers and actors and other artists, they spend far less -- and far too little -- to train the people who manage the institutions that employ these artists. The major problems facing the arts today are not the lack of great artists but the dearth of sophisticated planning, marketing, fundraising and board development skills.
To date, the DeVos Institute has taught arts managers from over 80 nations and has consulted to leading museums, orchestras, and dance, theater and opera companies across the nation and the globe. We look forward to deepening our relationships in our host cities and to initiating work in others. To that end, we are grateful to the President of the University of Maryland, Wallace Loh, for bringing us to the University and for committing funding for teaching programs in two new cities: Baltimore and Los Angeles.
Of course, in all we do, we honor Dick and Betsy DeVos for their continuing commitment to our work.
We could not imagine more dedicated patrons or a better new home!