Weissman Dean Aldemaro Romero Jr. Explores Intersection of Creativity and Arts Administration in New Book
December 11, 2019
There’s more to the job of an arts administrator than grant-seeking and fundraising. Of course these things matter.
But a new book, co-edited by Aldemaro Romero Jr., PhD, dean of Baruch College’s Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, makes the case for leaders of arts ventures, including university arts administrators, to embrace unconventional and creative approaches to promoting their academic programs.
Leonardo’s Children: Stories on Creativity by Fine Arts Leaders that will Blow Your Mind, consists of 13 articles by 19 authors from the U.S. and Europe who demonstrate the role creativity plays in arts administration.
“It was a great experience to learn from other deans and art administrators the creative processes they have developed in order to make their programs more academically attractive,” said Dean Romero.
Leonardo’s Children: Stories on Creativity by Fine Arts Leaders that will Blow Your Mind offers examples of the challenges and subsequent strategies colleges and universities have used to broaden awareness and engage audiences for their arts programs. Dean Romero, and his co-editor, Steven Peters, PhD, and dean of the University of Montevallo College of Fine Arts, also highlight new ways for colleges to promote the interdisciplinary nature of liberal arts studies.
A Look at Creative Ways to Market Liberal Arts Studies
Romero’s contributed a chapter to the book entitled, “Promoting Science Through The Arts (Or Vice Versa),” which offers a summary of his experiences as a professor and administrator implementing unconventional tactics. For example, when he taught biology at Florida State University early in his career, Romero took a page from Hollywood marketing and created a movie-style poster based on “Jurassic Park” to promote his Evolutionary Paleontology course. Registration for the course exceeded the minimum enrollment number and the course received enthusiastic reviews even among evolution doubters, Romero noted in the chapter.
Music Videos Promote a Sense of Wonder
At Baruch, Romero tapped faculty, students, and a former student to appear in and help produce music videos “to convey that you come to college to wonder about things, to explore what you want to do in the future… [The approach] very much aligned with the nature of a liberal arts education,” Romero writes.” He deployed the movie poster approach once again to highlight Baruch’s Weissman School of Arts and Sciences as a future-looking destination that, at the time, was building a virtual reality lab.
Romero has published more than 1,000 pieces including more than 30 books and monographs and has been awarded grants and prizes for his research and multimedia public outreach work. In addition to his academic scholarship, Romero has written for newspapers and magazines, and produced, directed and written for TV and radio. The book was published by the International Council of Fine Arts Deans (ICFAD) and is available on Amazon.
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