Arts Services fosters college’s cultural side
by Lee Conell ’09 (English)
Public Affairs intern
Fran Smulcheski (Arts Services) (l-r), Orin Chait (Fine and Performing Arts) and Nancy Lautenbach (Arts Services) promote the cultural events taking place at the college’s artistic venues, such as the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. Photo by Lee Conell
The role of Arts Services is to promote on-campus events that help the college fulfill its mission as an intellectual and cultural hub for the Mid-Hudson region.
Nancy Lautenbach, director of Arts Services, and her assistant, Fran Smulcheski, aim to raise the visibility of cultural events at the college, bring people together through these events and ensure that word about artistic productions and exhibitions on campus gets out not just to faculty, staff and students, but to the entire local community.
Lautenbach believes the work of Arts Services benefits the whole campus by highlighting the richness of its culture.
The staff of Arts Services, which operates under the school of Fine and Performing Arts, must stay on its game because at any given time during the semester there are multiple arts events happening on campus, from plays to visiting speakers to exhibitions at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. Lautenbach and Smulcheski work together on both big picture strategies, such as maintaining and developing media contacts, as well as the smaller details of production publicity, like renting a van so students can distribute posters and postcards advertising an upcoming event.
Lautenbach and Smulcheski often have to do some research to determine how best to promote an event. Lautenbach will frequently work with other departments, sitting in on a director’s concept meeting for a theatrical production to get a sense of the director’s vision of a show. She then obtains images from the production and sends them to Design Services, which uses those images to provide Lautenbach with several poster and postcard designs from which to choose.
Smulcheski’s research is geared toward background information on artists. It is her responsibility to write the press releases for events and to pitch events to media editors. Luckily, as a part-time instructor in the Art History Department, Smulcheski has the background for such work. She tries to promote an arts event in the same manner she teaches her classes; that is, in a way that will entice people from different areas of study. “I approach the arts as an interdisciplinary matter,” Smulcheski said.
Lautenbach and Smulcheski collaborate frequently with Box Office Manager Orin Chait (Fine and Performing Arts) to garner publicity for theatrical productions. In the recent on-campus production, “Company,” for example, Arts Services and Chait, who oversees ticket distribution and supervises ushers, teamed up to create surveys to determine how the play’s audience found out about the event and their reasons for attending. Finding out which means of promotion are most effective will allow Arts Services to determine the best way to draw the community into arts events at the college, heightening the campus’s status as a true cultural hub.
To contact Chait, call x3936. To contact Lautenbach, call x3872. To contact Smulcheski, call x3858.
Tags: Arts Services, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, School of Fine and Performing Arts, Theatre Arts
