Executive Director Leaving New Haven’s International Arts & Ideas Festival

Mary Lou Aleskie, who has been the executive director of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas for over half of its 21-year existence, will be stepping down in 2017 to become the director of the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.

Aleskie will be in Connecticut through the spring to smooth the transition to interim leadership while a search is undertaken for her successor.

“I’m surprised that I’m once again doing something that I’ve never done before, at this stage in my career,” Aleskie says, laughing, during a phone interview Friday morning. “But I guess that’s what I do.”

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas began in 1996. For two weeks every June, it presents hundreds of arts events, lectures, master classes and other activities in and around downtown New Haven. The festival had several different executive directors in its first decade, primarily Paul Collard and Mary Miller. Aleskie succeeded Miller in 2005.

Under her leadership, Arts & Ideas established lasting relationships with such notable groups as the Bang on a Can Collective in New York (which has sent several of its ensembles to the festival) and the National Theatre of Scotland, whose stage shows “The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart” and “Our Ladies of Pepertual Succour” had their U.S. premieres at Arts & Ideas.

In her first years as leader, Aleskie took an interest in the rebuilding process following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. This led to a number of festival events related to the disaster, from Spike Lee screening his documentary “When the Levees Broke” to the outdoor “jazz funeral” performance “Cry You One” staged around New Haven’s Maltby Lakes park recreation area as well as many New Orleans jazz artists.

“What I like to do is create framework and context,” Aleskie says.

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas has been shown to dramatically increase tourism and consumer spending in New Haven during what would otherwise be a lean period between the end of the school year and the beginning of summer. A study conducted by Quinnipiac University of the 2016 festival measured an overall economic impact of $15.4 million, the highest in the festival’s history. Arts & Ideas’ budget for that festival was $3.32 million.

For most of her tenure, Aleskie worked alongside Cathy Edwards, who was director of programming for the festival from 2006 to 2014 and is now the Executive Director of the New England Foundation for the Arts. Chad Herzog became Arts & Ideas’ director of programming in 2014. Herzog will be one of three interim co-directors of the festival until a new executive director is found. The other two are Managing Director Liz Fisher (who has been with Arts & Ideas nearly since its inception) and Director of Development Tom Griggs.

The Hopkins Center, informally known as “The Hop,” opened in 1962 and currently presents more than 100 live performances a year in several different venues: a 900-seat main auditorium, a 480-seat theater and a 180-seat black box space.

Aleskie notes that the Hopkins Center “has been a very important collaborative partner for many of us in New England.” Acts seen at Arts & Ideas may find themselves at Hopkins on the same tours. The current Hopkins Center season features artists familiar to Arts & Ideas attendees, such as the Mark Morris Dance Group. “It’s a similar aesthetic,” Aleskie affirms.

As part of her new job, she will be overseeing renovations and restorations at the center. With the simultaneous expansion and renovation of the college’s Hood Museum, a new arts district will be created on the Dartmouth campus. There will even be opportunities for outdoor festivals.

Regarding the future of Arts & Ideas, Aleskie says: “The festival is like nothing else, anywhere else. It has been a great challenge, and will continue to be. It is time for someone to put a new face on it and take it into the future.”

.galleries:after {
content: ”;
display: block;
background-color: #c52026;
margin: 16px auto 0;
height: 5px;
width: 100px;

}
.galleries:before {
content: “Local Entertainment Videos”;
display: block;
font: 700 23px/25px Belizio,Georgia,’Droid Serif’,serif;
text-align: center;
color: #1e1e1e;
}