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Chautauqua Institution
Picture"What Are We, Chopped Liver?!!"
Chautauqua's season may be only 9 weeks long, but during that short time it hosts and organizes somewhere around 3000 cultural events in all the disciplines stemming from its various branches: literary events, lectures, ballet, opera, theatre and the visual arts, not to mention interfaith programs, recreation, schools and classes. As the Interim Gallery Director in 2006, I oversaw 44 of them.

The Theatre Department, run by Vivienne Benesch and Ethan McSweeny, excelled at using PR to fill its seats and create buzz. When the pompous lead character of one of the plays ran a long “interview” in the daily newspaper bemoaning the fact that none of the Institution departments would play his group’s song, this Op-Ed piece ran as a rebuttal from the Visual Arts Gallery’s “director.”