Fifty years ago, a young man dropped out of college for lack of funds. Bill Venman, founding Director of the Division of Continuing Education (DCE) at UMass Amherst, offered him a part-time job to help him finance his college education. The young man was Stan Rosenberg.
Stan took on Venman’s directive to find ways to extend the University’s arts resources beyond the campus to the Commonwealth’s communities. After conducting extensive research, including 150 interviews, Stan saw the potential benefits and opportunities to bring those resources and communities together. He also saw how ill equipped most communities were to present campus arts resources.
In 1974, long hair and all, Stan formulated a vision and became the founding director of the Arts Extension Service (AES).
As a land-grant university, UMASS Amherst has a three-part mission: to teach, conduct research, and extend knowledge through public service. Since its inception, AES has embraced and upheld all three tenets while adapting to demand, opportunity, and funding and has stayed at the forefront of the community arts development field.
Thinking big and ahead, as well as being an incorrigible instigator, Stan searched for ways and means to accelerate the creation of viable community arts organizations across the Commonwealth. These councils, he thought, could help communities present arts programs and support arts and artists to celebrate existing, local, cultural assets as well as imagine what they could be. He pushed the idea that every community should have the opportunity to create a local arts council as a vehicle to accomplish these goals.
Unknown to Stan at first, like-minded arts supporters and politicians in the Massachusetts State House were plotting a path forward to achieve the same vision. As a result, in 1979, a law was passed authorizing every city and town government to appoint a local arts council. With funds from a new state-run lottery, each would receive annual state funding to regrant to local artists and arts organizations.
Today, there are 329 local and regional arts council’s serving the Commonwealth’s 351 cities and towns. Thus, the vision was achieved. To this day, Massachusetts is the only state in the nation to have such a program!
Over these 50 years, through applied research, public service outreach, teaching, and publishing, AES has played a significant role to develop training and practical tools to advance community arts development. From presenting arts festivals that inventory and showcase community arts resources, to documenting quality practices in public art to community cultural planning, these are just a few.
In addition, AES has prepared a next generation of community arts leaders through professional development and academic courses in arts management. AES staff, interns, and students have gone on to distinguished careers leading cultural organizations locally, regionally, and nationally.
Stan went on to be a state legislator for 32 years including serving as Senate Ways and Means Chair and President of the Senate. Never forgetting AES and its mission, he consistently moved arts-related legislation and budget allocations to support the arts, notably the creation of Cultural District and Cultural Facilities Programs. And to this day, Stan continues to take leadership responsibilities as president of the AES Advisory Board.
In closing, as part of public ceremonies, Stan the legislator would often paraphrase what John Adams said as the latter worked on the U.S. Constitution, “I must study war and politics so my children can study science and mathematics, so my grandchildren can study art and music.”
To remain relevant and true to the University’s flagship campus mission, AES continues to bring communities and art together sparking dialogue, reflection, and learning with the intention of working toward a shared vision of community and in pursuit of a more perfect union.
This article documents a conversation between AES Advisory Board members, Stan Rosenberg and Dorothy Chen-Courtin. To learn more about the Arts Extension Service’s history, visit the 50th Anniversary page for more articles as well as the AES History page.