AES Kicks off 50th Anniversary Celebration with a Look Back at Where It All Began
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The Arts Extension Service (AES) kicked off its 50th anniversary celebration by digging into its archives to share the first article in a series from its Arts Extension Institute Board of Directors, which details the history of AES and profiles university alumnus, founding director of AES, and former Massachusetts state legislator Stan Rosenberg.
AES has been building art and community since 1973 by bridging artists, arts managers, and other professionals with best practices, the latest research, publications, and training programs. It was founded as a program of Continuing & Professional Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Modeled after Robert Gard's Office of Community Arts Development at the University of Wisconsin Madison, AES was originally created to extend the cultural and educational resources of the University to stimulate cultural activity across Massachusetts.
An excerpt from the article may be found below.
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).