The MA in Arts Politics program attracts students from a variety of backgrounds who seek to create new spaces for themselves in art and society. The diverse accomplishments of our alumni exemplify this spirit of ingenuity and the desire to cultivate individualized paths. Please read on to find out what graduates of our program are doing now.
Aisha Jordan 2011 Art & Public Policy
Web Site: http://www.umass.edu/fac/nwt/Project-2050A.html
Aisha earned her BA in Theater and The Arts at The New School University, Eugene-Lang College. Her passion is to provoke thought and change within audiences and performers through collaborative interdisciplinary and cultural, Social Justice Theater. Growing up Aisha was intimately exposed to innovative cultural arts and performances for social change through New WORLD Theater a company devoted to developing new works by artist of color. Aisha has then been, for ten years working with New WORLD Theaters youth group project 2050 developing dynamic collaborative hip-hop theater centered around crucial social issues affecting many communities in the United States. Her work involves infusing spoken word poerty, dance, movement, song and monologue within stage performances. Aisha has developed pieces under the influence of artists such as Steven Sapp and Mildred Ruiz of Universes, Rokafella and Kwikstep of Full Circle, Rha Goddess, Lemon Anderson, Flaco Navaja, Willie Perdomo, Jorge Cortinas, Magdalena Gomez, Renita Harris, Reggie Cabico, and Zishan ugurlu. Since moving and studying in NYC Aisha has performed and or worked with, New Victory Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Hip-Hop Theater Festival, 13P, The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Brotherhood Sister-Sol, Lyrical Circle, the Nuyorican Poets Café, Bowery Poetry Club, and The Hemispheric Institute EmergeNYC. Aisha has also devoted time to re-developing the 2050 program due to the untimely closing of New WORLD Theater last fall. She is currently working on efforts to form her own interdisciplinary theater arts production company inspired by the work and teachings of mentor and friend Sekou Sundiata. She works to empower individuals and strengthen communities through art and social change.
Ava Ansari 2011 Art & Public Policy
Ava earned her B.A. in Public Relations at Allameh Tabatabai University. She is an Iranian artist, curator and activist who engages in a diverse range of creative/critical strategies including installation, performance, interventions and publishing. She has worked with the themes of censorship, Identity, and Sufism using mixed media, fresh and dry flowers and foliage. Ava is one of the founders of The Back Room Team whose mission is to create a dialogue between artists, writers and performers in a global level. Recently the team has organized a workshop between NYC and Tehran conducted by digital technology facilitated by Richard Schechner, the founder of the Performance Studies department at NYU Tisch. The second Tehran<>NYC workshop will be in held on Sept. 2011 in Tehran at Aaran Gallery and will be facilitated by Wafaa Bilal in conjunction with his exhibit about the Iran-Iraq War curated by Ava and Molly Kleiman. Ava is also an Engilsh-Farsi translator and teacher.
Azza Satti 2009 Art & Public Policy
Web Site: www.acuteobservation.com
Azza Satti is a producer, educator and curator from Sudan. Her work is based on using the arts and arts education for social and political change. She has previously worked for Opening Act Theater, Rashid Diab Arts Centre and Japan Society, and holds a B.A. in Media Studies from Hunter College. She is on the board of Asmi international, a non-profit that trains young leaders in displaced populations to use theater and literacy to reclaim their identity, and she is leading the al-Mashish theater partnership in Nyala, Darfur.
Butler, Anne Marie 2009 Art & Public Policy
Anne Marie Butler holds a B.A. from Scripps College with a dual major in Art History and French, and an M.A. from New York University in Arts Politics. In addition to her position as Administrative Secretary at the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, she freelances with the Austrian Cultural Forum, a cultural institution in Manhattan, as a curator, writer, and editor, and volunteers with Hollaback NYC, a non-profit dedicated to ending street harassment. Her interests include gender negotiations in public spaces, the influence of media on social development, teen culture, sex culture, and LGBTQ studies.
Chang-Han Liu 2011 Art & Public Policy
Chang-Han has a BA in Diplomacy, and a MA in Acting, in addition to his MA in Arts Politics. Aside from acting and singing, Chang-Han used to be a full-time arts administrator, coordinator and executive producer as well as free-lance translator, interpretor, voice talent and acting lecturer. Right now he is searching all possibilities for an even tighter bonding between arts, cultures and peoples in the hope that there will be a better world.
Chelsea Whitaker 2009 Art & Public Policy
Web Site: http://www.chelseawhitaker.com
Chelsea is a multimedia artist who is exploring the intersection of new media and social causes though her work in online marketing. She came to New York City from Michigan to study in the Tisch Film Program at New York University. After working on documentary and experimental multimedia projects, she continued on at NYU, this time focusing on the impact media can have on social and political dynamics. Upon graduation Chelsea was hired at Sanky Communications in New York City where she designs and manages online marketing campaigns for nonprofit organizations. She hopes to continue to work with socially relevant causes though applying a creative mindset to new forms of marketing.
Clara Inés Schuhmacher 2010 Art & Public Policy
Web Site: www.vvitalny.com
Clara Inés Schuhmacher is an experimental vocalist, public artist & arts advocate based in Brooklyn, New York. Current projects include: vvitalny, an art collective founded while at Tisch, with whom she is working on several large-scale public installations; Moviehouse, a film collective for whom she curates experiential experiences around film themes, often involving food; the Village Halloween Parade, where she serves as volunteer coordinator and assistant puppeteer; and empanadas ¡dpm!, her artisan food biz. Clara is the founder of Brown Opera Productions, an avant-garde opera company in Providence, Rhode Island, and as a vocalist she has performed across Europe, Russia, South America and the United States. She holds a BA in Ethnomusicology from Brown University, and an MA in Arts Politics from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Daniel Sander 2009 Art & Public Policy
Daniel Sander is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University where his research interests include the philosophy of desire, the psychopathology of deviance, libidinal materialism, and queer nihilism.
Esther Chang 2010 Art & Public Policy
Esther Chang is a Producer at Deepak HomeBase (DHB) and was brought on to launch a series of public programs with NYT best-selling author, Deepak Chopra. DHB is an interactive, experiential platform to inform and involve a global audience in the efforts of the most relevant, innovative individuals and initiatives of our time, DHB provides tools to engage community in profound personal and universal transformation. Esther produces weekly events with guests of global notoriety such as Nobel Laureate’s Leymah Gbowee and Wangari Maathai, actors Mark Ruffalo, Fran Drescher, Adrian Grenier, and Goldie Hawn to name a few, TED Prize winners JR and Karen Armstrong, 50 Cent, Bobby Kennedy Jr, Arianna Huffington, Dylan Ratigan, around issues ranging from youth and peace education to environmental awareness to conscious consumerism.
Prior to working at DHB, Esther was the Community Engagement Associate at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco, CA where she launched and produced YBCA’s largest signature event the Big Idea Night Party, a free open house festival featuring exhibitions, screenings, dance and musical performances with 3,000+ attendees. She also launched an ongoing public program for adult audiences called Art Savvy, which helps to demystify contemporary visual art. Other experiences include work as Outreach Coordinator for the Human Right’s Watch International Film Festival, Social Impact Leadership Coalition Coordinator at Social Venture Network, and volunteering at Camp Sunburst as an HIV/AIDS Counselor for Pre-Teens/Teens infected or affected with the virus. On her spare time she supports her friends with local businesses throughout Brooklyn.
Esther has a BA in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and an MA in Arts Politics from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Hilary Sand 2011 Art & Public Policy
Hilary earned her BA in Art History, Theory, and Criticism at UC San Diego. Prior to attending NYU for her MA in Arts Politics, Ms. Sand worked as an artist’s and installation assistant on numerous projects in the San Diego and Los Angeles area, and graduated in 2010 magna cum laude from the University of California, San Diego, where she received a BA with departmental honors in Art History, Theory, and Criticism and a minor in Studio Art. In the spring of 2010 Ms. Sand presented her honors thesis, entitled “Scenery, Sculpture, Symbol, Subject: The Evolution and Problems of Depicting Architecture in Photography,” at the Undergraduate Research Conference on a panel led by Alain Cohen on visual culture. She curated the university-wide undergraduate exhibition, “Subject Subject,” sponsored by the Visual Arts Department, in May of the same year. Her text entitled: “Manifesto: It’s An Ideology in Here,” appears in the limited-release anthology, Manifest-O, an accompaniment to the show of the same title that took place at Concrete Utopia, an alternative space in Brooklyn, in mid-October of 2010. Her work implements a variety of media, including sculpture, performance, and digital photography, as well as fiction, theory, and critical writing.
Jackie Miller 2009 Art & Public Policy
Web Site: www.giantsquidproductions.org
Jackie Miller earned her B.F.A. in Drama and her M.A. in Arts Politics at Tisch. Jackie holds a position coordinating New York programming for Reboot, a national non-profit organization which creates Jewish cultural programs, products and events. She is also a proud member of the theatre collective, Giant Squid Productions
Web Site: theartspolitic.com
Jasmine Mahmoud is an accomplished musician, arts journalist, and social justice advocate. Jasmine holds a BA in Government from Harvard University, where she volunteered violin lessons through HARMONY (Harvard and Radcliffe Musical Outreach to Neighborhood Youth) and wrote for The Harvard Crimson. Her career experience includes progressive policy research at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, community-oriented arts journalism at the Williamsburg Greenpoint News + Arts, and various performance pursuits on guitar and piano with her soul/funk band, with Seattle-based band Lawn-dree, as a classical violinist, and as music director for several Seattle-based original productions. She currently works for MusicianCorps Seattle at Arts Corps, part of Music National Service’s pilot modeling the need for full-time music service work. Jasmine also founded and currently edits The Arts Politic, a magazine which grew out of the Arts Politics program, which is dedicated to arts policy and political arts issues.
Kate Conroy 2011 Art & Public Policy
Before Kate entered the NYU Arts Politics program she worked to make arts accessible from upstate New York to downtown New York City and drafted an arts and economic development critique entitled Business is from Mars, the Arts are from Venus. During the MA program, she claimed her field of concentration: Lesbian Cultural Community Studies. Her immersion in this field generated The Lesbian Card project, The Lesbian Culture Studies, The Lesbian Migration Survey, and the character Prof. B. Giles through whom she presents The Giles Findings: The Natural Herstory of Lesbeings, which genetically links lesbeing hominids to the historic sites of Amelia Earhart's fatal crash, the Bermuda Triangle, and the Bowery.
Conroy migrated from Portland, Oregon to New York City's East Village, over 20 years ago where she continues to reside with her lesbian spouse of 15 years, Worcester-born writer Marty Correia. To sustain her arts activist practice, Conroy holds an administrative staff position at NYU's Department of Art History. Her independent research continues to explore the politics of humor.
Kevin Stanton 2011 Art & Public Policy
Web Site: thatiswhatwedo.com
Kevin earned his BFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kevin is a cultural activator working everywhere all the time. His activities include co-organizing Version Festival, directing public art events, writing, self-publishing, and causing problems.
Koby Rogers Hall 2011 Art & Public Policy
Koby is the founding artistic director of Mischief Theatre, a performance collective dedicated to redefining the audience/performer dynamic through site-specific and interactive performance events. Her work there as creator/director/performer includes Nothing Like The Sun (Harbourfront Centre), Look Up! (Arts 101 Festival Bend, Oregon), Lady J (EARTH festival Vancouver, Montreal Fringe), and Bordering (Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal). Recent collaborations include: Zeitgeist Theatre Collective’s P4W: Invisible Stories from the Prison for Women, bluemouth inc.’s interactive Dance Marathon, and arden 2’s City Acts Without Borders exchange between North American and Polish artists. She is an ongoing contributor to Artthreat magazine, the Emerging Arts Professionals network, and the grassroots movement for the Department of Culture across Canada. Koby directed and co-devised Abby Paige’s Piecework: When We Were French (in 2010-2011), and developed Mischief Theatre’s Dialogues Project with artists based in New York City and Masaka, Uganda. Her work has been supported by the Government of Canada’s Millenium Awards for innovation in her field, and the Zonta Club of Ottawa’s Emerging Artist Award. She was a Rosa Parks Fellow for Non-Violent Studies with the Alpha Kappa Alpha Educational Advancement Foundation Inc., and a recipient of a professional development grant for theatre artists from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Lauren Nicole Nixon 2010 Art & Public Policy
Web Site: www.laurennicolenixon.com
Lauren Nicole Nixon is a Brooklyn-based artist representative, teaching artist and poet. Nixon completed her M.A. in Arts Politics from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She completed her undergraduate work in Dance and Culture/Media Studies at The New School. She has worked for venues such as Round House Theatre, the Smithsonian Institute's Discovery Theatre, Imagination Stage, The Brooklyn Museum's Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the I Have a Dream Foundation, The New School and Sing for Hope. Her choreography has been presented at The Living Theatre, Dixon Place, Triskelion Arts and Dance Theatre Workshop College Partnership Program. Nixon's poetry appears and is forthcoming in literary journals such as Bone Bouquet, The Tulane Review, apt, 491, Jelly Bucket, Rougarou, Umbrella Factory, The Belladonna* Chaplet Series, Spillway, The Writing Disorder, No, Dear, In Posse Review, We'll Never Have Paris, RELEASE and Leveler. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Nixon currently works as an Artist Representative for Pentacle/Danceworks Inc.
Leah Thomas 2011 Art & Public Policy
As the former Director of Industry Relations for Ghetto Film School, a not for profit, that teaches film to students based in the South Bronx, Ms. Thomas used her knowledge of the entertainment business to create opportunity for youth with a desire to break into the film industry. During her tenure, GFS received the Mayor's Award for Art and Culture, was recognized by Russell Simmons at his Art For Life Benefit and spear headed its first Annual Benefit Dinner. Recently, GFS opened the Cinema School, the first high school in the nation with a focus on filmmaking. She is currently producing, THE GANG OF FOUR, a documentary revealing the extraordinary 50 year political legacy of Percy Sutton, Basil Paterson, David Dinkins and Charles Rangel, collectively known as the Gang of Four and AUTISTIC LIKE ME, the personal journey of five African American fathers of son’s with autism. As the Managing Partner of Femme Noir Films, Ms. Thomas is committed to telling stories with dynamic female leads. She is a full member of BAFTA and a Tribeca Film Festival Industry Delegate and was recently named as one of the Top Ten Rising Women Executives in Entertainment by Uptown Magazine.
M. Liz Andrews 2009 Art & Public Policy
Web Site: www.LetterToObama.com
M. Liz Andrews (2009) is an artist, curator, educator and serves as an administrator in the Department of Photography & Imaging at Tisch. While in the Arts Politics program, Liz conceptualized the LetterToObama project: a platform for people to present letters to the President… in the form of art. She believes that art has a unique power to document histories, convey messages, envision change and incite action. She is particularly passionate about vocal music performance. M. Liz Andrews was born and raised in Denver, Colorado and currently resides in New York City.
Mariana Azevedo 2011 Art & Public Policy
Mariana, a native of São Paulo, Brazil, earned her BA in Social Communication at FAAP (São Paulo, Brazil). She has a background in social communication and graphic design. Mariana worked for three years at the Jewish Culture Center in her hometown. She is interested in curating exhibitions and cultural projects, especially in alternative spaces where she believes the dialogue between community and artists can be powerful.
After earning her M.A. in Arts Politics, Mariana was an intern for the on-line platform Collectionof, which is a virtual place to display and sell works of art from individuals' and institutions' collections. She also serves as an intern at MoMA, where she works with the Assistant Curator of the Drawing Department, on a project of the exhibition about Brazilian artist, Lygia Clark.
Marjuan Canady 2010 Art & Public Policy
Web Site: www.marjuancanady.com
Marjuan Canady, a native Washingtonian, is an actress, playwright, educator and cultural worker. Her original work uses satire to critique and challenge notions of black female identity throughout the Diaspora. She is a graduate of Duke Ellington School of the Arts and holds a B.A. in Theater Performance and African/African-American Studies from Fordham University and a M.A. in Art and Public Policy from New York University. Some past credits include "For Colored Girls...", "Zemira" (independent feature), "Slipknot"(webisodic series). She is currently developing her one woman show, "Girls! Girls? Girls." For more information, visit her at
Noelle Ghoussaini 2010 Art & Public Policy
Noelle Ghoussaini is an American Lebanese who grew up in Michigan and Germany. She is a playwright, director and arts educator. She is currently developing her third original play, Ruth and the Great Gust of Wind, which tells the story of Ruth Reynolds, a pacifist from South Dakota, who was deeply involved in the struggle for Puerto Rico’s independence from the United States for over four decades. Over the past few years, she has worked for numerous non-profit arts organizations in Chicago and New York City, teaching theatre, dance, photography and playwriting. After completing her Masters, she traveled to Palestine where she taught dance at the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin Refugee Camp. In the fall on 2010, she will continue her work as a teaching artist and is currently applying for directing positions at theatres throughout New York City. She hopes to continue to use her work as an artist and educator as a form of resistance to oppressive social and political norms.
Olive McKeon 2009 Art & Public Policy
Web Site: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~kom220/
Olive McKeon is a doctoral candidate at UCLA in Culture and Performance. Her research focuses on the relation between dance and Marxism, moving between the political economy of dance and the choreography of labor struggles. She makes dances as a part of the Welcoming Committee. She is involved in university organizing and feminist groups. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Rashida McDuffie 2011 Art & Public Policy
Prior to earning her MA in Arts Politcs at NYU, Rashida earned her BS in Health Care Management at Florida A&M University, and a MA in Community Development from the University of Detroit Mercy.
Rashida seeks to merge her interests toward global service, social justice and sustainability. A native Detroiter with roots in Chicago, Atlanta and Texas, the foreclosure crisis of 2007 left this former real estate investor homeless and poised to perfectly quantify her values in life. Expressing these values through the universal language of art shall be her conduit. She recently wrote, produced, directed, filmed and edited a documentary about the importance of keeping arts in the school systems of struggling post-industrial cities like Detroit. In the spirit of W.E.B. Dubois, Rashida aspires to continue to be a voice for the inarticulate wherever possible, whenever necessary.
RonAmber Deloney 2008 Art & Public Policy
RonAmber Deloney graduated with BAs in English and German from Austin College. After her undergraduate studies she went to Berlin, Germany on a Fulbright scholarship where she did performance research on slam poetry and was a grassroots community organizer with local artists and activists. Some of the cool projects RonAmber achieved during this time include getting published, completing a spoken word album as The New Night Babies, working with The Last Poets to secure gigs around Europe and moderating discussions with Amiri Baraka and Jayne Cortez at The House of World Cultures. After 3.5 years in Berlin, she moved back to the US and attended Tisch where she found more direction for her activist interests. In 2011 she will graduate with an M.S.Ed in Adolescent Education from St Johns University, Manhattan campus. She has been writing instructional units at the intersection of arts and social justice. She plans to be a school resource instructor and teach an arts politics class in high schools. Her objective is to engage students in critical thinking and writing through creative curriculum.
The New Night Babies will also release a 2nd album, Lilac and Rapeseed, in the coming months. The New Night Babies is the effort of friends Khabo and two awesome brothers, Joerg and Frank Pokall who recorded both albums, Of Brickwalls and Breezeways and Lilac and Rapeseed, in Frank's bedroom in Berlin. It's electronic spoken word and Khabo's tracks on the first album are hip-hop influenced.
Music links:www.myspace.com/newnightbabies Photo credit: Nicolas James Harris
Samantha Calvano 2011 Art & Public Policy
Sam earned her BA in Film + Media Studies at Vassar College. She is a thinker and a dabbler, and is searching for that elusive connection that will bring together her love of film, graphic design, poetry, critique, and yoga. She is, above all, a work in progress.
Of mixed heritage and raised in Indonesia, Thailand and now New York City, questions of identity, representation, and cultural equity resonate strongly within her. She seeks to better understand and foster the notion of home and community. She hopes to always be listening and to never stop learning.
Her previous experience includes two years at MUSE Film and Television, a not for profit documentary production company that produces and distributes films on art, as well as freelance graphic design work for a number of organizations and institutions. She is also a certified yoga instructor and avid practitioner of mindful breath and movement.
Victoria Joy Murray 2011 Art & Public Policy
Prior to enrolling in the MA in Arts Politics, Victoria was the Arts Program Coordinator for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the official arts agency for the District of Columbia. Ms. Murray served as Executive Producer for numerous signature events for the District including the coveted Mayor’s Arts Awards, the most prestigious honor conferred by the District to individual artists, arts organizations, and patrons of the arts. Another such event, Art Unplugged, a new initiative which she developed and implemented for the Commission was recognized by the National Assembly of States Arts Agencies (NASAA) as a National best practice. Additionally, Ms. Murray served as Program Officer for several long-standing grant programs that assist artists and arts organizations by providing funding and a broad range of resources. She was responsible for managing a collective budget of $1.5 Million in District funds for these events and grant programs.
Ms. Murray is an artist in her own right and has directed numerous productions throughout the Washington, DC metropolitan area including PASSING STANGE; HERSTORY: Love Forever Hip-Hop; Moon Bitch (DC Premiere); A Woman's Liberation; SHE: The Healing Pool; The Lover; and Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. She has assisted directors including the Tony Award Winning Moises Kaufman, David Muse, Timothy Bond and Peter C. Brosius, among others. Ms. Murray is the Founding Artistic Director of Yams Theatre, Inc. and an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
An avid traveler, Ms. Murray has trained both nationally and internationally, New York City (Women's Project Producer's Lab); Ashland, Oregon (Oregon Shakespeare Festival FAIR Fellow); Washington, DC (Allen Lee Hughes Fellow, Arena Stage); Italy (LaMaMa, ETC. International Symposium for Directors); Brazil (Center for the Theatre of the Oppressed); and London (British Academy of Dramatic Arts Shakespeare Program).
Wan-Jung Wei 2010 Art & Public Policy
Wan-Jung Wei, a native of Taiwan, is an art administrator and dancer with extensive experience on both creative and administrative aspects of theatrical production. When working in Solar Art Management, one of the leading art management companies in Taiwan, Wei contributed in all phases of production including dance performance, set design and marketing. She has brought several world-known acts to Taiwan, including Maria Serrano Flamenco Dance Company and the Disney musical Winnie the Pooh, adding diversity to performance business. Besides working on theater productions, Wei is also one of the founding members of DX5, an award-winning contemporary dance company in Taiwan. She received her B.A in International Relations from National Taiwan University in 2005.
Yeojin Chung 2011 Art & Public Policy
Yeojin grew up in South Korea, and studied theatre in Hawaii and Seattle, focusing on stage management and technical theatre. She had internships with Seattle Children's Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company, and Washington National Opera before coming to NYC. While Yeojin was wondering how art can be more accessible and diverse, she found the Arts Politics program. She loves healthy food, but can't resist ice cream. She loves theatre, but it's not always healthy for her. Yeojin earned her BA in Drama at the University of Washington.
