Collecting area: Arts management

Patrick Overton started his work in community cultural development in 1976 as director of Thespian Hall, the oldest theater in continuous use west of the Allegheny Mountains. Owned by the Friends of Historic Boonville, Overton developed the theater and associated programming as a catalyst to create a Community Arts Program in Boonville, Missouri. During this time, he became involved in state, regional, and national arts organizations. He was the founding President of the Missouri Association of Community Arts Agencies (MACAA), serving as its first Executive Director (1984-1989) and served as Director of the Front Porch Institute. Overton received his Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Missouri where he was a Gregory Fellow and served as a tenured Associate Professor of Communications & Culture Studies at Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri (1987-1999). He also held a Master of Divinity Degree and a Master of Arts in Religion and was an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He devoted his ministry to serving as a bi-vocational pastor to churches in the rural and small community setting.

The papers of Patrick Overton feature content related both to his work in community cultural development–correspondence, his testimony on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts, conference materials, reports–and his work as a minister. Also included are copies of his books, The Leaning Tree and Rebuilding the Front Porch of America.

Since 1975, Community Development Coordinators for state-level arts agencies in the United States have met annually for the exchange of information, training, and to plan state and national programs for community activity in the arts. Charged with development of both community arts councils and rural arts, CDCs also work to decentralize efforts. In recent years, they have increasingly been engaged in arts and social action programs and in providing a voice on national arts policy.

This small collection documents over thirty years of annual meetings between Community Development Coordinators from state arts agencies across the United States. Organized chronologically, the collection includes agendas, membership lists, communications among organizers, and materials used in workshops and that document the history of CDCs. In 2000, the CDCs began keeping records electronically, though without designating a record keeper. Electronic records have not been included in the collection.

Tom Turk played a significant role in the growth of state and community arts agencies across five decades. Beginning his career as an organizer of community arts agencies in Michigan in the mid-1960s, Turk went on to hold leadership positions with community arts agencies in Texas and Tennessee. Active on the national level, he served as a founding member of the Executive Board of the National Assembly of Community Arts Agencies, later the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies (1977-1985), and as president of the United States Urban Arts Federation (1999-2000), the association of local arts council and commission directors in the nation’s fifty largest cities.

Reflecting a long career in community arts, the Turk collection includes rich documentation of three important organizations involved in the development of the field during the late-1970s and early 2000s: the National Assembly of Community Arts Agencies, the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, and the U.S. Urban Arts Federation. The records include a nearly complete run of minutes of the Board and Executive Committee for NACAA and NALAA, along with newsletters and some financial reports, as well as materials relating to the organization and name change.

The Arts Extension Service (AES), a national arts service organization located at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is the nation’s leading provider of professional arts management education, serving the arts through education, research, and publications. The AES distinguished itself as the first program in the nation to offer a bachelor’s degree in Arts Administration and it has subsequently added a range of training programs for state, regional and local arts agencies, including Peer Advising and Artist-in-Business, research services, and two online Certificates in Arts Management.

The records of the Arts Extension Service (AES) are divided into three series: Administration; Programs; and Publications. Series one dates from 1973-2004 and contains correspondence, consulting logs, contracts, course catalogs, organizational plans, press releases, books, booklets, forms and documents. Series two dates from 1977-2005 and contains correspondence, handouts, flyers, news clippings, brochures, pamphlets, reports, proposals, registration forms, grants, evaluation forms, schedules, and planning documents. Series three is composed of news manuals, catalogs, news clippings, newspapers, books, booklets, advertisements, correspondence, entry forms and handbooks that date from 1974-1999.