July 24, 2003
Summer Arts Festival won’t return
The UW Summer Arts Festival, which has graced the campus each July for the past four years, will not be returning next year.
“We simply don’t have enough money to support it,” said Michael Halleran, divisional dean for arts and humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences. The college sponsored the festival, which was directed by Hannah Wiley, professor and former director of the Dance Program.
Halleran said the festival was started with Tools for Transformation funds, along with money from two endowments — one from the Kreielsheimer Foundation and one from Donald Peterson, retired chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Company.
“Then there were two problems. The state began cutting our budget and private funding for the arts began to dry up,” Halleran said.
A&S, which has sustained cuts of 2.6 percent and 3 percent over the last two years, was using some of its own money to bolster the grants and ticket revenues brought in by the festival. This year, Halleran said, the college decided it just couldn’t carry the event any longer.
“It’s an ugly choice when you have to decide between the festival and offering more sections of dance or drama,” he said.
Wiley said she felt sad about the festival’s end. “Having just finished this year’s event, it feels even more poignant because we had such a positive response,” she said. “People had heard the rumors that this was the last one and were expressing their disappointment to me.”
She will be returning to full-time teaching in the Dance Program this fall. Her only full-time employee, Risa Morgan, will stay on through September to wrap things up and then hopes to find another position on campus.
“When we started the festival, one of our goals was to invigorate collaboration on campus, and I think we did that,” Wiley said. “A lot of people met others they hadn’t known before and some artistic unions were formed that are going to continue.”
She added that the festival also made campus arts more visible to members of the surrounding community and to the press.
“It was a wonderful event and Hannah Wiley did a superb job as its director,” Halleran said. “It generated a lot of energy and brought us some wonderful performances and exhibits. We’re all sorry to see it go.”
