The 2005 Arts Festival

For those of you who missed it, the 2005 Yeshiva University Arts Festival has dominated the last two weeks on campus, from a flamenco concert to Elizabethan drama, from poetry and prose readings to a Shabaton. Dean Norman Adler and the Joyce Jesionowski launched the festival six years ago in an effort to promote the arts on campus. Previous festivals allowed students to showcase their work in the fine arts, photography, poetry, prose, music and the dramatic arts. This year's festival upheld that tradition of providing a platform for student artwork, but it also pioneered an unprecedented trajectory of involving alumni participation as well as that of those outside the YU extended family.

Working with University Director of Alumni Affairs Robert R. Saltzman, the festival staff invited YU alumni to submit work to the fine arts exhibit. The festival staff also invited Jay Michaels, artistic director of the Genesis Repertory Ensemble, to direct the theater night, which included a reading of the Yorkshire Tragedy-once believed to be penned by Shakespeare-and an opening act by a Stern College professor, who played Elizabethan era compositions. On the Shabaton, I moderated a panel with three artists: Boston-based painter, Tom Barron; my co-columnist at the Jewish Press and painter in his own right, Richard McBee; and Canadian painter, Chashi Skobac. The festival also opened with a concert of Sephardi music with renowned guitarist Gerard Edery.

These delegations of out-of-house artistic involvement joined with a series of workshops. One trip visited the Urban Glass studio in Brooklyn, and students received a tour of the glass blowing facilities. Another event involved visiting Ceramic Supply, the largest ceramic tool distributor in the Northeast.

All these "extras" would never have been possible without the great support of the Yeshiva College Dean's Office. The festival, though titled the Yeshiva University Arts Festival, perhaps ought to be titled the Yeshiva College Dean's Office Festival; though other facets of the institution did contribute funds to the festival, the administrative and organizational planning really came mostly from Assistant Dean Fred Sugarman and Dean Adler. While in previous years there was definitely positive theoretical interest in the festival from the YU administration, this year the deans actually sported a can-do, pragmatic attitude that allowed student organizers the space they needed to plan new things, while also providing funding and advice when necessary. Under Sugarman's successful navigation of the channels that be at YU-I daresay he has learnt the ropes quite quickly-the festival increased its operating funding by more than double its previous resources.

From the student end Aaron Roller and Yael Dubrovsky chaired the uptown and midtown aspects of the festival respectively. Both showed enlightenment and maturity ensuring that I was not involved at all administratively.

If this the description of these arts festival events doesn't ring a bell for you, don't worry you are in the majority. A wonderful sounding recipe for a totally successful arts festival, it was missing one main ingredient: you. The events, though properly funded, were under-attended. The alumni work followed suit with only two submissions, and it generally reassured me that a connection to YU provides the necessary muse, and when people leave this glorious institution they cease to find the inspiration that YU so elegantly provides. Further, only two alumni submitted their work. The apathy on campus seems endemic to YU, for even the alumni don't seem to want to take a stake in the arts on campus.

The problem, for a change, is that the administration has finally started to support the arts, but the students are notably absent; I would especially like to highlight that Dean David Himber submitted a painting to the arts exhibit. I won't dare suggest that YU will be so daring as to hire a full times arts staff uptown. I won't dare suggest that Stern College align itself with a real arts school and offer more courses like the Jewish Art one that they offer. Until Modern Orthodoxy wants more for itself than doctors and lawyers and decides to support the arts, this festival is as good as it will get.

And, all things considered, that's pretty darn good. Even with low attendance, the Arts Festival managed to reach hundreds of students. Between all the people who submitted art work, listened to poems, danced to the music, the festival was hardly a flop. But when free concerts don't get filled, free refreshments are left over after events and buses to events are sparsely populated, it may take a change in the atmosphere for the campus to meet the Arts Festival on the higher ground established this year.

The administration has come to the table and sat down. The money is there. I can only hope that the students and the alumni realize they now have a friend of the arts in the current administration and they capitalize on it next year and the next year.