What do Claremont Graduate University (CGU), the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, and actress Meryl Streep all have in common?
Two words: Laura Zucker.
A longtime champion of the arts in Southern California and nationally, Zucker has been named the director of CGU’s Center for Business & Management of the Arts (CBMArts), which prepares students for careers in nonprofit and for-profit arts organizations of all disciplines.
Zucker, the former executive director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission (now the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture), succeeds Jonathan Neil, who said Zucker’s blend of insider and outsider expertise is perfect for her new role.
“Laura is a great pick to lead CBMArts,” said Neil, who has led the program since 2015. “She directed our arts management program for seven years and knows all the players at CGU. And as the Arts Commission’s executive director, she knows all the players in L.A.’s arts sector, too. She’s an exceptional educator and will serve our community very well.”
CGU’s arts business and management program was still in its infancy when Zucker first agreed in 2008 to direct—and teach in—the program while serving as the county commission’s executive director.
“I’ve always believed in this program,” she said, “and I’ve been invested in it from the beginning. So it’s really an honor now to come back and lead it.”
Leading in the Creative Capital of the World
Los Angeles is one of just three U.S. cities (the others are New York City and San Francisco) that are considered “arts super cities,” with very high concentrations of artists relative to the rest of the population. Zucker explained that artists and art organizations are an integral part of L.A.’s economic engine, which is why “arts education is so critically needed now.”
For her, CBMArts is ideally positioned both geographically and in its academic programming to respond to that need.
“A significant motivation for many students who choose CGU’s arts management programs is the fact that we are located in the creative capital of the world,” she said. “What they find here are opportunities to concretely innovate in the field and have a significant impact on cultural life, not only in our region but across the world.”
That word “impact” also describes Zucker’s career in the creative industries, including her 25-year tenure with the county commission. She created and oversaw the civic art policy for the county and directed the funding for more than 400 arts organizations.
Zucker’s county work touched on a wide range of priorities, from restoring arts education to all 81 of the county’s public school districts to creating a strategic plan for cultural equity and inclusion and building the most extensive paid internship program in the arts in the country for undergraduates through a public-private partnership with the Getty Trust.
Zucker is especially proud of that internship program, which today employs more than 275 students every summer and enables them to build networks and pursue careers in arts management.
“I have always called paid internships the secret sauce of the arts engine in LA.,” she said. “There was no place for undergraduate students in the arts internship program to go on to graduate work before the program with CGU started, and we were losing them to other parts of the country. Today, CBMArts has become an important pipeline for these undergraduates to pursue mission-driven careers.”
Helping Artists Do What They Do
Scratch the surface of any arts administrator, she says, and you’ll find an artist. It was true for her. In the early 1970s, Zucker felt an inner calling to be an actor and attended the Yale School of Drama.
But what changed her career trajectory was actress Meryl Streep.
Streep was one of Zucker’s classmates at Yale, and “it was clear to me,” she recalled, “that she was wildly more talented than I was and was being cast in all the plum roles I wanted. That’s what got me thinking that I should be directing instead”—until the department’s head told her women couldn’t be directors.
Frustrated, Zucker left Yale to pursue a directing career, which in turn led her to producing and managing a theater. Her experiences gave her an epiphany about the many opportunities open to artists.
“It’s only after working as an artist that you begin to realize there are myriad other interesting career options,” she says. “Many artists discover that it can be just as
creative to serve in a leadership role and enable other artists to do what they do.”
That experience also gave Zucker a sensitivity to the discrimination that can take place in the arts industry (which is why one of her last initiatives with the county commission was a strategic plan for equity and inclusion mentioned earlier).
“Although I don’t have the lived experience many have had in not having access to opportunities in arts and culture, as a young woman, I experienced gender disparity directly,” she says. “I think that’s one of the most important things our program at CBMArts addresses. We have an incredibly diverse student body and faculty. The future of arts and culture in our country and the world is going to be about the acceptance and valuing of all cultural traditions.”
The Power of Alumni
One of the new efforts now underway to increase the visibility of CBMArts is a special series of alumni panels highlighting the program’s many outstanding graduates.
For Zucker, who has been involved with the program since its beginning, its alumni community is one of its most valuable assets.
“When I started with the program, it was nascent, and we had no alumni to speak of,” she says, “but now one of the joys I have is seeing all the amazing places where our alumni are working. These special panel events are going to help everyone see the possibilities of what can be done with this degree.”
Learn more about Claremont Graduate University (CGU) at cgu.edu.
