Michael Kaiser
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Michael Martin Kaiser, is the President of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (which is also known as the Kennedy Center) in Washington, DC.
Kaiser received his B.A. in Economics from Brandeis University and his S.M. from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1977. [1] He had previously considered a career in vocal performance, but, in his mid-twenties, former a successful business consultancy -- Kaiser Associates, Inc. (http://www.kaiserassociates.com) -- which continues to operate out of Washington, D.C. Michael Kaiser left the consultancy in 1985. At that point, he began to work for arts organizations including the State Ballet of Missouri, the Pierpoint Morgan Library, and the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Foundation.
By 1994 he had formed his own arts management consultancy with clients who included the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa; the following year saw him become Executive Director of the American Ballet Theatre.
He came to the Kennedy Center in 2001 from the General Directorship of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London with a reputation for major fund raising and building relationships with donors including Alberto Vilar and Vivien Duffield. He had been brought in to manage to financially collapsing opera house in September 1998 and oversaw the House's significant re-construction prior to its 2000 re-opening.
At the Kennedy Center he oversees all the artistic activities, and has increased the Center’s already broad educational efforts, established cross-disciplinary programming with opera, symphony and dance, established an "Institute for Arts Management", created unprecedented theater festivals celebrating the works of Stephen Sondheim and Tennessee Williams, and arranged for continuing visits by Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater Opera, Ballet, and Orchestra, and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
In January of 2006, the Kennedy Center launched a new website, http://artsmanager.org, dedicated to providing resources for arts managers. The site contains materials built upon Michael Kaiser's experiences and the management philosophy he has developed, and includes case studies and an Ask ArtsManager section where questions can be submitted for answers by experts in various areas of the field of arts management.
