Martin Vinik holds a B.A. from Tufts University in theatre and an M.A. from the Program in Arts Administration at Columbia University. He began his career as an actor, director, and designer and started working in arts management, both leading his own theatre company and as an independent consultant, in the 1970s. His early clients, including New York City's Theatre Development Fund, the Massachusetts Department of Education, and Jerzy Grotowski's Objective Drama Program at UC Irvine, reflected the wide range of his interests in both the performing and visual arts.
He joined the consulting firm Roger Morgan Studio in 1982, where during 18 years as Director of Planning Services he built a specialized practice in long-range and capital planning in the arts. He was in charge of architectural programming and concept planning for all RMS projects and developed programs and planning studies for hundreds of them: nonprofit and commercial presenting houses, Broadway and Off-Broadway theatres, nonprofit resident theatres, symphony halls, and major arts centers across the US, in Canada, and overseas.
He was also in charge of the firm’s management consulting portfolio, supervising financial feasibility, economic impact, and long-range and strategic planning studies for such clients as the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. He is an authority on arts and cultural district planning and has been involved in the development of some of the most successful arts district projects in the U.S., including the 42nd Street
Redevelopment Project in New York City, Pittsburgh’s Downtown Cultural District, Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts, and the Grand Center Arts District in St. Louis. Mr. Vinik left RMS in 2001 to create Martin Vinik Planning for the Arts LLC, building a unique consulting firm with a broad international profile.
Since 1988, he has served as a core faculty member of the Program in Arts Administration at Columbia University, where he teaches Principles and Practice of Performing Arts Administration and Business Policy and Planning for Arts Managers. He has given seminars and policy workshops around the world for such organizations as the Arts Leadership Institute in New York City, the National Arts Council of Singapore, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and Chinese University of Hong Kong (as the Asian Cultural Council’s 2007-08 Credit Suisse Arts Management Fellow), where his workshops in cultural districts and urban planning coincided with his consultancy for the Hong Kong government on the proposed West Kowloon Cultural District and culminated with his speech at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, “Cultural Districts and Urban Planning: Can We Serve Business and Art at the Same Time?”
His past students run arts centers, museums, theatres, ballet companies, symphony orchestras, galleries, arts councils, ministries of culture, and consulting firms across the US and in more than 35 other countries.
CLAUDIA ZELEVANSKY
CONSULTANT EMERITUS
Ms. Zelevansky holds a BS from Northwestern University in Performance Studies and an MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama and has worked with MVPA since 2012, when she joined as an Associate.
Her professional career in the performing arts spans more than fifteen years and includes post in senior management, academia, and research. Her directing credits include more than 35 resident theatre productions at such theatres as the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, the The Flea in New York, and the Dallas Theatre Center. She worked at the Manhattan Theatre Club and the Joseph Papp Public Theatre for such directors as Lynne Meadow, Mary Zimmerman, and Nicholas Martin. She was the Associate Artistic Director of the Dallas Theater Center until 2004, where she worked with Education, Marketing, and Development as well as serving as director on numerous productions. Ms. Zelevansky has taught acting and directing at Yale University, CUNY’s Queens College, and at Oberlin College and served as Senior Research Associate at Columbia University’s Research Center for Arts and Culture before joining MVPA as a planner and operations analyst.
Claudia has recently joined The Mercury Store, an arts incubator in Brooklyn devoted to developing theatre directors, but she continues to work with MVPA and collaborate on existing and new endeavors.