The Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy

About The Center

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Curb Center Staff

Committee of Advisors

Mike Curb Creative Campus Program

Arts Industries Policy Forum

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

Bill Ivey, Director

Bill Ivey is the Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, an arts policy research center with offices in Nashville, Tennessee and Washington, DC. He also directs the Center’s program for senior government, the Arts Industries Policy Forum. Ivey also served as Senior Consultant to Leadership Music, a music industry professional development program, and is currently President of the American Folklore Society. He chairs the board of the National Recording Preservation Foundation, a federally-chartered foundation affiliated with the Library of Congress, and is board chairman of WPLN, Nashville Public Radio. He is the co-editor, with Steven J. Tepper, of Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation in America's Cultural Life (Routledge, 2008). His book about the public interest and America’s cultural system, Arts, Inc: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights, was published by the University of California Press in May, 2008.

From May, 1998 through September, 2001, Ivey served as the seventh Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal cultural agency. Following years of controversy and significant reductions to the NEA budget, Ivey’s leadership is credited with restoring Congressional confidence in the work of the NEA. Ivey’s Challenge America Initiative, launched in 1999, has to date garnered more than $20 million in new Congressional appropriations for the Arts Endowment.

Prior to government service, Ivey was director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee. He was twice elected board chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS). Ivey holds degrees in History, Folklore, and Ethnomusicology, as well as honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan, Michigan Technological University, Wayne State University, and Indiana University. He is a four-time Grammy Award nominee (Best Album Notes category), and is the author of numerous articles on U.S. cultural policy, and folk and popular music.

Email: heather.lefkowitz@vanderbilt.edu

Steven Tepper, Associate Director

Steven J. Tepper is associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy and assistant professor in the department of sociology at Vanderbilt. Previously Tepper served as the deputy director of the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies and lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Sociology.

Tepper is the co-editor, with Bill Ivey, of Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation in America's Cultural Life (Routledge, 2008). He is currently working on a book which assesses 900 cases of struggles over art, education, and culture in 75 American cities during the 1990’s. He has published articles on the sociology of art, cultural policy, and democracy in journals such as Review of Policy Research, Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, and International Journal of Cultural Policy.

Tepper holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and Latin America from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; a master’s in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; and a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University. Additionally, he has served as a consultant to numerous institutions including the National Humanities Center, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, and many foundations.

Email: steven.j.tepper@vanderbilt.edu

Paula Cleggett, Associate Director for Policy

Paula Cleggett is the associate director for policy at the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. After serving as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s deputy associate administrator for public affairs for six years, she joined Vanderbilt's Office of Federal Relations in Washington, DC, primarily supporting the Curb Center.

She manages the Curb Center’s major initiative, the Arts Industries Policy Forum. A seminar series for senior Congressional and Administration staff, the Forum examines public policy issues affecting the arts industry.

Cleggett monitors and reports on federal policy, legislative and regulatory actions that might impact the national arts/cultural scene. Her work includes public affairs activities involving a variety of DC actors, including the news media, think tanks, national associations, philanthropic organizations, the Executive Branch and Congress.

Cleggett's experience with the arts covers a wide spectrum. During her time at NASA, she worked with the arts and entertainment industries, including the IMAX Corporation in their production of large-format space movies as well as Hollywood studios as they created space-themed feature movies, such as Space Cowboys and Deep Impact. Cleggett's experience at NASA also includes the management of NASA's extensive fine arts program, a collection of hundreds of specially commissioned paintings. Under her leadership, the collection was expanded to include to poetry, musical compositions, and Web art.

Cleggett received a bachelor’s degree in art education from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, and a master’s in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Email: paula.cleggett@vanderbilt.edu

Elizabeth Long Lingo, Research Associate

Elizabeth Long Lingo is a Research Associate at the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University . Elizabeth completed her Ph.D. in Harvard University ’s joint program in Organizational Behavior and Sociology. Her work bridges applied research on negotiations with ethnographic research on how market-based projects are managed in practice. Elizabeth conducted a two-year study of Country music producers and has developed a theory of nexus work to explain how producers manage and integrate the relationships, resources, and perspectives of the multiple actors involved in their Country music projects. Findings from this study may be generalizable to other types of nexus actors engaged in market-based projects in cultural industries.

Elizabeth was recognized as a graduate fellow at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School in 2003-2004. She has consulted to Fortune 500 companies on issues of trust, risk taking and speaking up. Additionally, Elizabeth has taught MBA Negotiations at the Owen Business School and has written teaching cases and notes for Harvard Business School and the University of Michigan . She is currently preparing her work for publication.

Email: elizabeth.long.lingo@vanderbilt.edu