Howard Sherman Named Managing Director of Baruch Performing Arts Center

Howard Sherman has been appointed Managing Director of the Baruch Performing Arts Center. Jessica Lang, Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York system, made the announcement following his year of service as Interim Managing Director of BPAC. During that first year, Sherman oversaw the reopening of the facility in May 2022; it had been fully closed since March 2020.

BPAC is a professional center which consists of two adjacent venues: the 200-seat Nagelberg Theatre and the 175-seat Engelman Recital Hall, located in Baruch's Newman Vertical Campus at 25th Street and Lexington Avenue in the heart of Manhattan's Flatiron District. The facility hosts a variety of presented and co-presented work, and is regularly rented out by outside arts organizations, playing host to drama, music, dance, opera, and spoken word events for both single performances and multi-week runs. A third BPAC venue, the 1,100-seat Mason Hall auditorium, is currently offline due to planned construction work in the building in which it sits, but is set to reopen in August 2024.

Of his full appointment at BPAC, Sherman said, "I look forward to building out a full season of presented work for 2023-24 and to reconnecting BPAC with the broadest mix of work from the creative community, in service of Baruch students, the school, the Flatiron neighborhood, and New York City at large."

Howard Sherman is a veteran arts administrator, having served as executive director of the American Theatre Wing, executive director of the O'Neill Theater Center, managing director of Geva Theater, general manager of Goodspeed Musicals, and public relations director of Hartford Stage; he was also interim director of Inclusion in the Arts. In addition to his role within performing arts organizations, Sherman regularly writes about the arts, having been the US columnist for The Stage newspaper in London since 2012, and his articles have appeared in American Theatre magazine, The Guardian, Theatermania, and TDF Stages, among others. He is a widely recognized advocate against censorship and for artists rights; his work was recognized in 2015 with the Defender Award from the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund. His book, Another Days Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century, was published in 2021 by Methuen Drama.

The next major presentation at BPAC will be a co-presentation of Heartbeat Opera's spring season, featuring Tosca and Lady M in repertory. For more information on BPAC and its programs, visit https://bpac.baruch.cuny.edu/.