The Career in the Arts panel is held twice a year during the fall and spring semesters at the university and aims to educate not only art majors but anyone interested in succeeding in the world of the arts. Held at One Pace Plaza in room W614 from 6:15 to 7:45 Tuesday October 9th, this year’s panelists included Sara Reisman, director of NYC department of cultural affairs Percent for Art programs, Naomi Hersson-Ringskog, executive director of No Longer Empty, and Anna Harsanyi, administrative assistant for A Blade of Grass.
Sarah Resimen, director of NYC Department of Cultural affairs, works with major construction projects in the city that devote at least 1 percent of their budget toward art related programs in the construction. Naomi Hersson-Ringskog is the executive director of No Longer Empty, a group that rents out temporarily abandoned buildings and uses them for art projects. Anna Harsanyi is the Administrative assistant for A Blade of Grass and brings her expertise in breaking into the art industry as a recent college graduate.
Every Career in the Arts panel brings an impressive group of panelists who have all done great things in their fields. Panelists are chosen by either being professionals in their craft, fresh out of college students that have found success early in life and anyone else who is willing to offer their experience breaking into the incredibly diverse field of the arts. For students that inquire there is a private dinner allowing students to personally converse with the speakers. Past panels have featured such topics as animation to film editing and journalism, with panelists offering their expertise to students.
The Career in the Arts is the brain child of Jane Dickson, artist in residence at the university and a majority of the speakers are good friends of Dickson. Dickson expressed a great interest in the success of her students and the growing arts program at Pace. The panel focuses on a wide range of careers in the arts with the spring panel to be focused on careers in design featuring a former university student who has found a career designing brand name glasses. The wide variety and ever changing panel topics is meant to allow attendants a view at how to break into the industry that interests them and still do what they love.
“There isn’t a clear path in the arts. If we have a panelist come here and talk how he made it in the 1950’s the information’s useless to our students. I try to get the boss to explain what they want out of their employees, then someone who is fresh out of college breaking in and doing well and just anyone willing to share how they made it,” Dickson said.
When asked about the future of the panel, Dickson said “I have plans on trying to make this into a class, getting people to come more often and with a varying degree of skills so more students are able to learn from professionals.” Due to the lack of a clear path in the arts, it is more difficult for the career center to help students and these panels allow for those who have been there trying to break in to share and explain how different it is to get a job in the arts. “I have had friends who get so many resumes for art related jobs that they only look for ones that stand out and read those. The ones with interesting fonts, strange covers, anything that catches your eye when you look at it and isn’t the standard tan envelope.”
This year’s panel will be recorded and available at a later date. The past year was recorded and a majority of it can be listened to upon request from the art department.
