Reporter Volume 25, No.24 April 14, 1994

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Bureau Staff
Kerry Grant, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Letters at UB, has
announced the appointment of Robert E. Chumbley as director of the UB
Fine Arts Center. Chumbley currently serves as executive and artistic
director of the Lied Center for the Performing Arts at the University
of Nebraska, a position he has held since December, 1989. He will
begin work here in mid-May.
Chumbley will be the first director of the $50 million UB center,
which houses the university's Departments of Theatre and Dance, Art,
and Media Study, plus a number of public performance, presentation and
exhibition venues. The latter include an 1,800-seat theater, a
400-seat drama theater, black box theaters, screening rooms and two
exhibition galleries.
The center is currently occupied by the three academic departments.
Its public performance and presentation spaces will open officially
this fall.
In his new position Chumbley is expected to develop the center's
long-range direction through broad-based, comprehensive consultation
with the arts community both on and off campus.
He will be responsible for collaborative and interdisciplinary
programming that enhances and augments the activities of the
university's performing arts departments. He also will oversee the
selection and presentation of outside productions to attract audiences
from the surrounding community.
Chumbley's additional duties include fundraising and audience
development, educational outreach, and the coordination of center
activities with those of other community arts groups. He will
supervise the center staff, including direct supervision of its
business manager, events coordinator, facilities manager, and
marketing and technical directors.
In addition to his 12-year career in arts administration, Chumbley is
a composer and associate professor of music composition at the
University of Nebraska at Lincoln. His work has been commissioned by
the Omaha Symphony, Piedmont Opera Theater/Opera America, the American
String Quartet, the North Carolina Symphony and other groups.
In conjunction with his appointment, Chumbley will direct a major new
festival of contemporary music at UB, where he will be a tenured
associate professor of arts and letters. His wife, Shirley, an
assistant professor of music at Nebraska-Lincoln, has accepted a
position as visiting associate professor of music at the university.
As the first director of the Lied Center, Chumbley devised an eclectic
programming mix that, in its premiere season, included international
celebrities such as Isaac Stern and the Philadelphia Orchestra, local
talent like Opera/Omaha's production of "Madame Butterfly," classical
dance, a production of the Broadway musical "Les Mis
rables" and Japan's exotic Grand Kabuki and Kodo drummers.
The Lied's varied programming has continued with an emphasis on
classical forms, orchestral and ensemble presentations and weekend
performances that, for the past few seasons, have drawn large
audiences, including many from outside the Lincoln area.
The Lied Center, which is funded almost entirely by sources outside
the University of Nebraska, is largely dependent on audience revenues
for its operation, a fact that Chumbley says is reflected in its
programming.
He sees his primary mission here to be different from his role at the
Lied Center. At UB, he expects to promote the advancement of various
art forms by commissioning and presenting new work, establishing
resident performance companies, promoting interdisciplinary projects
with artists on and off campus, and other efforts in support of UB's
academic programs in the fine arts.
"The synergism that arises from getting UB's academic arts units
together on one campus and in one building is enormous and potentially
very productive," Chumbley says.
"By working with the campus community to bring important artistic
residencies to the center to advance the education of students," he
says, "we will not only expand our opportunity to present unusual work
to various audiences, but strengthen the likelihood that campus
artists will produce important collaborative work."
Like the residencies, new artistic commissions, he says, are also
likely to stimulate creative activity among students and faculty, and
perhaps focus greater national attention on UB's fine arts programs.
"We will, of course, also present work that appeals to a broad
audience," he says, "but I'd like this audience to be introduced to
new work when they come to the center. I'd like them to meet and
become comfortable with art forms they might not expect to enjoy."
Grant says the new Fine Arts Center "will fundamentally alter the
future of the fine and performing arts programs at UB."
"Not only will there be an integration of center programming with the
academic programming of our arts departments," he says, "but it is our
expectation that the center will draw its support from arts students
and faculty, from those at UB outside the campus arts community, and
from the greater Buffalo community.
"That," he says, "is the essential justification for the existence of
the Fine Arts Center on the Amherst Campus. The investment should--and
I think already hasQyielded a dramatic enhancement to the breadth and
quality of art activities at UB."
"The center's enlarged programming has a distinctive mission: to
present a public face for the arts and humanities here. Much of the
work that will be presented here will be esoteric and 'cutting-edge',"
Grant says. 
Chumbley holds a master's degree from the Juilliard School of Music
and was director of cultural affairs at Appalachian State University,
a member institution of the University of North Carolina, from
1985-90. In that role, he served as chief development and promotional
officer for the university's College of Fine and Applied Arts and its
School of Music.
While at Appalachian, he served as first artistic director of the arts
festival, "An Appalachian Summer," commissioning new works in several
media for presentation during the celebration. He was also responsible
for programming performing arts events during the academic year and
for teaching courses in arts administration and marketing and in
interdisciplinary multi-media art and performance.
From 1982-85, Chumbley was executive director of the Chopin Foundation
of the U.S., Inc., a private foundation that supports young American
musicians in the period between the completion of their academic
preparation and the launch of their professional careers.
As composer-in-residence with the North Carolina Symphony from
1987-91, Chumbley fulfilled two orchestral commissions for premiere by
the orchestra and advised in the programming of 20th century music. He
also served as composer-in-residence with "An Appalachian Summer," the
Nestle Musical Encounters Festival and France's MANCA Festival for
Contemporary Music and Entrecasteaux Festival.
From 1984 to the present, he has served as artistic director of the
Broyhill Chamber Ensemble, which he also founded. Chumbley serves as a
pianist/composer with the group, programs performances and recordings,
coordinates the ensemble's concerts bookings and oversees guest
artistic participation.
Chumbley is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation grant and a
Composer Fellow Prize from both the North Carolina Arts Council and
the Nebraska Arts Council. He was a panelist for the National
Endowment for the Arts in 1991-92 and has been associated with a
number of arts organizations in Nebraska.
He is a member of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, the
International Society of Performing Arts Administrators, Opera
America, Chamber Music America and the American Music Center.