Bernie Schultz, dean of the West Virginia University College of Creative Arts, is the recipient of the 2006 Governor’s Award for Arts Leadership and Service, the governor’s office has announced.
Schultz will accept the award during a special event April 3 at the Cultural Center in Charleston . The Arts Leadership and Service Award recognizes exceptional and visionary leadership and service to the arts by an individual or arts organization.
In addition to being dean, Schultz is a professor of art history at WVU and director of the Creative Arts Center . He is one of six West Virginians to receive one of the governor’s arts awards this year.
I feel that this award should be shared with many fine people,he said.I am privileged to work with visionary and dedicated colleagues in the College of Creative Arts , a senior University administration which values and supports the roles of the arts in higher education and in the fabric of our community, and a number of truly professional artists and arts administrators throughout our state. This is an exciting time for the arts in West Virginia , and I am honored to be part of it.
Schultz earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in art history from the University of Pittsburgh , where years later he was named a Frick Fine Arts Distinguished Alumnus.
His teaching career brought him to WVU in 1977 as an art professor specializing in Italian Renaissance art and art history survey classes. He is the author of the widely reviewedArt and Anatomy in the Italian Renaissanceand co-author ofArt Past/Art Present,a publication that is currently in its fifth edition and has received wide acclaim for breaking new ground in introductory texts in the study of art. The book is used by thousands of college students across the United States .
He has lectured on art history throughout the state and the surrounding region and has been a popular speaker for the past 20 years at national conferences and meetings of artists, designers, educators, physicians and historians, as well as at art museums and educational institutions. His biography is included in International Leaders in Achievement (1988) and Who’s Who in American Art (1986 and subsequent editions).
In the five years since Schultz became dean, he has overseen the expansion of international programs for students in the college, including highly successful programs in China , Germany , Italy and Mexico .
He spearheaded the $11 million renovation of the CAC ’s major performing spaces in 2004 and supervised a highly successful capital campaign that raised more than $15.4 million and led to two endowed professorships and more than 80 new scholarships.
The college also received two major Benedum Foundation awards, which allow it to conduct summer institutes for teacher education in the arts.
In addition, he is currently working to establish an art museum adjacent to the CAC that will serve the University, the Morgantown community and the surrounding region.
Schultz has advocated outreach by college faculty to the citizens of West Virginia and partnerships with professional arts organizations, including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Oglebay Institute in Wheeling and the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences in Charleston .
He is also an active member of the arts community and currently serves on the boards of directors of Arts Monongahela, the Metropolitan Theatre Foundation and West Virginia Public Theatre.
As part of hisDissolving Borders Project,the college is developing greater connections between West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania . The college also has a special relationship with the Greenbrier Valley Theatre in Lewisburg that provides performing opportunities for faculty and students.
For the past 20 years, Schultz has conducted numerous Italian art tours for students, faculty and the general public. These tours have allowed the participants not only to experience the rich history of art in cities such as Rome , Florence , Venice and Milan , but also to understand how the arts are woven into the daily life in each city.