Emil Kang Joins Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as Program Director for Arts and Cultural Heritage
NEW YORK, NY, JULY 9, 2019 – The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced the appointment of Emil Kang as Program Director for Arts and Cultural Heritage. In this role, Kang will lead the Foundation’s grantmaking program that seeks to nurture exceptional creative accomplishment, scholarship, and art conservation practices while promoting a diverse and sustainable ecosystem for the arts.
Kang will be joining Mellon from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he has served as Executive and Artistic Director of Carolina Performing Arts (CPA), a program he founded and built into one of the nation’s largest and leading university-based performing arts programs. Kang has driven change and growth through the arts across the University, programming thousands of artists, commissioning dozens of new works, and championing new scholarship on the arts. He will join the Foundation on October 1, 2019.
“Throughout his career, Emil Kang has understood the role culture can play in making communities more imaginative and connected to each other and the world through the power of creativity,” said Elizabeth Alexander, president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. “He shares Mellon’s fundamental understanding of art and culture as central to flourishing societies."
Kang said, “I am deeply honored to join the Mellon Foundation, an institution I have long admired for its willingness to invest in bold and innovative artistic endeavors. At UNC, these endeavors have always been grounded in the capacity of the arts to spark curiosity. In doing so, we encourage members of our community to discover and more deeply engage with the world and with each other. I look forward to working with President Alexander and distinguished colleagues to help continue their transformational work across the country and around the world...