Meet the New Director of the Performing Arts Program

We recently sat down with Robert van Leer, the new Performing Arts Program Director at the Hewlett Foundation, for a Q&A to hear more about him, what excites him about the Bay Area arts ecosystem, and where he sees challenges and opportunities.  

In your professional career, what are you most proud of?

In many ways, I’ve been proud of the journey I’ve been privileged to take. I’ve worked for some of the best-known places and had these incredible roles, starting at Lincoln Center, then my years at the Barbican Center followed by my years at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. I’ve been able to work with amazing people and do the most wonderful work across art forms with amazing artists and incredible communities. It’s hard to pick just one thing when it’s really that whole journey that’s led me here. 

Having said that, I am very proud of the work we did in D.C. to establish the Social Impact team, including the amazing festival we planned in September of 2019 to open the REACH, the first-ever expansion of the Kennedy Center with a dozen indoor and outdoor performance spaces. I can still remember the energy at the festival with two weeks of free activity, presenting local, national, and international artists celebrating a broad spectrum of forms led by artists including Robert Glasper, Kronos Quartet, Angelique Kidjo, Renee Fleming, and many more.

In my career, I’ve mostly worked with large groups of people who really wanted to change the world of the arts and make it better, and that’s always been exciting — what does that mean? How does that change over the decades? How does it manifest itself in terms of what we put on stage, how we work with community, how we work with artists, how we work with the larger field?  

What first made you interested in performing arts?

I was a music geek in school, and I became a theater geek in high school because they needed boys, so they recruited from the band since it was the same teacher overseeing the band and the annual theatrical production in my high school. I remember very clearly the first time my classmates and I were taken to the opera. Rochester, New York, had a small opera company. I think they did one or two productions a year. We were taken to see Carmen, and I had never been to the opera. I remember it very distinctly because of course it brought together the theatricality, the music — all of it. And it was all very new to me. I just remember it opened my eyes to a whole other world.  

I then began joining amateur theatrical groups downtown, building sets, stage managing, singing in the chorus and things of that type, and one summer I was able to join a professional summer company as an unpaid intern and was able to work with professional teachers and coaches. We did Sam Shepard, Sondheim, Shakespeare, and Sheridan — and my eyes were truly wide open. 

And then I went to Carnegie Mellon and became an actor/singer. That brought me to New York, and it was there that I discovered the other side of the arts — that you could still be in the arts but not be on stage. I got my first temp job at Lincoln Center in the early 90s and then I never looked back.  

What about the Bay Area arts ecosystem excites you? 

It’s just its sheer diversity — from small, local organizations to some of the world’s best-known ensembles and companies, incredible festivals. It has an incredibly diverse population, which is reflected in its cultural offerings. I think that’s what drew me here. There’s something for everyone, no matter what your taste is or to whatever extent you want to participate. It’s just such a rich cultural scene.  

I’m excited to learn more about the local landscape. I came to San Francisco several times to meet some of the bigger companies we would present in London at the Barbican, but I’m really keen to learn more about the local scene, the neighborhood cultural offerings across the 10 counties we serve, the grassroots scene, the amateur and professional scene. I want to learn more about what happens day to day in the cultural communities of the Bay Area.  

What drew you to this role at Hewlett?

I never in a million years dreamt that I would get the opportunity to be part of policymaking strategy in terms of the grantmaking and supporting the field. I’ve been leading and raising money for over three decades for arts organizations, so I have a great understanding and appreciation for how hard it has always been and how it’s gotten harder in the last five or more years to run an organization, to raise the funds every year, to make it all work. It’s hard work. I am excited to consider the long-term trends and opportunities as our field changes, grows in new directions, and considers new models for building and sharing a more balanced and equitable future.   

Now, from the funder side, I get to think about what helps move the arts forward, what might make it grow, what helps it to expand, what helps it be safe for the future, what helps it represent a wide variety of voices. And it’s such a privilege and opportunity. And to work alongside such great colleagues here at the foundation who work on things like democracy, gender equity, and the environment. I’m a big believer that the arts are interconnected to the broader world and our cultures; it can be a kind of open forum for discovery and learning of many kinds.   

What are the biggest challenges you see for the performing arts field and what role do you envision for philanthropy? 

The arts are in a period of powerful change, and stresses accompany that change.  Organizations across the country are struggling with changes to funding models, audience behavior, the socio-political climate, dynamics related to equity and justice, and rising costs.  

The arts play a vital role in creating a shared dialogue and cultural safe space around the issues facing our families and communities. We need that now more than perhaps ever before. And philanthropy plays a key role in not only addressing the immediate challenges the field faces but also leading, supporting, and co-creating the environment that allows the field to flourish in the long term.