President Barack Obama has nominated Emil J. Kang, executive director for the arts and professor of the practice of music at Carolina, to become a member of the National Council on the Arts.
The National Council on the Arts advises the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, who also chairs the council, on agency policies and programs. The 14-member council reviews and makes recommendations to the chair on applications for grants, funding guidelines and leadership initiatives. Presidential appointments to the council, by law, are selected for their widely recognized knowledge of the arts or their expertise or profound interest in the arts. They have records of distinguished service or achieved eminence in the arts and are appointed so as to represent equitably all geographical areas of the country.
Pending confirmation by the Senate, Kang will serve a six-year term on the council.
Kang came to UNC in January 2005 as the University’s first executive director for the arts, a senior administrative post created to help unify and elevate the performing arts at the University. In his first season, Kang introduced the University’s first major performing arts series, Carolina Performing Arts, inaugurated in conjunction with the grand re-opening of the University’s main venue, Memorial Hall. Kang co-teaches courses in artistic entrepreneurship and the creative process.
Previously, Kang served as president and executive director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He has also held positions with the Seattle Symphony and the American Composers Orchestra and was an Orchestra Management Fellow with the League of American Orchestras. Kang is secretary of the Board of Directors of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and is a member of both the Nominating Committee of the International Society for the Performing Arts and Board of Advisors of the Kenan Institute for the Arts at the UNC School of the Arts. Kang earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Rochester.