July 2023 Member Office Hour

Nora Halpern

We invite all members to join us for this hour-long conversation with Nora Halpern, VP of Leadership Alliances at Americans for the Arts (AFTA) and newly appointed member of the President’s Committee on Arts and the Humanities (PCAH).  

After a brief overview of her 22 years at Americans for the Arts, Nora hopes to hear your thoughts on how the arts can best be advanced through the work of Americans for the Arts, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and our collective work across the country. 

Here are some questions to consider:  

• What are pressing arts issues in your community?
• What do you think the Biden Administration should prioritize within the arts and humanities sectors? 
• What would change look like? 

About Nora 

Art historian, museum director, and curator Nora has spent her public and private life advocating for art, artists, and social justice. Since 2001, she has been a Vice President at Americans for the Arts, focusing on arts policy convenings and engaging individual thought leaders to advance the arts and arts education across America. She is co-founder of Street Scenes: Projects for DC, a public art program that provides access to the broadest possible audience within the greater Washington, DC area.  Raised in New York City, Nora began her career in Los Angeles as the Frederick R. Weisman Collections Curator and Founding Director of Pepperdine University’s Art Museum. She was a Los Angeles Human Relations Commission member and received the Mayor’s Award of Merit for Outstanding Volunteer Service. 

Nora has taught and lectured internationally as well as curated numerous exhibitions, including a Yoko Ono retrospective. Most recently, she was enlisted by the US Department of State’s Art in Embassies program as an independent curator, alongside Camille Benton and Ellen Susman of A More Perfect Union: American Artists and the Currents of Their Time, exhibition on art and democracy opened in June at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece and is currently on a tour to several international cities Among her publications is the recent Putting the Arts to Work: 15 Years of National Arts Policy Roundtables, 2006-2020. Nora has served on the boards of the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, ArtTable, PS Arts, and Scholastic’s Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, among others. She was appointed to the Arts Commission of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021 and was a Biden Arts Policy Committee member. Nora received her B.A. and M.A. from UCLA and was awarded a Helena Rubinstein Fellowship in Curatorial Studies from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program. 

Learn more about ways to support Americans for the Arts HERE!