Share | Print | Text Size

LLANJ Board of Delegates

Isabel Nazario

Isabel Nazario, is currently Associate Vice President for Academic and Public Partnerships in the Arts and Humanities at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She was appointed to this new office in September 2004, prior to this position she was the founding director of the Center for Latino Arts and Culture, and executive director of the Office for Intercultural Initiatives, at Rutgers.

As Associate Vice President, Nazario is responsible for developing and supporting faculty led co-curricular arts and humanities projects, community-service learning programs, and public scholarship programs that lead to innovative partnerships between Rutgers and local, state, national, and international organizations. Her office reports to the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs. She has university-wide responsibilities, with offices in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden. She has leadership oversight of the Civic Engagement and Service Education Partnerships Program, the Institute for Women & Art, New Jersey Leaders of Tomorrow Legislative Internship Program and administers the Transcultural New Jersey Arts and Education Pilot Program, the Rutgers Undergraduate Community Service Research Fellows, and the Transcultural New Jersey Public Service Arts Program.

The highly acclaimed Transcultural New Jersey Initiative is the unifying theme for museums, libraries, and education institutions working together to examine the states demographic landscape through a series of visual art exhibitions, collaborative public art works, performances, and community-based service learning programs that promote the contributions of underrepresented populations in the state. The initiative led to an innovative award winning partnership with New Jersey Network (PBS Television). Isabel Nazario and Susan Wallner, a producer at NJN developed a documentary of the initiative and told the story of the creative contributions made in New Jersey by Latino, Black, Caribbean, African, Asian/South Pacific and Native American artists. The National Academy of Television and Arts and Sciences nominated The New American Art documentary for a 2005 EMMY. A two volume catalogue produced by Ms. Nazario’s office with the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum received excellent reviews by local, and state newspapers and national and international journals.

Over the course of her professional career Isabel Nazario has organized and curated numerous exhibitions that received excellent reviews by art critics from the New York Times, the Philadelphia Enquirer and the Home News. Selected exhibitions include, among others, The Visual Imaginary of Latino Artists in New Jersey, held in 2001in the Mason Gross School of the Arts Galleries; co-curated the Cross-Currents of the Mainstream exhibition, held in 2004 in the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum. In Rutgers, over the years Isabel has raised support for exhibitions, public service programs, and student scholarships from such sources as the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan Chase, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation and The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.