For half a century, the UMass Fine Arts Center has been a cultural engine, activating conversations, uplifting diverse voices, and challenging the boundaries of what art can do.
In a time marked by division, political urgency, and a deepening need for connection, we remain committed to what we’ve always believed: that the arts are not just entertainment, but an essential means of truth-telling, resistance, and healing.
This season, we honor our legacy of innovation, inclusion, and inspiration, while looking forward to the next fifty years of storytelling, cultural celebration, and community.
We invite you to join us in imagining and creating a better world through the arts. All Together Now.
Our history
Our history
In October 1975, the Fine Arts Center opened under the leadership of Chancellor Randolph W. Bromery, UMass Amherst’s first Black chancellor and a steadfast advocate for the arts, and Fritz Steinway.
That month brought two back-to-back symphony performances: the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops. The first season was a tremendous success, with performances by Ella Fitzgerald, Marcel Marceau, the London Symphony Orchestra, Van Cliburn, and Pete Seegar in the new Concert Hall.
Downstairs, the University Museum of Contemporary Art (then called the University Gallery) opened with the installation of colossal sculptures, one of which (“Quinnipiac” by Robert Murray) still stands prominently outside the Randolph W. Bromery Center for the Arts. Later that year, the museum’s spring exhibition surveying contemporary American art went on to represent the United States at the prestigious Venice Biennale.
“Their stuff was spectacular, just because it was so monumental,” recalls longtime Deputy Director Marie Hess, who witnessed the early exhibitions firsthand. “There was nothing like that around here.”
“And the Fine Arts Center too,” she said, referring to the building later renamed the Randolph W. Bromery Center for the Arts. “There was no large performing arts house like that. Nobody could hold two-thousand seats. It was a coveted spot to be produced there.”
“We were the most comprehensive arts center in western Massachusetts,” said Shawn Farley, who wore many hats at the Fine Arts Center as former director of Hampden Gallery, head of marketing and communications, and a programmer for the performing arts. “You have the visual arts, the performing arts, and the educational component. I think that was really key, providing students and community members with access to the artists so that they could learn something from them.
Founding Vision
Founding Vision
The Fine Arts Center’s founding came during an era of profound change at UMass. The late ’60s through early ’70s were charged with activism as students demanded a more relevant curriculum, greater awareness of cultural diversity, and deeper sensitivity around identity and difference.
At the university level, Chancellor Bromery prioritized diversity efforts, positioning UMass as a national leader for African American research and scholarship, recruiting and supporting minority students and faculty, and balancing the gender ratio of undergraduate students.
A saxophonist and lifelong student of jazz, Bromery also moved decisively to institutionalize diversity within the music department. He pushed through the appointments of several tenured professors who, despite traditional academic credentials, were luminaries in the jazz world: Max Roach, Archie Shepp, and Fred Tillis — a visionary who would soon be named director of the Fine Arts Center, serving from 1978 through 1999.
Tillis’s influence on the Fine Arts Center as an institution, community partner, and cultural anchor cannot be overstated.
“He was truly a multicultural person,” says Ranjanaa Devi, founding director of the Asian Arts and Culture Program. “He lived the world. He taught courses in jazz and in music history at a professorial level, but he was keen to understand that we live in a global world.”
“He was saintly,” says Hugh Davies, founding director of the University Gallery. “He was such a good musician, such a considerate academic, a great listener — very thoughtful, very sage.”
In the late ’70s, at the start of Tillis’s directorship, escalating incidents of racial violence and animus on campus intensified existing unrest. It was in this environment that Tillis launched and supported performing and visual arts programs that expressly welcomed and uplifted people of color.
“We were known for our multiculturalism,” said Hess. “The depth of what we did, the breadth of what we did… no place else was ever doing what we did.”
In a major development for campus, the university founded New Africa House as a cultural center that housed the new Department of Afro-American Studies and Augusta Savage Gallery, a multicultural facility named in honor of an overlooked sculptor of the Harlem Renaissance. New Africa House and the gallery quickly became a vital cultural nexus for expression, resistance, and belonging, fostering an environment in which UMass became a destination for Black artists and intellectuals across disciplines. Among those drawn to the gallery were Yusef Lateef, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Playthell Benjamin, Johnetta Cole, Pearl Primus, and Chinua Achebe.
Meanwhile, the University Museum of Contemporary Art made bold curatorial choices, identifying and exhibiting artists early in their careers and presenting groundbreaking exhibitions featuring large-scale installations and publications, helping to place UMass on the regional map for contemporary art.
Onstage, the Fine Arts Center’s performing arts program brought world-class performers to Amherst, offering audiences access to both established legends and emerging voices from around the world. Among the many incomparable performers and troupes were Ray Charles, Harry Belafonte, Sarah Vaughn, Ravi Shankar, Dave Brubek, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Martha Graham Dance Company.
A home for jazz
In its first decade, the Fine Arts Center quickly rose as a national epicenter for jazz performance and education.
In 1981, Tillis and fellow UMass faculty and jazz greats Max Roach and Billy Taylor founded Jazz In July. What began as a one-week intensive study of jazz improvisation with the nation’s top jazz artist-educators soon evolved into a comprehensive two-week study of jazz music and culture. Led by professional world-class faculty, Jazz In July has been a career launchpad for the next generation of prominent jazz artists.
“I remember being on this campus at sixteen … spending time with teachers who made their time available for us to learn from them,” says Camille Thurman, a Jazz In July alum who returned to UMass in March 2025 for a performance as a bandleader and to turn the tables on student engagement through the Billy Taylor Jazz Residency. “Fast forward to being here as a guest, it’s surreal because at sixteen, I didn’t know this was where the music would take me.”
Starting in 1990, Glenn Siegel founded, curated, and ran the Magic Triangle Jazz Series, which provided the community with an intimate performance experience at an accessible price — as Siegel put it, “Small is beautiful and more meaningful for patrons.”
“In jazz, proximity is everything,” Siegel added. “It creates a more powerful experience to be physically closer with the stage and to interact with musicians after the show.”
The Magic Triangle Series’ mission was to present artists whose critical reputation exceeded their place in the public eye. Over the years the series presented some of the most celebrated musicians in jazz history at all stages of their careers: Andrew Hill, Lester Bowie, Sam Rivers, Milford Graves, Yusef Lateef, Roscoe Mitchell, Von Freeman, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor Randy Weston — “a who’s who of Black classical musicians, young and old,” as described by the late Afro-American founding faculty member John Bracey Jr.
“The jazz community grew up in a way in and around the Fine Arts Center and its programming,” Hess said.
Multicultural mandate
“Whether it’s Jazz In July, Asian Arts and Culture, Center Series, visual arts program, Global Arts program, everything had to be multicultural. They had to be inclusive,” Willie Hill said. “When you program, you make sure it’s from a global perspective, regional perspective, and from a local perspective.”
Perhaps the most striking example of the Fine Arts Center’s commitment to multiculturalism and diversity was New World Theater, a visionary cultural institution at the forefront of U.S. theater for more than twenty years. Founded in 1979 by Roberta Uno, a 24-year-old Japanese-American and recent graduate of Hampshire College, New World Theater operated for more than thirty years and became a leading voice in the national dialogue on race and culture.
“It was instrumental in reaching underserved communities,” said Farley.
Uno knew there was a community of artists of color in the valley who needed support to create without barriers. She also knew the area needed more exposure to art from diverse cultures.
With that vision, Uno spearheaded New World Theater with a mission: to produce and present high-quality theater that would educate, enliven, and empower diverse audiences; offer a space for discourse among artists and scholars of color; and showcase work from international and local artists, particularly offering marginalized young people an artistic outlet and a means to explore their identities.
Over its thirty-year history, the New World Theater hosted the works of significant artists the likes of the daughters of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Alice Childress, and Tadashi Suzuki. In a region that in 2000 was 85 percent white, New World Theater attracted audiences that were 50 percent non-white and drew in many attendees who were not typically theatergoers.
In 1995, recognizing that the Latinx community had become the Five College area’s largest community of color, New World Theater launched the Latino Theater Project. The initiative expanded Latinx theater activity and strengthened partnerships with community organizations.
A year later, New World Theater hosted the Asian Theater Project, later renamed to Looking In/To the Future Project. The program worked with youth from African American, Latino, Vietnamese, and Cambodian communities of western Massachusetts, helping them produce original theater performances that empowered youth to embrace their identities and build cross-cultural connections.
In another program under Uno’s leadership, from 1985 to 2001, the Bright Moments summer music festival drew crowds of 2,000 to 4,000 people to the campus pond area for pan-African music across genres. Legendary artists like Fela Kuti, Angelique Kidjo, BB King, Pancho Sánchez, Terry Carrington, the Sun Ra Arkestra, and Eddie Palmieri, performed along with UMass faculty and Jazz In July students, creating a joyful, communal space.
Under both Tillis and Willie Hill, who served as director from 1999 through 2019, curators were given autonomy to program, purchase, and commission quality work that forged new directions and was responsive to the community’s needs.
“You, as a curator, see the quality of the work … and you can evaluate the depth of the work, but the double-edged sword is you need to know who would want to see it,” said Devi, founder of the Asian Arts and Culture Program.
Devi and her fellow curators were hungry to expand and experiment in ways that responded to the cultural needs of the local area and the national field alike. As she put it, “It was blood, sweat, tears, and very long hours” to achieve their visions.
Audiences, in effect, felt a deep sense of trust that anything presented on the Fine Arts Center’s stages would be of the highest quality — “a one-stop shop for world class artists,” said Siegel.
“They will be the cream of the crop even if you’ve never heard of them,” Farley said.
The Asian Arts and Culture Program, run by Devi and founded in 1993, was one such series with a loyal following for its high-caliber performances and community engagement.
“As a programmer, you have to be very humble,” Devi said. “You have to know your community, know the people, and listen to them.”
Under Devi’s leadership, the program filled a void for Asian music, dance, and education in the valley. As a local artist and educator herself, Devi forged close partnerships with the region’s local organizations and schools, bringing thousands of K-12 students to the Fine Arts Center to interact directly with presenting artists.
Engagement with students was always a core objective of the Fine Arts Center, and under Hill’s directorship beginning in 1999, that commitment became an even higher priority.
“To engage with students off campus, we created the program called Global Arts,” Hill said. “Not only did [students] experience performances, but they also had the opportunity to meet the artist. That’s what made it really unique.”
Hill emphasized that student engagement extended well beyond performances. “We had all kinds of programs under one umbrella,” he said, noting visual arts exhibitions and events were integral parts of the Fine Arts Center’s approach.
Hampden Gallery, located in the Southwest Residential Area, the most densely populated area on campus, was built to bring art directly to the place where students lived. Exhibitions aimed to showcase current contemporary art practices and speak to current issues. And the University Museum of Contemporary Art and Augusta Savage Gallery similarly engaged with students through exhibitions and educational programming.
“Whenever we did a program, we always wanted to get artists there early to have a workshop with students or have master classes with students,” said Farley. “That’s another place that the Fine Arts Center can hang its hat on is getting students access to these professional artists to not only learn from them in their craft, but also how to become a professional.”
Access and equity
In 2009, Hill founded the Valley Jazz Network as an outreach arm of the Fine Arts Center, focused on preserving the legacy of jazz and making it more accessible. Through small interactive concerts, educational programs, and listening parties across Amherst, Greenfield, Holyoke, and Springfield, the initiative brought jazz directly to where people lived and gathered.
Membership was free, part of a broader Fine Arts Center philosophy that prioritized access and affordability for all.
“We wanted all to experience world class art at an affordable price,” Hill said. “And I wanted to make sure that people did not have to go to New York or Boston or any other major city to experience global arts.”
In 2000, former director of programming Joyce Smar founded the Angel Ticket Program, providing free tickets to residents of Hampshire, Hampden, and Franklin counties whose financial or social situation would otherwise prevent them from experiencing live performances by touring artists.
Access wasn’t just about welcoming audiences; it was about creating opportunities for artists, too.
From 2001 through 2020, Augusta Savage Gallery ran the Arts International Residency program, under the direction of Terry Jenoure. Selected artists were invited to spend one to three weeks abroad in countries like South Africa, Columbia, India, Germany, and Mexico. Upon their return, resident artists created new work for the gallery, offering the community new understandings of themselves, the world, and the need for social change.
The next fifty
The next fifty
In recent years, the Fine Arts Center has maintained its legacy of access, multiculturalism, and education through longstanding programs and newer initiatives like Art Sustainability Activism, founded in 2019 to connect artists, scientists, and changemakers as they reckon with climate change.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and continuing racism in the U.S. and beyond demanded the Fine Arts Center to rethink how it responds to and draws in its communities, leading to the founding of two new programs: Reimagine Residencies and Codemakers.
Codemakers responds to division, fear, and racism in the national landscape through talks with socially engaged BIPOC artists and thinkers whose practices and identities embody non-Western experiences.
Meanwhile, Reimagine Residencies supports interdisciplinary and socially engaged artists confronting present-day public health, political, and environmental crises. The residency model encourages artists to examine what it means to be engaged with their art form, communities, and the public in this moment. The goal is to welcome underserved audiences and provide meaningful support for artists who work resonates culturally and socially with those communities.
As the Fine Arts Center steps into its next fifty years, we invite you to be part of its next chapter as audience members, collaborators, students, and champions of the arts. Together, we will continue to build a community where creativity thrives, stories are honored, and change begins.
