Steven A. Hoffman

BIOGRAPHY

Steve Hoffman has curated, produced and presented cross-genre multi-disciplinary programs, events and seasons for nearly 30 years. Since 2010, he has served as Executive Director of Centre College’s Norton Center for the Arts, in Danville, Kentucky, where he is responsible for its oversight, management and programming. Highlights include producing the Japanese Winter Plum Festival and Kentucky Bluegrass Week (in Yamaguchi, Japan), curating The Wright Angle: William Wesley Peters, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Norton Center, producing and commissioning EAT: A Literary and Photography Installation, scores of campus and community engagement activities with professional artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Bobby McFerrin, Ben Vereen, Chris Thile + Edgar Meyer and Sphinx Virtuosi, and his involvement with the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate and Debate Festival.

In 2017, Steve was proud to accept, on behalf of the Norton Center, the Governor’s Award for the Arts for Community Arts. Previously, Steve served as President and CEO of the National Steinbeck Center, in Monterey County, California – an international cultural institution and museum with a mission focused on the life, works and philosophies of John Steinbeck. Before that, he spent eleven years as the founding CEO of the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he led the multi-disciplinary cultural institution’s Kirby Science Discovery Center and Omnimax-type theater, seven-gallery Visual Arts Center, and Husby Performing Arts Center with its 1,900- and 300-seat theaters. He also previously served as Program Director of the Huntington Arts Council in New York where he produced an annual 50+ day, eight-week outdoor summer festival.

Steve’s professional accomplishments include co-chairing the 2009 and 2010 Association of Performing Arts Professionals’ annual national conferences, serving on the California Association of Museums’ board of directors and speaking at regional and national conferences. He has served on federal, national, state and local grant review panels. Steve is also currently on the faculty of the University of Kentucky Department of Arts Administration graduate program and has also taught courses at the University of Michigan and Centre College. He has mentored international, professional, classical musicians since 2013 through the national Young Professionals Career Advancement program.

Since living in Kentucky, Steve has served on boards and committees for The Gladys Project, the Heart of Danville, Leadership Boyle County, The Danville Community Arts Center, Heart of Kentucky United Way, Clayton Center for the Arts at Maryville College (Maryville, TN), and the Association of Performing Arts Professionals. His photography, poetry and prose have been published in numerous anthologies and publications.