Ella Baff
Ella Baff is a consultant for arts and culture and works with a wide range of cultural organizations, artists, producers, philanthropists and funders.
Ms. Baff was the Senior Program Officer for Arts and Cultural Heritage at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York City where she was responsible for grantmaking to museums, performing arts and multidisciplinary arts organizations, and national initiatives across art forms and cultural practices, granting approximately $65M annually.
Prior to her work at the Mellon Foundation, Ms. Baff was the Executive and Artistic Director of Jacob’s Pillow, a 225-acre historic site that encompasses an international dance festival, professional school, archives, exhibits, artist residencies, public venues, and education and community programs. Under her leadership, the organization was designated a National Historic Landmark and was awarded the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama at the White House.
Prior to Jacob’s Pillow, Ms. Baff was the Program Director of Cal Performances, an international presenting organization at the University of California, Berkeley. There she presented and commissioned theater, music, dance and interdisciplinary art encompassing traditional, classical, popular and experimental forms from the US and around the world, and initiated many education and public programs at the University and in Bay Area communities.
Public engagement through media is also part of Ms. Baff’s work. She was the Project Director for national outreach for the documentary series, Dancing, for WNET Public Television in New York and was Executive Producer of Never Stand Still, an award-winning documentary that aired on PBS Great Performances and released worldwide. At Jacob’s Pillow, its rare and extensive archives was digitized and made accessible online as Dance Interactive. As a funder, Ms. Baff supported public access to the archives of libraries and arts organizations.
Her work in the cultural field has also included designing and implementing community dedicated programs in a variety of contexts. She designed a theater program that she taught in juvenile prisons in the Bay Area. She was an artist-in-residence on an Aleutian Island. As a certified Literacy Instructor through the Public Library System, she taught children and adults to read.
Ms. Baff has received several awards in the cultural field including the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the Ministry of Culture of France and the Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence from the Association of Performing Arts Professionals. She has received Honorary Doctorates from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and the College of the Holy Cross.
She has co-chaired the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) Congress inNew York, chaired The Gish Prize, and has served on juries and panels for foundations, US and international government agencies and not-for-profit organizations including the Rolex Mentor Protégé Initiative, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships, Princess Grace Foundation, Creative Capital, United States Artists, the Vilcek Prize and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ms. Baff has been a moderator for the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum. She has served on the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA) and MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art). She is a member of the Advisory Council of the American Friends of the Batsheva Cultural Center in Tel Aviv, designed by Sir David Adjaye, opening in 2023.
Consulting work includes a report on Jazz for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; lectures at Colby College for the Lunder Institute of American Art, Humanities Division, and The Writers Center; strategic planning for the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center; marketing and development for Playing on Air, a podcast for theater; strategy for Sound & Painting, LLC, an international soundscape and visual design company; and strategic planning for Greylock Works, a 240,000 sq. ft. c.1800 cotton-spinning factory that is re-adapted as a regional development and cultural center. Ms. Baff is a Mentor for the New York Community Trust Leadership Fellows Program/Baruch College Marxe School of Public and International Affairs.