{"id":8828,"date":"2012-01-06T08:10:33","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T08:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=8828"},"modified":"2016-08-22T10:13:48","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T16:13:48","slug":"nancy-boskoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/nancy-boskoff\/","title":{"rendered":"The Show Will Go On: Nancy Boskoff"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nancy<\/a>

photo by Zoe Rodriguez<\/p><\/div>\n

Many people may not know this about Nancy Boskoff, but 30 years ago, before she became an arts administrative fixture in Salt Lake, she was a modern dancer. She recounts a story of when she choreographed a piece in her previous life, before she moved to Utah.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the box with the tech crew for one of the rehearsals and one of the guys looked at me and asked, \u2018What is this about?\u2019 I told him it wasn\u2019t about anything to which he replied, \u2018It has to be about something.\u2019 It turns out he and the rest of the guys on the crew made up a romantic story about the dance. It may not be what I had in mind, but I thought, \u2018OK, that\u2019s fine.\u2019 If someone can experience art and take something from it that is meaningful to them, that\u2019s what is important.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you happen to be an arts administrator, you understand much of your career deals with what is essentially this conversation over and over again. It helps if you possess the openness and positivity Nancy Boskoff does. The creative challenge is finding new ways to show the public how art experiences enhance your life and bring meaning to it, no matter who you are and what you take away from it. For over three decades, Boskoff has spent her career taking on that challenge as she ran what looks like an arts organization but operates as a government agency. Before she came to Utah, she worked at a neighborhood art center in D.C. (where she grew up), she was the director of a county art council in Maryland and then moved to Utah to work at the Utah Arts Council in community development. Shortly after, she took on the task as director of the Salt Lake City Arts Council. I sat down with her for over an hour to get an idea of what her career here has meant to her and what story it told. But as evidenced in her approach as a choreographer, Boskoff doesn\u2019t think in terms of stories. She\u2019s more an impressionist when it comes to retrospect.<\/p>\n

One of her impressions is that Utah still seems to have an inferiority complex regarding how rich the arts are in our community. \u201cWhen I moved here in 1980, the art scene was already vibrant. To have a Shakespeare festival, a ballet company, two modern dance companies, several theatre companies, a museum of fine arts, the salt lake art center, the opera and the symphony — all professional level — not community based, that\u2019s impressive. What I see from people who come visit is they\u2019re amazed at the quality of activity. We don\u2019t realize how much we have and how good it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another impression is how over the years, the arts have become more integrated into the whole of the community. Much like the tech guy backstage at rehearsal, there will always be someone who needs a story or something logical to explain art\u2019s purpose. But people are beginning to grasp a little more of the abstract. Especially for the younger generation, going to an art event isn\u2019t necessarily an event anymore. It\u2019s just part of what they do.<\/p>\n

If you know Nancy Boskoff, you\u2019d think her life is Salt Lake\u2019s art community. She has a reputation of being the omnipresent arts activist. Unlike some self-proclaimed arts supporters, Boskoff actually attends as many performances and events as she can. She has learned so much about the many art forms Utah represents and she has had a lot of on-the-job training when it has come to running a visual arts gallery and the city\u2019s public art program. \u201cPersonally I think public art is a fascinating arena of art. It\u2019s not just about visual art, it\u2019s about community, it\u2019s about stakeholders, it\u2019s about construction, engineering, legal issues…so for me it is a fascinating field and I feel really fortunate that I was able to learn about it.<\/p>\n

Deciding to leave her career at the Salt Lake City Arts Council has been difficult. Someone recently asked her: \u201cAre you bailing?\u201d Boskoff has been around long enough to see challenging times as well as prosperous times. She just smiles when she hears people talk about how things are in a downward spiral and will never be the same. She knows things will look up soon. So no, she\u2019s not bailing. \u201cThe arts council is in really good shape. I care very much about the people here, so leaving them is hard. There\u2019s always more you want to do. But I have enough years to be able to retire and enough energy to do something different. What I really want to see is really good people to succeed all of us who are leaving their positions, and I feel pretty good when I see a new generation of people who have a foundation in arts administration and understand what it takes.\u201d She\u2019s not sure what the future holds for her, but that\u2019s what is exciting. She is also optimistic about the future of Salt Lake\u2019s arts programs, its artists and their stewards.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething that I have learned over time is everyone is replaceable to a degree. The show will go on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Durham sits down with Nancy Boskoff as she retires from the Salt Lake Arts Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":8829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,20,14],"tags":[902,779,780],"class_list":["post-8828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-15-bytes","category-art_professional_spotlight","category-visual_arts","tag-by-laura-durham","tag-nancy-boskoff","tag-salt-lake-arts-council"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/nancyslideshow.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-28 01:44:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8828"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34851,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8828\/revisions\/34851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}