Cathy Barbash has spent over 20 years in the arts, as manager and consultant for organizations as diverse as The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Department of State of the United States, The Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Juilliard School, Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment, Broadway Asia, Het Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), The City of Philadelphia, The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Arts Midwest, the Asian Cultural Council, the International Society for the Performing Arts, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the American Symphony Orchestra League. Ms. Barbash’s experience covers most areas of arts management, from long-range planning, feasibility studies and public diplomacy to touring, education, fund raising and sponsorship, public relations, and community redevelopment. She is a specialist in the performing arts and cultural policy of the People’s Republic of China.
Barbash recently produced the official visit of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities to China, which resulted in the renewal of the Cultural Implementing Accord between the two nations. She is currently consulting to The Juilliard Orchestra on China initiatives. She was the primary consultant for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ October 2005 Festival of China, and is a member of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
Ms. Barbash first went to China in 1993 as Orchestra Manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Since then, as an independent consultant and agent, she has organized the China tours of artists such as soprano Kathleen Battle, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. She has collaborated with a broad range of Chinese arts organizations, including the Ministry of Culture, China Performing Arts Agency, Beijing Music Festival, Beijing Modern Dance Company, Shanghai International Arts Festival, Shanghai Performance Company, and the Shanghai Cultural Exchange Agency.
Ms. Barbash has presented major papers on arts management and cultural industry infrastructure development at national conferences at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Beijing, the Shanxi Provincial Government, the China National Development and Reform Commission and the Federation for Asian Cultural Promotion. In September 2006, she co-produced, programmed and hosted a Media/Cultural Policy Reform Forum in New York City with Tsinghua University and the National Committee on United States-China Relations. She also participated in the White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy in November 2000.
Ms. Barbash was principal organizer and programmer of the U.S. State Department sponsored US/China Performing Arts Presenters Exchange Program, which brought major United States presenters to China in October 2000 and major Chinese presenters to the United States in January 2002. Barbash consulted to the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, D.C. on the cultural exchange tour programmed in conjunction with Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s 2002 State Visit, and produced the 2002 ISPA International Forum - Beijing, an international meeting of high-level arts professionals, which won broad attention from the Chinese media, cultural world and government.
Ms. Barbash maintains ongoing close relationships with major classical music, dance, and theatrical institutions and performers. A graduate of Harvard University, she also sits on the Board of the Pierian Sodality of 1808, the governing body of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, and serves on the boards of the International Society for the Performing Arts, Ping Chong & Company, and in Hong Kong, the City Contemporary Dance Company and Arthub.
