Bau Graves, Development Director & Senior Advisor

 James Bau Graves is joining us as our Development Officer. Bau is a musician, music educator and arts administrator. From 2007 until 2019, he was Executive Director of Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, the largest community school of the arts in the United States. Along with his partner Phyllis O’Neill, he directed the Maine Festival, created the New Year’s/Portland celebration and co-founded the Center for Cultural Exchange. He is the author of Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community and the Public Purpose (University of Illinois Press, 2005), and publishes occasionally in the academic and popular press.