John Patches Receives 2009 Hartgen Award
Contact: George Manlove, (207) 581-3756
Photo available upon request
ORONO – This year’s Vincent A. Hartgen Award has been given to Collins Center for the Arts Executive Director John Patches, who for nearly 17 years has overseen both day-to-day operations and long-term goals for one of the most dynamic cultural arts centers in New England.
Presented by the University of Maine Patrons of the Arts, the Hartgen award recognizes outstanding contributions by individuals who advance the arts at the University of Maine.
The patrons agreed Patches was a natural choice for the award because of his dedication and accomplishment — and his oversight of recent renovations at the Maine Center for the Arts, renamed the Richard R. and Anne A. Collins Center for the Arts with its reopening in February, according to Danny Williams, chair of the Patrons.
“I think this year, with the reopening of the Collins Center for the Arts, the timing was right and the decision was unanimous by the selection committee,” says Williams, a graduate of UMaine’s music program, and an original member of the center’s advisory board. “It is clear what the Collins Center has done for the campus and the community, and John has been the driving force.”
Williams credits Patches with expanding the use and purpose of the center and its 1,629-seat Hutchins Concert Hall, making them much more accessible to the public, affordable for students, and making the facility “a must-see destination” for visitors and elegant “gateway” to the university for thousands of new UMaine students, parents and family.
“John is both the big picture and the little picture person,” Williams says. “He oversees the entire operation: marketing, and booking events and activities, and board activities and fundraising and friend-raising. I think that anyone who has worked closely with him knows he wears many hats. That there is very little turnover in the office is a testament to his leadership.”
Indeed, one of the first things Patches did upon arriving in 1992 was take steps to eliminate pigeon droppings on the sidewalk under the archway entrance. In a more substantial move that year, he also created the center’s advisory board, which included members from surrounding communities.
The advisory board opened the center and its functions to the community and increased public engagement, which led to the formation of a friends group.
“That got us rolling and we’ve been building on it ever since,” Patches says.
Under Patches’ leadership, the center has become a theater for distinguished lectures, university awards ceremonies, in addition to being a premier cultural and performing arts center. In the fall, the center, which includes the Hudson Museum on the second level, also will host regular independent films and community cultural activities and events.
Patches says he believes the center should be even more accessible to the public as a fundamental component of its mission.
“The arts are for everyone,” he says, “and it’s unfortunate that we have, at times, attributed a word like elite to the performing arts, because that does, for some people, set up a barrier. Arts should be visible to everyone without any impediments whatsoever.”
Patches’ career has included teaching, producing and performing arts management, fund development, administration and consulting for colleges, universities, arts associations, performance consortiums and related organizations throughout the country.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in music at Bethany College in Kansas, Patches began his career in the arts in 1968 at State University of New York at Stony Brook in the music department. Over the next two decades, he served as the music department’s concert manager and arts coordinator, and then associate director of the Staller Center for the Fine Arts at Stony Brook. Patches also co-founded the Slavic Culture Center at Stony Brook as a venue for plays, art exhibits, workshops and film presentations and also an international theater festival there.
Prior to coming to UMaine in 1992, Patches worked as a consultant in New York. He was invited to serve less than a year as interim director of the Maine Center for the Arts, but the temporary appointment became a 16-year engagement.
Patches says he continues to be moved by audience satisfaction with performances, by “that inexpressible experience of joy and sorrow, and the electricity that opens doors in people’s minds. To have people go out the door exhilarated by what they have just seen is wonderful,” he says. “I love it. I’ve been fortunate to be in this profession.”
Patches received the award in ceremonies held in late April.