UNC Arts Leader Emil Kang Leaving for Mellon Foundation

When Emil Kang was given charge of UNC’s arts initiative and appointed special assistant to former Chancellor Carol Folt in 2016, he vowed to improve how Carolina celebrated art.

Kang had already done so with the founding of the Carolina Performing Arts program in 2005, which led to artists from all corners of the world performing on UNC’s campus each year. In his new position, though, he integrated art even further into the university’s culture. Kang launched the Arts Everywhere program in 2016, which immersed the campus in interactive art and challenged UNC to find additional, practical purposes for art installations.

“If there’s a sightline issue with trees and woods, how can the arts be a part of that solution,” Kang said in 2017. “If there are public safety issues because of darkness and other things, how can the arts be used to address those issues? How can we as someone who really thinks about the arts every day, can we offer some ideas to solutions to challenges that already exist?”

Not long after, Kang established and opened the CURRENT ArtSpace and Studio on Franklin Street. An additional space for artists whose work falls out of traditional theater or museum formats, it created a new place for the university to utilize, which Kang described at its opening as one-of-a-kind.

“CURRENT sits at the crossroads of the campus and community,” said Kang, “a truly public-private partnership that will unleash the power of adjacency and creativity.”

Now, 14 years after arriving at UNC, Kang will take on a new, larger challenge. He will become the new program director for arts and cultural heritage at the Mellon Foundation, a group that privately funds many initiatives like Kang brought to Carolina.

In a statement, interim chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and provost Bob Blouin congratulated Kang and wished him luck in his new position.

“Thanks to Emil’s leadership, Carolina has made immense progress in elevating the vital role the arts play in our campus and local communities,” wrote Guskiewicz and Blouin. “It is not surprising that the Mellon Foundation would turn to Emil to take on such an important role because of the well-earned reputation he has forged as one of the leading arts administrators in the United States.”

Even without his leadership and collaboration with the chancellor, his various efforts have clearly made the arts vital to the university, which Kang said was his goal from the start.

“When I started Carolina Performing Arts 13 years ago,” said Kang in 2017, “I was a staff of one. We announced our first season without any ticket prices because we hadn’t figured that out yet. We had no box office, we had no website, we had nothing. And look at us now.”

Kang will begin his position at the Mellon Foundation in October.