THE NAJP'S NATIONAL COUNCIL consists of leaders in the worlds of journalism and the arts. National Council members are not directly involved in day-to-day program governance, such as the selection of fellows.

Alberta Arthurs
Alberta Arthurs is an independent advisor and commentator in the arts and humanities, providing research, planning, and programming services to not-for-profit cultural and educational institutions. Until 1996, Arthurs was director for arts and humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation. During 1996-97, she directed a program on culture and development at the Council on Foreign Relations. Until 2003, she was affiliated with MEM Associates, a not-for-profit consulting enterprise. Arthurs oversees cultural projects and studies for a number of national organizations. Recent and current clients include the Pew Charitable Trusts; the James Irvine, Henry Luce, Cisneros, Ford and Rockefeller foundations; JPMorgan Chase; the National Music Leadership Coalition; and the American Symphony Orchestra League. She has served on boards including, currently, the Salzburg Seminar, the American Place Theater, Exit Art, the Center for Arts and Culture, Yaddo, the Graduate School of New York University, National Video Resources (chairman), and StreamingCulture. She has co-chaired several national convenings on the arts and culture through the American Assembly at Columbia University.

Laurie Beckelman
Currently the Director of the New Building Program at the Museum of Arts & Design, Laurie Beckelman has served as Deputy Director for Special Projects at the Guggenheim Museum, Vice President of the World Monuments Fund and Executive Director of the Joseph Papp Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival. She was involved in the redevelopment of Grand Central Terminal and the revitalization of historic buildings on 42nd Street.

In 1990, she was appointed by Mayor David N. Dinkins and also served under Mayor Giuliani as the Commissioner and Chair of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. She had earlier served as the Executive Director of the New York Landmarks Conservancy and Deputy Director of the Municipal Art Society. Beckelman is on the Board of Directors of the Municipal Art Society, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, Alliance for the Arts, and other arts and cultural institutions.

Charles Bergman
Charles C. Bergman is Chairman of the Board and CEO of The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the largest foundation ever created to exclusively aid worthy and needy visual artists. He serves on the Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission of New York City, appointed by Mayor Bloomberg and is on the Overseers’ Committee of the Harvard University Art Museums. He was appointed by Governor Pataki to The New York State Council on the Arts and is on the Board of Trustees of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, in Miami, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, in New York, Very Special Arts in Washington, D.C., and numerous committees and boards. Mr. Bergman is Senior Advisor to Foursome Investments, Ltd. in London, and he advises widely on corporate philanthropy.

He is also Chairman of the Sculpture Committee of the Park Avenue Malls Planting Project and a member of the National Council of the Glimmerglass Opera. Formerly, Mr. Bergman served as Vice-President of the Inter-American Foundation for the Arts, the first private cultural exchange program between the United States and Latin America.

Arthur C. Danto
Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University, and Art Critic for The Nation

Gabriella De Ferrari
Gabriella de Ferrari was born in Peru and moved to the United States to attend university. She served as Curator and Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Curator of Harvard’s Busch Reisenger Museum, and Assistant Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. Gabriella serves on the Boards of the Creative Time, Harvard University Art Museums, New School University, The Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, Italy, and the Kentler International Drawing Space in Red Hook, Brooklyn. She is also a member of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art.

Gabriella published a novel, A Cloud on Sand, with Knopf in 1990 and a memoir, Gringa Latina, with Houghton Mifflin in 1995. A Contributing Editor for Travel and Leisure, she also writes for BOMB, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair. She holds degrees from Saint Louis University, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, and Harvard University. She is currently at work on a new book, Machu Picchu.

Stephanie French
Stephanie French’s career spans the business and the not-for-profit communities. She is particularly known for her leadership in the field of corporate sponsorship and corporate philanthropy. In her twenty years at Philip Morris, Ms. French built and directed the company’s highly regarded art sponsorship program and went on to gain overall responsibility for Philip Morris’ worldwide contributions program, including philanthropic grants, matching gifts and employee volunteer activities. Under her guidance, Philip Morris became widely recognized as a pioneer in corporate giving, particularly in the arts.

Currently, Ms. French advises not-for-profit organizations and corporate giving programs, and she serves the boards of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Parsons Dance Company, Museum of Arts and Design, Miller Theatre at Columbia University and numerous other arts organizations.

Marian A. Godfrey
Marian A. Godfrey spearheaded the creation of the NAJP in 1994. She is Director of the Civic Life Initiatives of The Pew Charitable Trusts. She was the Trusts’ Program Director for Culture in 1989-2003. Previously she spent 12 years in New York City as a performing arts manager and consultant to La Jolla Playhouse, the Wooster Group and other organizations. Prior to that she managed Mabou Mines, for which she produced a feature film, “Dead End Kids: A Story of Nuclear Power.” She has been as an Instructor in Drama at N.Y.U., Director of Development for Dance Theater Workshop and Managing Director of Ensemble Studio Theater.

Ms. Godfrey is on the board of the Maine College of Art and chairs the Arts Policy Roundtable of Americans for the Arts. Earlier board service includes Grantmakers in the Arts (chair, 2000-02), the Theatre Communications Group, the Mayor's Cultural Advisory Council of Philadelphia and the Arts and Humanities Task Force of the 1992 Presidential Transition Team. In 2003, Ms. Godfrey received the John Cotton Dana Award for contributions to museum education from the American Association of Museums.

Jack Miles
A MacArthur Fellow (2002-2007) and Senior Advisor to the President at the J. Paul Getty Trust, Miles is a Pulizter Prize winning writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and many other publications. Over nearly twenty years, 1975-1995, he was successively an editor at Doubleday, executive editor at the University of California Press, literary editor at the Los Angeles Times, and a member of the Times Editorial Board. He is Senior Fellow with the Pacific Council on International Policy and serves on the final selection committee of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Miles has been Mellon Visiting Professor of Humanities at Caltech, Director of the Humanities Center at the Claremont Graduate University, Regents Lecturer at the University of California, and is currently visiting fellow at Occidental College. Miles is a past president of the National Book Critics Circle and an advisory board member of PEN Center USA West. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Orville Schell
Dr. Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, has devoted much of his career to reporting and writing on Asia. He is author of 14 books, including Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood, Mandate of Heaven and Discos and Democracy and has written for such publications as Wired, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Harper's, and Newsweek. He has received Guggenheim and Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowships, in addition to awards such as the Overseas Press Club Award for the best Foreign Story and the Harvard/Stanford Shorenstein Award for Reporting on Asia. He has served as a network television commentator and as a consultant for projects including several PBS “Frontline” documentaries. Dr. Schell serves on the boards of the Social Science Research Council and Human Rights Watch and is a member of the Pacific Council and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jane Safer
Ms. Safer is a consultant to arts organizations and governmental and multinational agencies in the United States and abroad. Before forming her company, Jane Safer Associates, she was executive director of Anthology Film Archives and of Survival International, and held senior positions at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York Hall of Science. She is an advisor to the Fund for Arts and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe and serves on the boards of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Arts and Business Council, and other arts and cultural organizations. Ms. Safer is the author of two books and numerous reports and articles about arts and arts policy.

Stephen Urice
An art historian and attorney, Mr. Urice is Director of the Project for Cultural Heritage Law and Policy, which promotes the teaching of cultural heritage issues in law schools, schools of public policy, and related fields. The Project is based administratively at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and is housed at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where Mr. Urice is a lecturer. Mr. Urice earned his doctoral degree in art history at Harvard University. On completion of his law degree at Harvard, he practiced law in New York and Los Angeles. He has taught courses in art law and cultural heritage law at UCLA’s and at Penn’s law schools. Prior to his current appointment, Mr. Urice directed the national culture program of The Pew Charitable Trusts and before that served as director of Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum & Library.

NAJP : About Us : National Council