Angela Chi-Chi Glass, a current student of Weissman Graduate Studies’ MA in Arts Administration program, has been named the Association of Arts Administration Educators (AAAE) 2022-23 Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Research Fellow. EDI Research Fellows at AAAE investigate the confluence of equity, diversity, and inclusion and arts management programs, a position that Glass’ lived experience and passion for artistic community makes her a perfect fit for.
The daughter of Peruvian parents, Glass came to the United States at a young age and was raised by her Lima born aunt and a Brooklyn Jew from Flatbush in the town of Virginia Beach, VA. Not too different from any other kid trolling the beaches of Southern Virginia, the lively Navel town’s cultural and linguistic diversity became surprisingly formative for Glass.
“I guess, looking back, it was pretty unique,” she reflected. “We were the kids of the diverse community you would expect to find in the largest Navy town in the U.S.— my friends were Black, Filipinx, Latinx and a lot of us were first generation and spoke different languages and we were all also making art in this relatively small town. My Mom also really wanted us to feel centered in our Judaism — she converted from Catholicism when she married my Dad — and I have fond memories of Shabbat dinners at our house being surrounded by educators, social workers, artists and of course also military personnel, all giving impassioned points of view while chowing down on challah and lomo saltado. From the very start my existence was one of multitudes, and that’s probably the connective tissue through it all.”
These intimate experiences, growing up around so many different communities, instilled in Glass a conviction that everyone should have access to the arts and a sustained arts education—a conviction from which both her creative and academic work springs.
As she entered adulthood, Angela focused on her classical piano studies which led her to earn degrees in piano performance from L’École Normale de Musique in Paris and the New England Conservatory in Boston. Upon graduation, Angela’s desire to work on music more closely related to her heritage, took her back to her native Perú where she spent several years immersed in the kaleidoscopic proliferation of musical forms native to the region. “I came back singing songs in Spanish and in Quechua, which is an indigenous language still spoken in the highlands,” Glass said.
“My time living in Lima as a musician and composer was transformational and uplifting in so many ways.” Nonetheless, Glass describes an attitude in Perú that women in bands are expected to be singers rather than instrumentalists. “There’s still this perception that if you’re the woman in the band, you’re not really the piano player or the guitarist, you know?” She notes that she also felt a sense of being at odds with the predominant musical mindset she experienced when she first moved to New York . Despite the passage of time, Glass suggests that some of these attitudes may still persist in New York and elsewhere.
Glass then saw herself at a crossroads and feeling pulled towards centering herself in service towards her community, she began more and more to dedicate herself to music education. It was a vocation that she had explored during her time in Peru and, as a resident of Sunset Park, home to one of the largest Spanish speaking populations in the city, she created a music studio and started doubling down on teaching.
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, her vision of creating community through music education only grew.
“What was once a personal project, I began to envision as a bigger project. Both as a musician and an educator, I’ve experienced what the interchange of ideas and music can do, and I thought I would very much love to do that on a broader scale,” Glass said. “But you need skills, you know? You need to learn how to do your taxes as a nonprofit. How to even exist as a non-profit in the first place. Who’s going to be the director of education? Who’s helping me think through and create the programming that is grounded in community-first? So, I realized I needed to go back to school and the Arts Administration program at Baruch seemed like the place for me.”
Since entering the program in the Spring of 2022 , Glass has been a quick study, bringing a systematic financial understanding to her love of music. She’s quickly fallen under the guidance of DEI Fellow and Program Director of Arts Administration David Milch and Professor Beth Allen who is also the Executive Director of the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance, who helped her put together her application for the AAAE fellowship.
“And they made themselves completely available to me,” Glass said. “That’s the beauty of Baruch, you know? David mentioned the fellowship, Beth helped me think through some ideas, and, amazingly, I got it! I’m so thrilled to be able to be working together with AAAE toward finding solutions to the problem of lack of diversity in the arts in New York. This is really my dream—my way of bringing all these pieces of my personality together—and it really is coming together. Who knew?”
Glass will present the culmination of her research at the AAAE Annual Conference in June, which will be hosted by Baruch College.