by 
Howard Gilman ’44 Executive Director | Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
Panelist | Bridge to the Arts: Connecting Communities Through Cultural Spaces
Mary Lou Aleskie is an internationally known advocate for the power of the arts to bring people together, not only within local communities, but around the globe. Since 2017, Aleskie has been the Howard Gilman ’44 Executive Director of the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College. On campus she chairs the Provost’s Council on Arts Advancement and Integration focusing on the creation and evolution of Dartmouth’s Arts District. This initiative is catalyzed by the reimagining and expansion of the historic Hopkins Center (the Hop) in collaboration with Snøhetta, world-renowned architects and leaders in global transdisciplinary practice. Under her leadership, the Hop has secured $89 million in philanthropic support for the reimagining of its iconic building. Her key achievements also include establishing Dartmouth’s first arts integration initiative, one of the nation’s most progressive arts integration in research programs in the country, linking the arts with humanities and sciences across campus.
With Aleksie at the helm, the Hop has transformed into a hub of creation, with over thirty commissions and new productions in dance, theater, music and more, as well as dozens of artist residencies. As executive director, she has shaped the vision and direction of some of these creations and Hop productions, most notably The Ritual of Breath Is the Rite to Resist, an interdisciplinary opera responding to state-sanctioned violence against Black life. This groundbreaking opera received its world premiere at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, travelled to Stanford’s Bing Hall, and was featured at Lincoln Center in summer of 2024. The opera has been hailed for its bold creativity as well as for transcending the stage to reach out to communities of resistance and offer healing through rituals and activations. A central component of the project is the powerful inclusion of a group of mothers who lost their children to police violence.
Before Dartmouth, Aleskie was the director of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas from 2005 to 2017, where she led the largest international multi-disciplinary festival in New England, acclaimed for gathering world-class artists, thinkers, and leaders while attracting and engaging a broad and diverse audience. During her tenure, the festival was recognized among the top arts presenters in the nation by the National Endowment for the Arts and grew its audience in record numbers. While there, she also served as a lecturer at Yale and was a fellow at Branford College.
From 2002 to 2005, Aleskie served as president and CEO of La Jolla Music Society, San Diego’s premier presenter of world-renowned orchestras, dance companies, and soloists, and as producer of the award-winning chamber music festival, La Jolla SummerFest.
For the decade prior, Aleskie was executive director of Da Camera of Houston, the ensemble music presenter and producer-in-residence at the world-renowned Menil Collection.
She was also the general manager of Houston’s Tony-award winning Alley Theatre.
Aleskie’s work stems from her commitment to amplify the essential role of the arts in learning, research and society. She has been a frequent speaker and panelist as well as an invited international delegate to numerous arts and culture forums, most recently the China Shanghai International Arts Festival Forum. She was also a lecturer at the University of Houston and served on the Connecticut State Planning Commission for Higher Education.
