Cogswell Polytechnical College Dean, Michael Martin, has been elected the new Chair of the San Jose Arts Commission. His term as Chair will begin July 1, 2008.

The Arts Commission is a citizen advisory body that provides the San Jose City Council with advice and recommendations on City policies and programs that affect public access to a wide variety of arts opportunities in San Jose. Its areas of interest include arts education, cultural planning, financial support for the arts and cultural celebrations, neighborhood arts and public art. The Commission also addresses a variety of other issues that affect public opportunities to be an arts audience as well as an art maker and participant and the role of artists and arts enterprises in sustaining the creative economy.

“I am very pleased to chair the arts commission at such an important time in the City’s cultural history,” said Martin, “there is an outstanding new Public Art Master Plan, for the first time the arts will be included in City’s General Plan, the activation of the Mineta Airport as an international model for the exhibition of art and technology and the new Director of the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs, Kerry Adams Hapner, joins an outstanding staff of skilled arts professionals. I think I can speak for the Commission when I say that it is exciting helping make possibilities become realities.”

Michael is an artist and teacher who specializes in photography. He is currently the Dean of the College at Cogswell in Sunnyvale, where he has taught photography and digital imaging for eleven years. Michael earned his M.F.A. degree from San Jose State University in 1988.

Michael’s many years of non-profit and volunteer work include serving as Board President at WORKS/San Jose Gallery, membership on the Cultural Advisory Commission in Santa Clara, California, and most recently membership on the San Jose Arts Commission, where he also sits on the Public Art Committee and the Airport Art Program Oversight Committee. He is also a member of the Santa Clara County Office of Education Arts Education Master Plan Core Planning Group, which is developing a plan to reintroduce the arts into K-12 schools.

Michael lives in San Jose with his wife, Cheri and Miniature Bull Terrier, Snowy.

To learn more about the San Jose Arts Commission, please click here.
June 25, 2008