Dr. Steven Lavine has been an artistic, educational, and community leader in Los Angeles and nationally for four decades. From 1988 to 2017, he served as President of the California Institute of the Arts, a period of sustained growth in programs, community engagement, enrollment, reputation, and financial stability for the progressive multi-disciplinary arts college. Shortly after stepping down, he was recruited as Founding Director and then Chair of the Los Angeles Advisory Council for the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles, which is devoted to bringing creative thinkers from Germany and the United States together around urgent contemporary issues, particularly the future of liberal democracy. Today, Lavine divides his time between the Thomas Mann House and consulting with a broad range of progressive not-for-profit organizations. He has co-edited two influential books about museum practices: Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display and Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture.