Al Head is described as equal parts quarterback and diplomat, excellent qualifications for anyone who must tiptoe along the political sidelines with savvy, poise and politesse.
And yet, he has managed to do just that for a quarter of a century as executive director of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the agency responsible for the well-being of visual, performing, literary and folk arts statewide.
Head has accomplished this despite shifting political administrations, economic downturns and even the occasional controversy, a la Mapplethorpe and the ongoing debate over the viability of the National Endowment for the Arts.
He has seen the state arts council budget grow steadily, from a few hundred thousand when he arrived in 1985 to the current budget around $5 million, despite budget cuts because of proration. He remains optimistic about the arts in Alabama.
“A lot good things are happening in the state and a lot of organizations are doing good work,” he says via long distance from his office in Montgomery. “There are signs of progress that the arts have evolved in some positive ways, especially if you look at that and assess it over 10, 15 even 25 years — we’ve come a long way in many respects.”
Head, 61, has been involved with state arts agency work for two-thirds of his life. Among the most significant changes in that time is the way in which the arts are perceived by power brokers who once might have regarded classical music, ballet, contemporary art and even arts education as frills for the idle rich.
“I think the arts are viewed much more significantly as a matter of public policy, public interest, importance and so forth,” he says. “We’ve gone from the perception, in many ways, of arts as . . . something nice to be engaged in if you have the time and money to where the arts are an essential part of education — and I think legislators generally accept that notion.
“I think they see the arts as an essential part of teaching and learning, and critical to enhancing education and achievement.”
Of course, part of that shift in thinking is what one might describe as enlightened self-interest.
Cultural tourism has had profound economic and social impact on communities in Alabama and throughout the South. Even hardline non-arts people see the value of promoting and showcasing arts and cultural organizations that have the potential to attract big tourist dollars.
More dramatically, they have slowly come to realize the value of a vibrant arts community in attracting business and industry.
“Public officials think arts have an important role to play in community development, economic development, in the quality of life and our being able to promote the state of Alabama as a place for people come, invest, live and bring their family and kids,” Head says.
“That’s been a real change over a period of time. . . . While money’s tight and we clearly don’t always get everything we ask for from the Legislature, the discussions are at a much more elevated and informed level on the importance of the arts in Mobile, Montgomery, Huntsville, Birmingham, and they have a role to play in moving our state forward and improving the quality of life for everybody.”
Mary Settle Cooney, executive director of the Tennessee Valley Art Association (www.tvaa.net) has known Head for 25 years and says he "has led a movement to increase access to the arts for all the people of Alabama."
Head has worked tirelessly with the Alabama Legislature, says Cooney.
“The result is that our state can claim a more educated leadership that understands the economic and cultural benefits of a strong arts program for Alabama,” she says.
“The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs works tirelessly to recruit new business and industry to our state. Large and small towns from the Tennessee River to Mobile Bay have seen a growth in foreign investment over the past two decades. Incentives play a big part in the competition for industry.
“I believe that a great deal of the credit for ADECA’s success can be attributed to Al Head, who understands that a corporation does not want to locate in a land void of the cultural opportunities that set us apart as human. When the time to recruit Honda, Mercedes, Toyota came, there were strong, viable arts programs for management and employees alike.”
Those issues and a few more will be on the minds of ASCA board members when they convene next week in Mobile. The March 4 business meeting will take place at the Mobile Museum of Art; the board will reconvene March 5 the Regions Bank building in downtown Mobile.
A restructuring of the Council has just taken place with new officers including Julie Hall Friedman of Fairhope as the new chairman and Jim Harrison of Tuscaloosa as vice chair. Head says specific agenda items will include: legislative (budget) issues, and updates on tourism and regional arts.
Head served two terms on the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies board participating in a wide range of committee work. He has been a member of the Southern Arts Federation board for 32 years and presided as its chair, 1981-83.
He has served on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and has chaired the Folk Arts and Arts in Education panels. In 1998 he received the Gary Young Award presented by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies for his leadership and achievements in promoting the arts nationally.
Wiley White, development director for the Johnson Center for the Arts in Troy, was a member of the state arts council for six years. Her term ended in December 2002.
“What always impressed me about Al is his diplomacy,” she says. “The council changes membership from time to time, with new people coming in and old people going off, and he deals with everybody. He knows how to handle people’s personalities and how to get things done. He is at home in any situation.
“I’ve always been afraid he was going to leave us because he just seems so set to do bigger and better things.”
White, a Troy native, says Head’s football training serves him well.
“He works like a quarterback,” she says. “He’s always thinking, always planning, and he hands the ball off to other people and gives them a chance to do things as well. He’s not in it for all the glory. He wants others to succeed and come forward with ideas.”
She describes Head as soft-spoken and self-confident.
“I never heard him raise his voice. As a woman on the council, that always impressed me so much. And his poise onstage — you can put him onstage anywhere.”
Head is the only executive director to hire or start three folk arts programs — in Florida, Louisiana and Alabama.
He is clearly proud of Alabama arts, from the impressive “museum trail” — including Huntsville, Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, Auburn, Dothan and Tuscaloosa, among other cities and towns — to homegrown artists such as Mobile’s Casey Downing Jr., Fairhope’s Bruce Larsen, and native Alabamians Nall, Frank Fleming and William Christenberry.
The arts have gone a long way to rehabilitate the state’s image sullied by images from the turbulent civil rights era.
“It’s one way to prove to the rest of the world that there are creative people, progressive-minded people with vision in the state,” he says. “Without exception, when people visit Alabama they are amazed. They say, ‘I had no idea . . . that the arts are as lively, vibrant, interesting and important as they seem to be.’ That’s always a real plus.”
Friedman says Head’s leadership and vision have made the Alabama State Council on the Arts one of the strongest state arts agencies in the country.
“I think Al is such a strong leader because of his ability to anticipate the needs of the arts community and develop a concrete plan of action,” she says. “In 1992 Al directed ASCA to produce the first state blueprint for supporting the arts in Alabama. The document, which includes a needs assessment, also describes the council’s funding priorities, goals and funding philosophies.”
The blueprint, updated every five years, further serves as a guide for program development and new arts initiatives, according to Friedman.
“Two relatively new initiatives developed under Al’s leadership are the Art Cultural Facilities grants and the Cultural Exchange program,” she says. “Under his leadership the council has seen a steady growth in state funding and we have . . . remained financially stable during the recent economic downturn.”
Bob Burnett, director of the Mobile Arts Council, says Head’s tenure as leader of a state arts agency is “exceptional in the world of public art institutions.”
“In his tenure as executive director of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, (he) has provided the arts with a strong foundation in Alabama,” Burnett says. “While other states have seen their arts agencies dramatically reduced or eliminated altogether, it is a testament to the working relationship that Al has forged with the Alabama Legislature and Alabama governors that our state agency is still intact.
“Al has infused ASCA with talented and dedicated managers and associates (who) serve our communities, our cultural organizations and Alabama’s artists well.”
Although born in Andalusia, Head calls Troy home. There he graduated from Charles Henderson High School and played quarterback for Troy State, which won a national championship with Head taking the snap from center. He majored in art history and aesthetics, and “folks thought that was really strange,” he says.
Head is no dilettante, having tried his hand at various visual arts projects such as painting. An art instructor at Troy would stroll past his easel, shake her head and say, “Al, you’re just never going to make a living in the arts.”
Head would paint a little more and show her his finished work.
“Well,” she said, “if you promise you’ll never do that again, I might give you a passing grade.”
Undaunted, Head knew he had other inspirations. For one thing, the visual and performing arts were in his DNA. His mother played the piano and supported her son’s interest in the arts; Head’s great-grandmother, a graduate of LaGrange College for Women, was an accomplished artist in her own right. He admired the paintings she mounted on the walls of her home.
“I thought they were magical,” he says, and he was proud of her accomplishments and creative endeavors such as her ability to play the piano, paint china and create a lovely garden.
“She was an inspiration and I always enjoyed dabbling in the arts,” he says.
Head started college with a major in marine biology, switched to business, then psychology — but he always took art courses, especially art history.
“I just enjoyed it so much,” he says. “As I was starting to graduate, it was like, ‘What you going to do with this?’”
He considered law school, but graduated from Troy State in 1971, married his high school sweetheart and spent a year teaching art and coaching athletics.
During the early 1970s he was impressed by Project Impact, a joint effort of the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Office of Education. The agencies identified five culturally depressed areas nationwide and Pike County, Ala., was one of them.
The program provided artists in residence, teacher training and other programs that lit a fire under Head, who knew he did not want to coach football all his life.
“I was teaching at high school,” he recalls. “I never heard of the NEA, what they did or what that was about. But I knew I wanted to follow the arts and I was very naive about all that. I thought after I finished coaching I could go off and get a job.”
Rebuffed by the High Museum in Atlanta, he applied in Florida and wound up working for the Division of Cultural Affairs of the Florida Arts Council, which launched his career. He later spent two years with the Stephen Foster Folklife Center and eight years with the Arts Council of Louisiana.
He became Alabama’s top arts executive in 1985 and never looked back.
Al Head and his wife, Judy, have been married since 1971. They are, Head explains, “a right brain-left brain couple.” Judy teaches algebra and trigonometry at Brewbaker Technical Magnet School. They have two children: a son, Albert “Trace” Head III of Norfolk, Va., a Navy pilot; and a daughter, Allison Pace, who lives in Memphis. The couple have two grandchildren.
Among his hobbies, Head says he has “the incurable disease of collecting books, mostly old, mostly about Alabama history, Alabama writers and Southern culture.”
“I play a bit of very average (or worse) golf on occasion and a little racquetball,” he says. “The newest hobby that Judy and I share is restoring our new hundred-year old-house in Montgomery — lots of projects.”
Looking back over his 25 years as director, Head says one of the council’s finest accomplishments was a long-range plan that identified needs and opportunities. That created or gave new life to several statewide service organizations such as the Alabama Writers’ Forum, Design Alabama, the Alabama Alliance for Arts and Education, the Alabama Folklife Association and Alabama Dance Council.
“We looked at channeling time, money and energy into supporting statewide service organizations where we had a common purpose,” he says, “and for the most part that has very successful. A lot of good things came out of that.”
More recently the state established a cultural exchange with Pietrasantra, Italy.
“It makes no sense to continue to think provincially or parochially, limiting our artists and communities to a tight, small circle of cultural exposure,” Head says. “The world is much smaller these days through technology and a lot other things. We ought to expose our artists more broadly, and our audiences here in Alabama to things going on, whether that’s Italy, South Korea, China or wherever.
“We’re in much more of a global culture, and we felt we needed to start participating in that. So, the last couple of years have been kind of a new venture for us and we’re real pleased with the way that’s turned out. We know we’ve got a tiger by the tail there, and how much we are able to continue doing depends on our resources — but we think that’s an important stance for us as an organization."
Another important task for the state arts council is to help guide organizations through the shallows and eddies of a dismal economy. He is concerned about institutions such as Alabama Shakespeare Festival, about which he says there is “reason for concern.”
“The economy has hurt programming and overall operations,” he says. “The quality of performances remains, but high-cost productions like ‘Les Miserables’ have been cut, full-time staff has been lost and the season schedule has been re-thought to reduce expenses.
“ASF, like almost everyone else, has lost revenue and the budget has been scaled back significantly. Management team there is making adjustments and seems to be handling this recession period as well as possible. ASF is a tremendous asset to Montgomery, the state and, in many ways, the Southeast. It is clearly the pre-eminent performing arts organization in our state and its impact is significant, artistically and economically.
“Hundreds of thousands of people, in-state and tourists, are exposed the some of the finest professional theater in the country. It is extremely importantly for a public-private partnership to remain in place to support and provide a level of stability for this institution.”
The economy, along with the state’s multiplicity of festivals, are among the reasons Head does not foresee a Spoleto-like festival taking root in Alabama.
“I don’t see an Alabama version of Spoleto anytime soon,” he says. “Spoleto is a major expense (multimillion-dollar budget) involving a major community and organizational commitment. I don’t see that surfacing in an Alabama community on top of the many festivals already taking place. Alabama is a festival-rich state: Panoply, Kentuck, Magic City, Mobile International, Jubilee, and not to mention Mardi Gras.
“I think a major performing arts festival with an international field of performing groups would be terrific, but I am skeptical about that becoming a reality in the next five years or so. There was some talk (through Nall’s experience in Italy with ‘La Rondine’) about co-hosting a opera festival-type event with the world famous Puccini Opera Festival and an in-state company, but that is dormant at this point.”
Head believes the Alabama State Council on the Arts must stay the course until the economy improves and financial support increases.
“Alabama was probably a little later coming into this recession than some states, and traditionally we’ve maybe been a little slower coming out,” he says. “But I’m optimistic and I think this cycle will change. We’ve been through economic downturns before, and the pendulum always swings back — and it will swing back again.
“I think this coming year will be a tough one, and I’ve talked to a lot of development directors and arts organizations folks who are going through tough time trying raise money. Government money is down, foundations are down, and . . . revenue from audiences is kind of a mixed bag. Some groups are holding up while and others are experiencing real problems.
"We are probably looking at a tough year, but there are plenty of signs that will change.”
What will not change is Head’s commitment to the arts in Alabama. Where will he be in five years? He doesn’t have a long-range plan.
"In five years I might be right where I am right now," he says. "I am looking forward to spending more time with our growing grandchildren. But I enjoy what I'm doing, I have a pretty high energy level, and I'm not ready to hang it up right now — so I'll be around for a bit."
NAME: Albert Branscomb Head
OCCUPATION: since 1985 executive director, Alabama State Council on the Arts
AGE: 61
HOMETOWN: Troy, Alabama
EDUCATION: Auburn University at Montgomery (1993), Masters of Liberal Arts, concentration on Southern history, art and literature; Harvard University (1975), certification in arts administration, advanced studies on public support policy for the arts; Florida State University (1973-74), graduate studies in public administration; Troy State University (1971), B.S., art history and aesthetics.
EXPERIENCE: 1977-85, Division of the Arts, Arts Council of Louisiana; 1975-77, Stephen Foster Folklife Center; 1972-75, Division of Cultural Affairs, Florida Arts Council; 1971-72, Charles Henderson High School, Troy City Schools (art and history teacher, football, basketball and golf coach)
CONTACT INFO: 334-242-4076, Ext. 245; e-mail Al.Head@arts.alabama.gov
WEB: http://www.arts.alabama.gov/
NOTE: Alabama State Council on the Arts will meet from 1:30 until 4:30 p.m. March 4 at the Mobile Museum of Art in Langan Park; after a business meeting the board will tour the museum at 4:30 p.m. led by MMA director Tommy McPherson. The ASCA board will reconvene from 9 until 11:30 a.m. March 5 in the boardroom on the 29th floor of Regions Bank, 11 N. Water St., downtown Mobile.