Collective CT - Reimagining the Role of Artists and Scholars Within and In Collaboration with the University
Mini-Conference | Sponsored by Yale School of Music, Yale Schwarzman Center, and the Cultural Innovation Lab at Yale
Building Artistic Careers that Meet the Moment
The conditions under which artists and scholars build careers are changing with unprecedented speed. Intellectual property, contracts, institutional transformation, and public trust are no longer background considerations—they are the very terrain of professional life. This convening brings together leaders in law and scholarship to examine how artists, alumni, and cultural workers can design careers that respond to these realities with resilience, clarity, and imagination.
Session II: Reimagining the Role of Artists and Scholars Within and In Collaboration with the University
6:15 – 7:30 PM
Dr. Michael Sy Uy and the 2025 Public-Facing Scholarship Think Tank
Universities remain powerful engines of cultural production, while also undergoing rapid change in response to political, financial, and structural pressures. This session explores what it means for artists and scholars to build careers within academia at a moment of transition. Led by Dr. Michael Sy Uy and members of the 2025 Think Tank on Public-Facing Scholarship, the conversation will examine the evolving expectations of academic and artistic labor, the challenges of engaging broader publics, and the opportunities for artists and scholars to shape institutions in ways that sustain both their work and their communities.
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Michael Sy Uy (he/him) is associate professor of musicology and director of the American Music Research Center. His main areas of scholarly research are on philanthropy, patronage, arts education, cultural policy, expertise and connoisseurship. His first book—Ask the Experts: How Ford, Rockefeller and the NEA Changed American Music—was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. He is currently working on his second book—Endowing Equity: The NEA, Minority Artists and the Battle for Arts Funding—which has been supported by an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellowship. He is co-editor of the volume Musical Capital: Sound and Power in Washington, D.C. (Dumbarton Oaks: Harvard University Press, under contract) and co-series editor of Arts in Context: Critical Performance Infrastructures (University of Texas Press). His other published work appears in American Music, Journal of the Society for American Music, Journal of Musicology and Music and Arts in Action.
Prior to CU Boulder, Uy was assistant dean of Harvard College and the Allston Burr Resident Dean of Dunster House (2017-23), as well as a lecturer in the music department. He completed his BA at UC Berkeley, MPhil at Oxford University and PhD at Harvard University. He is the recipient of several teaching awards including the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship’s Curricular Innovation Award, the Derek Bok Center Excellence in Teaching Award and the Distinguished Faculty Award from the Harvard Foundation.
For AY 2025-26, Uy is serving as entrepreneur in residence at Yale University's Cultural Innovation Lab.
Collective CT is an eight-month cultural accelerator powered by the Cultural Innovation Lab at Yale in partnership with the State of Connecticut and MOC Innovations. Designed as a free “mini-MBA for artists,” the program equips Connecticut creators with training, mentorship, and infrastructure usually reserved for startups in STEM. All sessions are open to the public, making Collective CT both an accelerator for artists and a statewide forum for reimagining cultural innovation: treating artists as founders, ideas as infrastructure, and culture as a driver of economic and civic vitality.