Mondavi Center for the Arts at UC Davis.

After helping to open the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in 1998 as its first vice president of marketing and public relations, Richard Bryant founded Front of House Services to help with start-ups and transitions in the performing and visual arts, provide outsourced arts management, and lead creative placemaking efforts.

Front of House Services provides planning, management, marketing, programming, and fundraising services for the arts and other creative businesses. The company is experienced in board development, finance, production, education, research, promotion, and other practical tools that advance, sustain, and strengthen the arts, local neighborhoods, and host communities.

National clients have included American Ballet Theatre, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts , New York’s Theater Development Fund, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, Yale University, Mondavi Center (pictured above) at University of California Davis, San Antonio’s McNay Art Museum Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall.

John F. Kennedy Center for the Perfomring Arts

Front of House Services played a central role in the emergence of New Jersey’s Valley Arts District as one the State’s top creative places. Programs supported there included a theater company, galleries, a teen arts center, artist live/work spaces, weekend arts academies, annual festivals, and other arts and community events. Working with ValleyArts stakeholders, FOH Services helped secure a prestigious ArtPlace grant, one of 31 nationwide out of 1300 applicants that year.

Ribbon cutting at the grand opening of the ValleyArts Firehouse, a live-work spaees for artists in the Valley Arts District of Orange and West Orange NJ.

Front of House Services helped complete plans to advance arts-driven economic development along the rail corridor that links the three New Jersey cities of Woodbridge, Avenel, and Rahway. The company advised Cooper’s Ferry Partnership in Camden NJ, and produced  concerts and other events in public parks there. For Rahway’s Hamilton Stage, Front of House Services developed strategic operating plans, raised operating funds, and directed the launch of the inaugural season.

Cooper’s Ferry Partnership led a robust program to enhance community life beneath the the Ben Franklin Bridge and surrounding neighborhoods in Camden NJ.

Front of House Services advised Southern California’s Chapman University on its 2016 launch of of the $85-million Musco Center for the Arts. After teh company managed the opening, Bryant was invited to become executive director, a position he held for eight years until is retirement from Chapman in 2023.

Opening Night of Musco Center for the Arts in March 2016. Center, Principal Benefactors Paul and Marybelle Musco with (left) Benefactors Wylie and Bette Aiken and (right) Juliann and George Argyros.

Previously Mr. Bryant served for ten years as director of marketing and communications for Southern California’s Orange County Performing Arts Center (now Segerstrom Center). He was also director of marketing for Washington DC’s Arena Stage for seven years and a founding member and first President of the Helen Hayes Awards.