Catherine Peterson
Executive Director
ArtsBoston
Catherine Peterson is the executive director of ArtsBoston, the audience development and marketing service organization for Boston’s performing arts. ArtsBoston, whose programs include BosTix, BosTix Advance, and Member Services, returns $2.5 million in ticket sales each year to Boston arts groups and runs initiatives that build marketing capacity and stretch marketing dollars for its 170 theater, music, and dance member groups.
Under Ms. Peterson’s guidance, the organization has garnered significant recognition in the community, including acknowledgment from the Boston Globe that “no organization has been more important over the past 25 years to bringing theatre to a wider audience than ArtsBoston.” In 2001 ArtsBoston received the Commonwealth Award, the state’s highest honor for the arts and the following year the organization was acclaimed as “a national leader in arts marketing” by a Massachusetts Cultural Council peer review.
Ms. Peterson worked for the English National Opera in London in the 1980s, opening the first opera merchandise store in Great Britain. She has also held positions as artistic administrator for The Cleveland Orchestra and as vice president at Columbia Artists Management in New York, managing the careers of 25 opera singers including Arleen Auger, Olaf Baer, Robert Lloyd, and Mignon Dunn.
In the Boston area since 1995, Ms. Peterson previously managed a $1.6 million audience development program supported by the Wallace Foundation for the Worcester Art Museum. In addition, she has written classical music criticism for The Boston Globe.
Ms. Peterson is a graduate of Stanford’s Executive Program for NonProfit Leaders─Arts and LeadBoston, the NCCJ’s social justice leadership program. She has been a featured speaker or workshop presenter on arts marketing and audience development for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, New England Conservatory, Boston University, Boston Conservatory, Temple University, and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Born in Berkeley, CA, Ms. Peterson graduated summa cum laude from Wellesley College.