CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- Nicholas A. Mestas, executive director of The Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State LA, recently designed and taught a new graduate-level course at Harvard University during the first term of Harvard Summer School, the nation’s oldest summer academic program.
Harvard invited Mestas earlier this year to develop the graduate seminar. The inaugural cohort included 15 established and emerging leaders in the arts and culture sectors from six countries, representing a varied range of professional backgrounds in the museum and arts presenting fields.
The four-credit, 12-session course, titled Cultural Leadership and Institutional Strategy, focused on equipping cultural leaders to build institutions that are adaptive, audience-centered, and resilient through participatory and narrative-driven models of engagement and extension. Sessions drew on frameworks spanning audience and program development, design thinking, and innovation, culminating in final projects in which each student developed a strategy for extending an institution’s scope. Real-world scenarios drawn from The Luckman were offered to ground final project development, giving students a working case study that applied institutional strategy to a live, operating arts organization.
The course featured guest speakers that included Tonya Matthews, president and CEO of the International African American Museum; Hilary Walter, program associate at Getty Foundation; Julia Diamond, senior vice president of TMC Arts/The Music Center Los Angeles; and Joel Flatow, former senior vice president of artist and industry relations and chief of West Coast operations at the Recording Industry Association of America and former legislative director of the Congressional Arts Caucus.
For The Luckman, the Harvard engagement marked a new chapter in the institution’s growing national profile—one that extends its reach and reinforces its strategic vision to steward access to the arts and strengthen the connection between artistic practice and academic inquiry. The course reflects a broader effort at The Luckman to expand learning through the arts and strengthen connections between professional arts programming and academic curricula. These efforts are building a more connected cultural ecosystem that bolsters Cal State LA’s position as a hub for creativity, scholarship, and civic life.
Ahead of the summer program, Mestas conducted research and development activities in collaboration with Katherine Burton Jones, director of museum studies at Harvard and a leading expert in museology, museum management, and museum technology. A world-renowned scholar and practitioner, Burton Jones has authored three books, numerous peer-reviewed articles, and a wide range of invited presentations. She has contributed to Harvard University’s academic and professional programs for more than three decades, including serving as a research advisor since 2004. Her previous leadership appointments include assistant director of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and assistant dean for Information Technology and Media Services at Harvard Divinity School.
The research, development, and rollout of the course also created opportunities to collaborate with influential scholars and professionals in arts administration, museum practice, and cultural leadership. It brought new resources and strategies to The Luckman and to the Harvard curriculum.
To this work, Mestas brought knowledge and practice from a career spanning arts presenting, curation, cultural diplomacy, and cultural production. Named executive director in 2021, he led The Luckman’s post-pandemic reopening and raised its national visibility, bringing to Cal State LA artists including Patti LaBelle, Isabella Rossellini, Taj Mahal, Melissa Etheridge, Julieta Venegas, Chaka Khan, Lila Downs, Sérgio Mendes, Judy Collins, Esperanza Spalding, Bernadette Peters, and Compañía Nacional de Danza de España.
He also led the expansion of The Luckman’s digital program, Luckman Sessions, into a globally produced streaming series with more than 30 episodes filmed in Madrid, Tel Aviv, Oaxaca, New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. Last year, he spearheaded The Luckman’s first international brand extension with an exhibition of Andy Warhol works from its permanent collection at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’s Casa del Lago gallery in Mexico City.
Prior to his current role, Mestas worked in cultural diplomacy as a director of cultural affairs and cultural attaché, representing cultural heritage and artistic interests within the arts and entertainment industries. He served on the Board of Directors of California Presenters, a statewide coalition of performing arts professionals. Mestas was also an appointed delegate to the Institut Français and Office National de Diffusion Artistique’s FOCUS Cirque in Paris, the International Exposure conference in Jerusalem, and the Cultures Conference Assembly of Cultural Attachés at the United Nations. He served as chief curator of a landmark biennial that featured a keynote address by filmmaker John Waters and included works by artists ranging from Robert Mapplethorpe and Keith Haring to emerging artists from six continents. He has also worked as a cultural consultant for a prime-time network television series, as an art publisher, and as a producer of events in nearly 10 countries.
