Joseph Wesley Zeigler, a long-time resident of Montclair, New Jersey, died March 28th, 2020. He was born October 11, 1938 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, grew up in New Haven, and graduated from the Hopkins School in 1956 and with an A.B. magna cum laude in English from Harvard College, where he was a member of Lowell House, in 1960. At Harvard, he co-authored the 1960 Hasty Pudding Show, “Run for the Money”.
Mr. Zeigler, an arts consultant, began his career in 1969, and served hundreds of arts institutions throughout America in long-range planning, audience and market research, programming, marketing and communications, and funding. Through the years, his major New York City clients included the American Music Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Museum, the Ford Foundation, the Henry Street Settlement Arts for Living Center, Lincoln Center's Education Department, Meet the Composer, the New York City Opera, the New York Philharmonic, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, and Town Hall.
Before becoming a consultant, Mr. Zeigler spent the 1960s in regional theatre, as one of the first recipients of a Ford Foundation Administrative Internship at Arena Stage in Washington, DC and at the San Francisco Actor's Workshop, and later as executive director of Theatre Communications Group, a service organization for non-profit theatres. He wrote a history of the movement, “Regional Theatre: The Revolutionary Stage”, published in 1973 by the University of Minnesota Press and re-issued in paperback by DaCapo in 1977. A second book, “Arts in Crisis: The National Endowment for the Arts vs. America”, was published by Acapella Press in 1994. Mr. Zeigler wrote articles for Cultural Affairs, New York Affairs, Playbill, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Washington Post, and U.S. News and World Report. He was a consulting editor of the Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society.
Mr. Zeigler taught graduate courses in arts administration as an adjunct professor at Adelphi University, Brooklyn College, the City University of New York, Marymount, NYU, Seton Hall University, and SUNY-Purchase. He was a member of the governing Consistory of the Collegiate Church of New York, and the Board of Trustees at Collegiate School.
Mr. Zeigler is survived by his wife of 55 years, Alison Damon Zeigler, sons Damon Wesley and Abraham Ives, and two granddaughters and two grandsons.
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Published in Montclair Times from Mar. 31 to Apr. 9, 2020.
