Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser and his world-renowned DeVos Institute of Arts Management will relocate and join the university next fall, university officials announced yesterday.

The announcement comes just seven months after the university announced it was exploring a partnership with the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington’s oldest private art museum that houses more than 17,000 pieces of art. University officials said Kaiser’s appointment and the addition of the DeVos Institute, which begins Sept. 1, is not related to the Corcoran endeavor.

However, university President Wallace Loh said if the Corcoran and the university ultimately decide to partner, he expects to use Kaiser’s expertise. Kaiser has been dubbed the “Turnaround King” because of his ability to bolster numerous arts programs and centers, including London’s Royal Opera House, the American Ballet Theatre and the Kennedy Center.  

“We are a very, very strong STEM institution, and one of my goals has always been to make it also a STEAM institution — science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics,” Loh said. “One step in this grand strategic vision is of course to bring in a superstar.” 

The DeVos Institute, led by Director Brett Egan, will become part of the university’s arts and humanities college. The institute’s staff members — including Kaiser and Egan, who will become co-directors — will occupy offices in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Officials are still working out the logistics of the move and whether the university will partner with the Kennedy Center in the future.

“Our goal, as an educational institution, is to develop the next generation of leaders and performers and now managers in the arts,” said Bonnie Thornton Dill, arts and humanities college dean. “It’s really about the future of the arts and it just strengthens the portfolio of what we can do in developing that.”

Kaiser founded the Kennedy Center’s DeVos Institute, originally named the Arts Management Institute, in 2001 shortly after he took the helm of the Washington performing arts center. The institute’s impact spans globally, according to the Kennedy Center website, as it has advised thousands of individuals and foundations in the United States as well as in more than 70 countries on six continents. 

Before Kaiser’s appointment, the arts and humanities and college was exploring ways to create a program in arts management, Thornton Dill said. Kaiser and the DeVos Institute make that endeavor much simpler, she said. 

“It does give national and international visibility to our programs and to our students and to our graduates,” Thornton Dill said. “It puts us on an even bigger platform.”

The institute, which is largely self-supported through private gifts, grants and contracts, will be better served at a university where students and international fellows can directly benefit and earn a certificate in arts management, said John Dow, a Kennedy Center spokesman.

“The decision was made on both sides,” Dow said. “For [the university] it’s better and for the [Kennedy] Center, it’s really the work that we want to continue and we will still have joint programs in the future.” 

Kaiser announced his resignation from the Kennedy Center earlier this year, but he will end his contract four months earlier than planned in order to join the university.

A university task force is in the midst of studying and preparing a report on a partnership with the Corcoran. That announcement came in April after the Corcoran’s well-publicized financial struggles led the museum, which sits across from the White House on 17th Street, to explore selling its more than 100-year-old Beaux-Arts building. It needs $130 million to meet museum standards. 

The DeVos Institute will help the university garner national attention in the arts, Loh said, as well as create joint ventures in the arts with countries the university already works with, including China, Israel and other Middle Eastern nations. 

“We’re bringing in a very well-run, mature organization,” Loh said. “If there are challenges, it’s because we will have to operate at their level, efficiency and speed.”