Interview with Mary Colleen Heil, president, Pennsylvania College of Art & Design; Joyce Heberlein, owner, Lancaster Galleries; and Liz Todd Lambert, president, LancasterARTS—conducted by Peter Crescenti, managing editor, Car & Travel, on March 28 and 29, 2008.

Car &Travel: What will visitors find when they visit Lancaster today?

Mary Colleen Heil: I think they will be absolutely flabbergasted, that is the first thing. When I bring people from New York, New Jersey or Delaware, even California, they are always stunned.

They don’t expect history, they don’t expect beautiful architecture. People are surprised when they find out how old this city is. It’s the oldest inland city in the United States. Juxtapose that with what people know about Lancaster, which is the farm country, and they see a very interesting mix of communities.

We have been compared to a lot of small booming cities that are experiencing a growth in the arts. A lot of cities are trying to cultivate the arts, but you can’t do it unless you have a real artist community. You don’t just make it happen. The community grew organically.

Joyce Heberlein: We have a mixture of people who have been here for 20 years and have watched this development grow, as well as people who are new and bring an outside-the-box thinking. I’ve watched the art scene change quite dramatically in town, and it really is a lot more than we had hoped for 20 years ago. Lancaster seems to attract that creative class, so you have people who want to work here as artists, people who want to study the arts here and professional people who want to perform or show there work here, because they like the buzz that is going on. There is an everyday buzz that is happening, and you often see it on the streets.

C&T: So the arts scene here was more of an evolution than a big bang?

JH: It’s been an evolution that had been building, but then it had a big boost. Looking back, I can’t pinpoint when that big boost happened. I’m not sure there was one specific event. It was a culmination of a lot of things that were working toward the same goal at the same time, but we never were at the table at the same time. All of a sudden, you sit back and say “wow.”

The College of Art & Design started out across the river in Yorktown. It grew and finally moved to Lancaster. The Lancaster Museum of Art, which once was the Lancaster Community Gallery, started looking at itself as a museum with mission. The Fulton Theatre made some major renovations. A new, fresh set of energy and blood came in and said we can renovate this building and make it very special, and they did. The theater had survived somehow as a movie theater, and it became a place where a lot of professional artists from outside the area chose to come and perform. We have had several world premieres here, and I think that says a lot. The Academy of Music is bringing in top-notch performers. The acoustics were done by the same gentleman who did the acoustics at the Sydney Opera center. It’s supposed to be the most acoustically accurate building on the East Coast, and its intention at some point is to simulcast live throughout the world.

And so, all of that was happening at the same time there were people with perseverance who really believed, and then all of a sudden it all starts to surface at the same time.

C&T: What is LancasterARTS?

Liz Todd Lambert: LancasterARTS is an incorporated nonprofit organization whose key mission is the marketing and promotion of the arts in Lancaster, especially to those outside of this area. This is a place where you can come and see high-quality arts, whether it’s visual or performing arts. There is a great diversity of the arts here, a great concentration in this wonderful little town that is so much fun to walk around in.

C&T: Your First Friday celebration of the arts has been a huge success.

JH: What is interesting is a lot of our art people used to go to Philadelphia for their First Friday, and now their Philadelphia friends are coming up here to ours.

C&T: Is this a year-round event, or is it seasonal?

LTL: It’s every month year-round. In fact, we’re having First Friday on the Fourth of July this year. There will be fireworks in the evening. Not everything will be open that day, but a good number of galleries will be.

C&T: Tell us about your latest event, Artist Saturday. How is this different from First Friday?

LTL: It’s targeted to a narrower market. First Friday is a great event, and people have a great time, but not everybody who comes out is real serious about purchasing art. Artist Saturday gives people another opportunity to come into the galleries along Prince Street, get a great view of the artwork and have an opportunity to talk to the artists. If you have more than a casual interest, are thinking about collecting, or are a collector, this is the time for you, because the artists are here, and there will be more structure.

C&T: We have seen art on the walls of many restaurants in town, much of it for sale. Is this an organized program?

MCH: We get calls on a regular basis from restaurant owners who want to get student and faculty work to hang in their businesses. We counted to see how many artists were represented, and we counted about 1,000 in the course of the year.