Rising Stars in...Presenting

Megan Dunn and Duke Dang
Senior Program Associate and General Manager, Guggenheim Museum “Works & Process”

Megan Dunn and Duke Dang didn’t plan on becoming a dynamic duo when they met as grad students in arts administration at New York University. For the past six years, however, they have been part of the team that has made the Guggenheim Museum’s “Works & Process” series in New York City one of the most innovative performing arts programs in the country. Dang, now 30, is general manager of the series; Dunn, 31, is senior program associate. They work closely with Mary Sharp Cronson who founded “Works & Process” 27 years ago.

Dunn, a Minneapolis native, studied ballet and music and danced with the Colorado Ballet from 1999 to 2001. Realizing she didn’t want to stay in the field, she returned to the Midwest to study philosophy. But she missed the arts, and NYU’s arts admin Master’s program seemed an ideal way back into the world she loved. Looking for a job after graduation, Dunn approached Dang, a former classmate who had joined the “Works & Process” staff after working there as an intern for several years.

As a teenager growing up in Southern California, Dang worked as an education program assistant at Orange County’s Discovery Science Center, demonstrating such natural wonders as liquid nitrogen to children. But arriving at Boston University as an education major, he discovered museums and was drawn to visual art. Internships at Glimmerglass Opera and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles convinced Dang that the performing arts, specifically museum programs in performing arts, were where he belonged.

At “Works & Process,” Dunn and Dang do a little bit of everything to help produce the programs that Cronson schedules. Dunn jokes that while she mainly writes grant proposals, she also is adept at ironing costumes.

A typical “Works & Process” program combines artists of all kinds speaking about how they made a work followed by a short performance of the full piece or an excerpt. “As a person who loves all sorts of different things in the arts,” said Dunn, “'Works & Process' is a dream job.” For Dang, taking audiences behind the scenes is “not so different from a scientific demonstration. It’s a great fit for me.”

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