Americans for the Arts

A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Margie Johnson Reese brings exceptional skills in cultural planning and implementation design. Margie’s career has included arts leadership in Dallas and Los Angeles.  She has been an advisor to the nation’s most diverse communities. She has worked directly with artists and other creative professionals to enhance their employment and business opportunities, in both the nonprofit and commercial sectors.

Margie has a 30-year portfolio as an arts management professional and has contributed to public policy in areas of public participation in the arts, public art policy and practice, community development, and cultural master planning. She has guided the development of numerous cultural facilities and managing architectural design, budget and staff to guarantee that pubic service is a priority.

She served as a grant maker for the Ford Foundation in their Office for West Africa as the Program Officer for Media, Arts and Culture. In that capacity, she led the ongoing efforts of the Foundation focusing on heritage preservation, conservation, museum education, governance and cultural policy. She cites among her major accomplishments funding the restoration of the slave castles in Ghana and Nigeria, and providing funding to preserve the ancient Arabic manuscripts of Timbuktu in Mali.

Margie formed MJR Partners, LLC in 2010, and provides professional arts management services and guidance to communities for planning, stabilizing and implementing inclusive public policy. Her clients have engaged her services to assist in stimulating strategic partnerships between the cultural sector and government agencies, foundations, corporations, and academic institutions to advance cultural understanding. She is a professor at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, teaching Cultural Policy in the Arts in the graduate Arts Administration program.

A graduate of Washington State University in Pullman, Washington with a BS in Speech and Theater, Margie holds an MFA in Theater from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.