Umberto "Bert" Crenca is an American artist, arts administrator, arts advisor and educator. He is known for being a founder and long-time artistic director of the non-profit arts organization,

AS220 AS220 is a non-profit community arts center located in Downtown, Providence, Rhode Island, United States. AS220 maintains four dozen artist live/work studios, around a dozen individual work studios, six rotating exhibition spaces, a main stage, a ...

, in Providence, Rhode Island. He has been credited with helping to "lay the groundwork for much of the cultural development that shaped the Providence imaginary in the 1990s and early decades of the 21st century" by scholar Micah Salkind, and in 2010 was identified as one of Rhode Island's Most Influential People by Rhode Island Monthly.

Early life

Crenca was born in Rhode Island in 1950. In the 1980s, Crenca worked in the print shop of

Fleet Bank FleetBoston Financial was a Boston, Massachusetts–based bank created in 1999 by the merger of Fleet Financial Group and BankBoston. In 2004 it merged with Bank of America; all of its banks and branches were converted to Bank of America. Hist ...

. He graduated from the

Rhode Island College Rhode Island College (RIC) is a public college in Rhode Island, United States, with much of the land in Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, and other parts in North Providence, Rhode Island, North Providence. The college was established in 18 ...

in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in fine arts.

AS220

Following an unfavorable review of Crenca's work in

The Providence Journal ''The Providence Journal'', colloquially known as the ''ProJo'', is a daily newspaper serving the metropolitan area of Providence, the largest newspaper in Rhode Island, US. The newspaper was first published in 1829. The newspaper had won four ...

in 1982, a group of artists gathered to condemn harsh art critiques. Together, they created a manifesto and sought to create a new art space. This resulted in Crenca founding AS220, a non-profit art space, in 1985. AS220 grew from a small performance and studio space in 1985 to the proprietor of live/work studios, exhibition spaces, multiple performance areas, teaching spaces, a restaurant and bar. Crenca describes his work at AS220 as being "extremely blurred" with his work as an artist, and describes AS220 as a "work of art." Crenca retired as artistic director of AS220 in 2015, and served as an adjunct advisor and spokesperson for the organization through 2019.

Arts administration and education

In his capacity as artistic director of AS220 and arts administrator, Crenca acted on local boards and committees as a representative of the Rhode Island arts community, including the Arts and Entertainment District Task Force in 1992, the mayoral transition committees of Providence mayors

David Cicilline David Nicola Cicilline ( ; born July 15, 1961) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 2011 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 36th mayor of Providence from 2003 to 2011, the fi ...

(2002) and

Jorge Elorza Jorge O. Elorza (born November 24, 1976) is an American law professor who served as the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island from 2015 until 2023. He defeated former mayor Buddy Cianci in the 2014 mayoral election and on January 5, 2015, was sworn ...

(2014), and the Providence School Board 2005–2008.DAVIS, KAREN A.. "Frye, Crenca formally join School Board." ''Providence Journal (RI)'', Metro ed., sec. News, 5 Jan. 2005, pp. C-01. ''NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current'', infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/152428E8A72E3A48. Accessed 3 Nov. 2019. Crenca has spoken at numerous events as regarding place-making and community arts programs, including the keynote address Museums Aotearoa Conference in New Zealand in 2012, the TEDxProvidence conference in 2013, and The Cass Project's lecture series at the

University at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo (commonly referred to as UB, University at Buffalo, and sometimes SUNY Buffalo) is a public university, public research university in Buffalo, New York, Buffalo and Amherst, New York, United States. ...

in 2018. Much of his work has centered around arts education and programming for youth, including the establishment of the Broad Street Studio, which evolved over time into what is now the AS220 Youth Program, and his work as an art instructor at the Rhode Island Training School and at AS220's education program for arts administrators
Practice//Practice

Visual art, music and performance

Crenca is a visual artist, musician and performer. His style was described as "propelled by a prolific, relentless, try-everything-at-once drive" and "improvisational, free-association, automatic-writing, hallucinatory" by Greg Cook of the

Providence Phoenix Providence often refers to: * Providentia, the divine personification of foresight in ancient Roman religion * Divine providence, divinely ordained events and outcomes in some religions * Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of Rhode Island in the ...

. In the 1990s, Crenca co-lead a fluxus-based music and performance troupe, Meatballs/Fluxus. His other musical and performance collaborations include Monkee Head, Panic Band, and the Gillen Street Project.

Selected exhibitions

* 1984 - Galleria del Corso, Latino, Italy * 1985 - Antonio Dattorro Studio Gallery * 2004 - Frenetic Engineering: censored/uncensored,

Newport Art Museum The Newport Art Museum, founded in 1912 as the Art Association of Newport, is located at 76 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. The museum operates a gallery in the John N. A. Griswold House, a National Historic Landmark that is one of t ...

and Blink Gallery, Newport, RI * 2010 - You Can't Call Your Own Baby Ugly, AS220 Project Space, Providence, Rhode Island * 2007 - Just 'N Artist/Not an Artist at Firehouse 13 Gallery * 2014 - Puzzled,

Machines with Magnets A machine is a physical system that uses power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to natural biological macromolecul ...

* 2017 - Pain and Such, Providence, RI, 82 Weybossett Street)

Awards and honors

* 1997 - Crenca was fellow in the Pew Civic Entrepreneur Initiative * 2005 - Pew Civic Entrepreneur Initiative Fellow * 2010 - Rhode Island Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts * 2010 - Rhode Island College Charles B Willard Professional Achievement Award * 2011 - Rhode Island Foundation Community Service Award * 2013 - Rhode Island Arts and Culture and Tourism Making a Difference Award * 2016 - Honorary doctorate from Brown University * 2016 - Honorary doctorate from Roger Williams University * 2016 - Honored by the White House as one of the Champions of Change national initiative.news digest." ''Providence Journal (RI)'', sec. RI News, 18 June 2016, p. 2. ''NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current'', infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/15D95EA8923C6948. Accessed 5 Nov. 2019. * 2002 RI Foundation Fellow * 2003 Scholarship Recipient, Harvard University Business School

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crenca, Umberto Artists from Rhode Island American arts administrators Musicians from Rhode Island Rhode Island College alumni 1950 births Living people