Robert Fitzpatrick

Who is Robert Fitzpatrick?

Robert Fitzpatrick is an art academic and executive, entrepreneur and former politician. In 1972, he was elected as Baltimore, Maryland's youngest city council member while also serving as a professor of medieval French literature and dean of students at Johns Hopkins University. Time Magazine named him one of its "200 Faces for the Future" in 1974, where he remained for 12 years.

In 1975 Fitzpatrick was appointed President of California Institute of the Arts. CalArts is an arts institute in Valencia, California, offering undergraduate and graduate arts degrees in visual arts, music, theatre, film and video, dance, animation, and creative writing. In 1987 he resigned as President of CalArts to take the position of head of EuroDisney in Paris.

During his tenure at CalArts, Fitzpatrick served as the director of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles, California. He was also the founder and director of the Los Angeles Festival, which grew directly out of the 1984 Olympic Games.