Bio
antonio c. cuyler (kyler), ph.d. (he/him/his) is Professor of Music in Entrepreneurship & Leadership and Faculty Associate in Voice & Opera in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD), Faculty Associate in the African Studies Center (ASC), Faculty Affiliate in the Center for History, Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences, & Ethics in Medicine (CHHASSEM) at Michigan Medicine, Faculty Affiliate in the Center for Racial Justice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and Faculty Affiliate in the Institute for Research on Women & Gender (IRWG) all at the University of Michigan. He also serves as Research Associate in Cultural Policy & Management in the Wits School of Arts (WSoA) at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
dr. cuyler’s scholarship optimizes curiosity about arts administration, entrepreneurship, leadership, & management education and practice, creative justice, cultural policy, and experiential learning. The central question that compels his consulting, research, service, & teaching is, “in what ways can the creative sector ensure and protect the creative justice of those historically and continuously casted as the least and most vulnerable among us?” To this end, he authored Access, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the Careers of Executive Opera Managers of Color in the U. S., edited Arts Management, Cultural Policy, & the African Diaspora, co-edited Accessibility, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Cultural Sector: Initiatives and Lessons Learned from Real Life Cases, and most recently, authored Achieving Creative Justice in the U. S. Creative Sector. He has also authored or co-authored 28 peer reviewed journal articles and 8 book chapters. The League of American Orchestras commissioned him to lead its seminal report, Racial/Ethnic and Gender Diversity in the Orchestra Field in 2023, and the Hewlett Foundation commissioned him to author Arts Leadership in the Bay Area: A Qualitative Study.
Internationally recognized as a thought leader, he has given lectures & presentations, and facilitated workshops around the globe on 6 continents and in more than 30 countries. He has also moderated panels such as #BlackLivesMatter in and Through the Arts, Truth Telling: The Kinship of Critical Race Theory and Hip-Hop, and Opera: Reflecting on the Past, Reaching Toward the Future. In addition he has given interviews about his scholarship, Q & A with Antonio C. Cuyler and the Michigan Minds podcast. In 2020, he founded Cuyler Consulting, LLC, a Black-owned arts consultancy that partners with cultural organizations to maximize their performance and community relevance through access, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI). He has worked with a variety of cultural organizations to actualize creative justice, including serving as Lyric Opera of Chicago’s inaugural Scholar-in-Residence with Lyric Unlimited during the 2024-25 season. He also serves on the boards of the American Composers’ Forum, Black Opera Database, I/O, and OPERA America.
As a proud first generation college student, he previously held faculty positions at Florida State University (FSU), becoming the first Black man to earn promotion and tenure in arts administration in the U. S.; Colorado State University (CSU), Purchase College, SUNY, American University, and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). dr. cuyler is also the inaugural recipient of the Luminary in Arts Equity and Education award given by the Distinguished Black Classical Excellence Awards, and the 2025 University of Michigan North Campus Deans’ Martin Luther King, Jr. Spirit Award for Lifetime Achievement.
