About

Celeste A. Bateman started her company, Celeste Bateman & Associates, LLC in 1997. The firm specialized in arts and cultural programming, arts management consulting, special events production, arts advocacy and the Nia Network, a roster of artists and speakers of African descent who specialize in and present art forms relative to the African Diaspora.

Current and/or recent clients include the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Crossroads Theatre Company, NewarkBound (DMC Publishing), Newark Symphony Hall, The Newark Public Library, the Newark Arts Council, Connection Newark, Newark Downtown District, Newark School of the Arts, United Way of Essex & West Hudson, First Class Championship Development Center, Center for Education Innovation (MS) and numerous other companies and arts organizations nationally and abroad. In 2022, she formed a nonprofit called Blue Butterfly Arts & Media but closed the organization in December due to extenuating health circumstances.

Prior to starting her business, Ms. Bateman was Cultural Affairs Supervisor for the City of Newark, New Jersey.  For the City, she produced concerts, exhibitions, school programs, lectures series, symposia and other public programs for the greater Newark community. Ms. Bateman produced several publications for the Cultural Affairs division, oversaw grants to small and emerging arts organizations, organized community arts tours, served as liaison between the arts community and the City administration and represented the Mayor on several boards and committees. After leaving the City, Ms. Bateman served as interim Executive Director of the Newark Arts Council (now Newark Arts), a non-profit organization that serves the city’s artists and arts organizations, and interim Executive Director of Art House Productions, and eclectic visual and performing arts space in Jersey city (2015).

In 1995 she was one of 10 arts administrators selected nationwide by Americans for the Arts to participate in an arts study tour in Northern Ireland, courtesy the British Council, where they shared ‘war stories’ with fellow arts administrators in a country that, at the time, was enjoying a six-month cease-fire from a tumultuous civil war. Prior to her service with the City of Newark, she was the Program Coordinator at The Newark Museum where she presented over 50 events annually.

Over the years, she has worked with or booked for various organizations such luminaries as Dr. Maya Angelou, Amiri & Amina Baraka, Dr. Tony Brown, Dr. Calvin Butts, Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee, Dr. Gwendolyn Goldsby Grant, Dr. Bernice King, Yolanda King, Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, Dr. Alvin Poussant, Randall Robinson, Congressman William Grey; numerous jazz musicians, among them the late jazz violinist Noel Pointer, the late singer Abbey Lincoln, Chico Mendoza; singers Cissy and Whitney Houston, and countless others. As a filmmaker, she produced/directed two documentaries:  GONE TOO SOON: The Life, Legacy & Loss of Newark’s Cultural Icons (2021) and STRONGER THAN STEEL: The Senator Wynona Lipman Story (2024).

Ms. Bateman received her B.A. in Theatre Arts and Speech from Rutgers University and holds a Masters in Communication Arts from Montclair State University. She is a licensed booking agent and a graduate of the Entrepreneurial Pioneers Initiative, a program of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurial and Economic Development (CUEED) at the Rutgers Business School (2012). She served on the Board of Directors of the Newark Community Economic Development Corp. (2014-2019) and was a Guest Producer for The Newark Public Library for many years until 2020.