Christopher Benincasa
Associate Producer

Christopher Benincasa joined State of the Arts in February 2001. He produces stories for the show and works on its overall production.

His biggest project to date was Peters Valley, a half-hour documentary covering a year in the life of the Peters Valley Craft Education Center, located in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

Peters Valley won a 2005 national CINE Golden Eagle Award in the Arts, Leisure & Lifestyle category, and a 2005 Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition. The original music featured in Peters Valley was written and recorded by The Band Who Planted Trees. Christopher - who played bass in the band when he was in college - remixed and re-engineered the music to create the soundtrack.

Most recently, he won a 2006 Mid-Atlantic Emmy in the Magazine Program or Special category for his work on the State of the Arts episode Tools of the Trade. He won his first Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award in 2003 in the Outstanding Magazine Format Broadcast category.

A graduate of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, he has a strong interest in the visual arts. While earning his BFA, his work was shown in his Senior Thesis exhibit and won several awards in MGSA’s annual Art Open shows.

A native of New Brunswick, New Jersey, he currently lives in rural Hunterdon County. When not working on his favorite television show, he still manages to make and write about art. His work is featured in current issues of American Abstract Artists Journal and The Structurist.