Art News & Notes: Woodruff Center’s new CEO, Decatur’s poet laureate, and more
Shake-ups, announcements and updates from the arts
- Tara-Lynne Pixley
- The race to re-design the AJC’s old headquarters is tightening.
The search for a leader for the state’s largest cultural organization is over. Woodruff Arts Center has a new president and CEO. Virginia Hepner will step into the position formerly held by the retiring Joe Bankoff. Hepner has worked as both a business executive with Wachovia and as an arts director: from October 2010 to August 2011 she was the interim director for Young Audiences, a division of Woodruff Arts Center responsible for youth arts-in-education. Hepner also severed as the interim executive director of the Atlanta Ballet in 2009.
Her appointment comes after unanimous approval from the Center’s Board of Trustees, based on a search committee recommendation that included four of the Center’s division chairs. Hepner’s hiring clears up the question of succession raised by Bankoff’s retirement announcement late last year. And Woodruff Arts Center - one of the largest arts centers nationally - can continue on.
The Office of Cultural Affairs has announced the final four contestants in its RE:DESIGN architectural contest, which tasked members of the community with submitting their own visions for the bottom floor of the former Atlanta Journal-Constitution headquarters, which the city now owns. The space will be retrofitted for a gallery to fill a void left by the closing of City Hall East. The shortlisted entrants have advanced to round two where they will submit a final presentation and an architectural model to the judging panel on June 28.
The remaining contestants are: anthonythorpedesign, BFR LAB, M20 Projects and Stanley Beaman & Sears. Follow the links and judge them for yourself.
In other OCA news, Mayor Kasim Reed has proposed doubling its arts grants funding for the FY 2013 operating budget, which would double the money for arts contracts from $470,000 to $940,000. That includes an initial $250,000 increase, as well as an additional $220,000 to jump-start a fledgling fund-match program called “power2give.” The announcement came two weeks ago in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Orly plane crash, on June 3, 1962, which killed many of the Atlanta arts community’s leaders. “The leading cities of the world invest significantly in arts and culture, and Atlanta should be no different,” Reed says in a press release.
- Courtesy Oglethorpe University
- Elizabeth H. Peterson
These increases would help stabilize a disproportion in the Atlanta arts community: although the city has the most arts-related businesses per capita in the country, it contributes less to arts funding than Nashville and Charlotte, both of which ranked lower.
In other arts executive news, the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art has named a new director: Elizabeth H. Peterson, who will begin in her position on August 15. Peterson previously worked as director at the Akus Gallery at Eastern Connecticut State University. “This is absolutely my dream job,” she said in a press release.
Last, a bit of we’re-so-happy-and-jealous-for-you news, Natasha Trethewey - Decatur resident, Pulitzer Prize winner and Emory lecturer - has been named the next poet laureate by the Library of Congress, making her the nation’s official poet beginning in September. The announcement comes at a fortuitous time for the poet: Trethewey has a new book of poetry, “Thrall,” out in the fall. Not to mention that she’s the first Southerner to hold the title since the original laureate himself, Robert Penn Warren.