view from my old office at The O'Neill - nice!
As many of you tens of readers already know, three weeks ago Dan and I got married. It was a joyous occasion for all the obvious reasons, and also some less obvious ones. I was never one of those girls who dreamed of a big wedding, but the first and only place I imagined having a big wedding was at The O’Neill. The combination of art, barn and beach was undeniably romantic, even when I worked there every day. When Dan and I started looking for a place to get hitched, we found the Headlands Center for the Arts—or, as I like to think of it, “the O’Neill of the West”—big views, big love, and a place where our rental fees will support artist residencies and other community programming.
Getting married, and particularly getting married where we live, feels like turning a corner in all the right ways. When I accepted the job as director of SOMArts, it was a great leap into the unknown. Leading an organization that supported art and artists deeply rooted in community was a dream I had been working toward for ten years. And no place celebrates community-based arts as boldly and beautifully as San Francisco. We could guess at, but couldn’t predict exactly, the challenges and opportunities ahead of us, which have included:
-the highs and lows of leading change in an organization with a rich history and multifaceted identity
-the weight of important decisions surrounding Dan’s career and how to best navigate his move to San Francisco in an uncertain economy
-the shifting balance of learning, mentoring, creating and curating in my own career.
When I drove cross-country, I stopped in Salt Lake City to visit my cousins Sue and Phil, who like me have a history of working in the arts. Phil, who runs several arts venues for Salt Lake County, told me that it would take at least two years for my vision to begin to take any sort of visible shape. It seemed like an unbearably long time to wait, when so much can be done so quickly. But of course the arts veteran was right in this case. One of the most important things for any kind of leader to develop is the very hard-to-define, hard-to-explain sense of when things can bend, and when they will break. It’s like a chef’s palate—critical. Also, learning how to read the signs of who will change and who won’t, and how to live with the sometimes irreconcilable contexts of my personal feelings for an individual, and my professional obligation to serve the mission of SOMArts and the greater good. In some instances, “learning” is a euphemism for saying “mistakes were made.” After two years, what makes me happiest in my work life is to see a growing circle of staff members, board members, volunteers and artists surrounding SOMArts who complement each other in strength and ability, care deeply about the value of community-based art and cultural equity, hold themselves and others accountable, respect differences, and bring creativity and enthusiasm to their daily work.
What makes me happiest in my home life is to celebrate the moments when good fortune smiles upon us, as we did in early September, surrounded by friends, family and love at our wedding. And in the middle of all this activity came the wonderful news that starting in October, Dan will become the new Art Director for SFMoMA.
So now, we turn the corner. We start our lives together as husband and wife, Dan begins a new job, and SOMArts has already started a season that will include the launch of Feast of Words, a literary potluck and collaboration between Irina Zadov and myself (October), the first Commons Curatorial Residency, featuring Julie Michele’s I Live Here: SF (November), the first-ever touring exhibition (December) and too many exciting collaborations to mention.
