Released on: November 3, 2007, 5:15 am

Press Release Author: The Arts Center of the Capital Region

Industry: Non Profit

Press Release Summary: A well-known leader of the Upstate New York arts community
has been tapped to be the next president and executive director of The Arts Center
of the Capital Region.

Press Release Body: TROY—A well-known leader of the Upstate New York arts community
has been tapped to be the next president and executive director of The Arts Center
of the Capital Region, board chairman Richard Wallace announced last week.

The appointment will be a homecoming for Amy Williams, who served as The Arts
Center’s vice president for 20 years before moving on to her current position as
executive director of the New York State Alliance for Arts Education in 2005.

“There is no one better suited to lead The Arts Center,” Wallace said. “Amy not only
brings to the job a stellar record as an arts administrator and innovator with a
statewide reputation, but The Arts Center is in her blood.

“She grew up with it,” Wallace said, noting that Williams’ parents were among the
founders of the organization. “And, in the course of her own career, she was
instrumental in shaping the highly-regarded, award-winning programs The Arts Center
became known for,” he added.

For her part, Williams said she is eager to work with the region’s artists,
audiences, educators and students, and a broad-based community to take the already
widely-acclaimed center to the next level.

In part, she said, she hopes to do that by exploring new programming opportunities,
including the launch of a large-scale public arts event that will reach all segments
of the community, in the way the organization’s former Riverfront Arts Fest did. She
said she also is looking toward establishing a program of artists’ residencies that
reach beyond the studio and into the community, and to making The Arts Center’s arts
education expertise a resource for schools throughout the greater Capital Region.

Williams said her first step toward those goals—and the administrative one of
increasing and diversifying funding sources—will be to turn to the region’s artists,
cultural consumers and arts supporters for help in shaping a shared vision of the
center’s future.

“Because The Arts Center has always been a part of my life, I’m acutely aware that
all of its growth and all of its successes over the past 45 years have been the
product of a remarkable community of people committed to giving the region a
creative home,” she said.

The news of Williams’ new role came as the centerpiece of a press conference at
which Arts Center officials also revealed that her appointment had been met with an
immediate outpouring of support. In yet another announcement, Wallace said that
several generations of Arts Center leadership are coming together to form an
advisory council that will both strengthen the center’s capacity for strategic
planning and lengthen its reach into the region’s cultural, educational, and
business communities.

The council will be composed of board leaders and friends of the organization
spanning more than 20 years. The group will lend both their professional expertise
and their demonstrated commitment to The Arts Center’s success, he said.

Williams will begin her new duties on Jan. 2. She succeeds Deidre Healy, who headed
the organization for the past year-and-a-half, following the departure of longtime
president Raona Roy.


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Web Site: http://www.artscenteronline.org

Contact Details: Contact: Amy Williams
518-273-0552