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Director Change-Up at YU Contemporary

By Lisa Radon
January 19, 2012
Featured, Visual Art

 

Curtis Knapp, Acting Director, YU Contemporary

 

This just in: An email arrives to say that Director Sandra Percival leaves YU Contemporary to be replaced by co-founder Curtis Knapp as Acting Director as of January 20. That’s tomorrow. Percival had been recruited from San Francisco to come to lead the organization through its critical development phase in a difficult fundraising climate. She brought decades of experience leading arts organizations such as New Langton Arts in SF and working on London’s public art collection. During her tenure, YU made its public roll-out, secured a $75,000 gift from the Martin Family, did strategic planning, and did some early programming before the organization had a curator. The loss of Percival’s experience and contacts is problematic, but for the time being Knapp, who has run Marriage Records since 2002, should be an able hand on the rudder. He’s been there from day one, co-developing with Flint Jamison the vision and planning for YU.

If you’ve been asleep for the last year or so, you may not know that YU Contemporary is a new contemporary arts center in development in the old Yale Union Laundry building on Portland’s Eastside at SE 8th between Morrison and Belmont. Here’s a story from November on the latest.

So what’s next? Co-founders Knapp and Jamison have secured a further gift from YU’s lead donor and will be building out the board that has until now consisted of the founders and the director. YU hosts 100 Years of John Cage with FearNoMusic on February 17 and a conversation with artist Shannon Ebner on March 2. I’ll be curious to hear what new curator Robert Snowden is thinking about the rest of 2012. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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