nothin Fitzmaurice Named New Arts Council Chief | New Haven Independent

Fitzmaurice Named New Arts Council Chief

Katrina Goldburn Photo

CAW Board Chair Antoinette Brim, Fitzmaurice and Arts Council Board Vice President Rick Wies.

As the new executive director of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, Dan Fitzmaurice won’t have to go very far to find his new office — he’ll need to take a few steps down the street.

Fitzmaurice is currently the executive director of Creative Arts Workshop, a not-for-profit community art school located in the arts corridor on Audubon Street. (He is also a host of WNHH radio’s biweekly Artbeat” program.) On March 13, he will formally step into the role of the Arts Council’s executive director, a position that has been open since Cynthia Clair’s departure from the organization last September. In the months since, Martha Murray has been acting as interim director. 

That news was announced Monday afternoon in email messages from the Arts Council and Creative Arts Workshop. As Fitzmaurice begins his leadership at the Arts Council, Creative Arts Workshop reported that it plans a period of professional interim leadership before launching the search for its next executive director.” A staff member at Creative Arts Workshop said she could not provide more detail than that at this time. 

We are thrilled to welcome Daniel to the Arts Council during this important transition,” said Eileen O’Donnell, chair of the Arts Council’s Board of Directors. As an arts leader, collaborator, and innovator, he is exactly what our regional arts and cultural sector of the 21st century needs.”

It is a real honor to get the position and to put the Arts Council back on the map,” Fitzmaurice said when reached by phone Monday afternoon. The map means really becoming regional, really being the arts council for greater New Haven and New Haven. I think it’s now in name only, and that’s a real focus — making sure that our arts organizations are connected, and that we’re healthy going forward. That our relationship with the state as a whole is healthy.”

The [Arts Council] board has done a lot of listening, and the first priority is to keep them in there,” he added. There’s still more listening to be done. Each of our stakeholders has different needs … and I think there are a lot of unmet needs where the Arts Council can come in.”

He added that he will look at arts and culture as a broader lens,” working to make the Arts Council more interdisciplinary in its approach to what constitutes arts and culture in the 21st century (for instance, adding culinary and digital aspects to the work that the Arts Council does).

It’s a really really transformative time,” he said. I think board members see, and I see, this as starting a new chapter for the Arts Council, and it’s going to be written by everyone.”

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