Savor! Cries Wolf

New Haven government’s top arts and culture official has plans for you every month — and sometimes more often than that.

The official, arts and culture director Andy Wolf, touted two immediate events: a visit and public forum Thursday with the new U.S. surgeon general (at 10:30 a.m. at Gateway’s downtown campus) and Friday evening’s first New Haven Grand Prix bike-race exhibition and pizza/beer fest on the Green.

Working as a City Hall department of one, Wolf has taken up a challenge he received from Mayor Toni Harp since taking office last year (returning to his hometown of New Haven from Los Angeles): To have a big event in town at least once a month. And to incorporate an arts-and-culture sensibility into broader plans for city renewal.

So in addition to leveraging private dollars and energy to stage monthly-or-more-often big events, he has dived into cultural issues of the day, such as the quest to save the John Slade Ely House. In a prior life Wolf worked as an attorney handling estates — which came in handy in dealing with this matter.

You can listen to Wolf talk about that, his plans for upcoming months, and his journey from Norton Street to CBS News to the West Coast and back again, in an interview on WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. Click on the audio file above or find the episode in iTunes or any podcast app under ​“WNHH Community Radio.” The Ely House discussion begins at 36 minutes into the program. The matter is before a Shoreline probate judge; Wolf supports a plan brokered by the Community Foundation to move in Educational Center for the Arts’ art department as a paying tenant to share space with groups already in the building.