Announcing the addition of 5 new board members at Artspace

On behalf of Artspace, a non-profit contemporary art gallery in downtown New Haven, Matt Maleska, its Board Chair, is pleased to announce the addition of five new members to its Board— Marion Belanger, Jessica Labbe, Helen Kauder, Beka Sturges, and Paul Taheri— effective July 1, 2016.

Marion Belanger is a photographer based in Guilford currently serving as visiting artist and lecturer at Hartford Art School and at Wesleyan University. Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Yale Art Gallery, the Beinecke Library, among other venerable institutions. A forthcoming book of her photographs, Rift/Fault, will appear in October 2016 (Radius Books) with an essay by the noted art historian and critic Lucy Lippard. She has been a participant in many past Artspace programs and exhibitions. She holds an MFA from Yale.

 

Jessica Labbe is the Deputy Director for Finance and Administration for Yale University Art Gallery. In this capacity, she serves as a strategic administrative partner within the Art Gallery’s leadership team and directs, plans, and manages the comprehensive business affairs of the museum, including management and analysis of departmental budgets, human resources, staff training and development, and regulatory compliance. She holds an MBA from Yale School of Management and a BFA in Furniture Design from RISD. She lives in East Rock.

 

 

Helen Kauder is Executive Director of Artspace and co-founder of the City-Wide Open Studios festival. Before returning to Artspace in 2010, she served as Deputy Director of the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. Earlier, she was a Vice President at Citibank and the Director of University Licensing Programs at Yale University. She has been recognized for her long service to the art sector through Connecticut’s Office of the Arts Elizabeth Mahaffey award, and an Elm-Ivy award, Yale’s highest honor for town-gown bridge building. She has previously served on the Board of Artspace as Treasurer, and later Board Chair. She holds an MBA in Accounting/Finance from U Chicago and an SB in Economics from MIT.

 

Beka Sturges is an Associate Principal of Reed Hilderbrand and directs the firm’s presence in New Haven. She received a Master of Landscape Architecture with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Sarah Lawrence College. Since joining Reed Hilderbrand in 2004, Beka has participated in the design and implementation of the Old Quarry Residence in Guilford, Connecticut, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. She has served as project landscape architect and manager for Phase 2 of the renewal and expansion of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. While at Harvard, Beka received the Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship to research urban agriculture sites in South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. She serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at Connecticut College.

 

Paul Taheri, MD, MBA, is Chief Executive Officer of Yale Medical Group (YMG), and a Deputy Dean at the Yale School of Medicine, providing leadership for a rapidly expanding physician organization that combines the best compassionate care with the latest in advancing medicine. He joined YMG from University of Vermont (UVM), where he was President and CEO of the UVM Medical Group in Burlington, and Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs, as well as a professor of surgery. Before that he was Division Chief of Trauma, Burn and Critical Care, and then Vice Chair of Surgery at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he completed his MBA at the Ross School of Business. Dr. Taheri, who is originally from Buffalo, N.Y., completed his medical degree at New York University and his general surgical residency at Tulane University. Yale Medical Group’s CEO is also the past chair of the Group on Faculty Practices for the Association of American Medical Colleges and an examiner for the American Board of Surgery. He has lectured broadly on various business topics, including cost of care, physician leadership and system optimizations.

For nearly thirty years, Artspace has been at the forefront of New Haven’s contemporary art scene, championing the ideas and artistic concerns of local artists and creating space for exhibitions on some of the most urgent issues of our time. Touchstone programs like our Summer Apprenticeship for New Haven Public School students, our City-Wide Open Studios festival, and our Flatfile, which brings needed attention to exceptional works on paper, together provide artists with unparalleled access to audiences, space, resources, and to one another. In 2016/2017, Artspace will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a series of exhibitions and programs to mark “Three Decades of Change.”

Artspace is very grateful to receive exhibition and operating support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, City of New Haven Economic Development Office & Dept of Arts Culture & Tourism, the Connecticut Office of the Arts, the Greater New Haven Community Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, Maximilian E. & Marion O. Hoffman Foundation, Mabel Burchard Fisher Grant Foundation, First Niagara Foundation, New Alliance Foundation, Yale University, local businesses and individual Friends of Artspace.