The Cultural Organization Director: Kate Lorenz
“This is an opportunity to remind us how much we value the arts. People will say, “Oh, wait, we DON’T want a city without the arts.”
5 Questions with Kate Lorenz
Executive Director, Hyde Park Art Center
Chicago, IL
Kate Lorenz is Hyde Park Art Center’s Executive Director. Since assuming the role in 2010, she has led a period of transformation and growth that has made the Art Center a national leader in how an institution can cultivate an authentic community that is part of people’s daily lives, while investing in its city’s diverse artists and voices. This work was recognized with a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions in 2016 and has served as a model for peer institutions and leaders nationally.
The mission of the Hyde Park Art Center is to stimulate and sustain the visual arts in Chicago. Hyde Park Art Center is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering and production space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for today and tomorrow’s creative voices, providing the space to cultivate and create new work and connections. Every year, The Art Center unveils 20 exhibitions, offers 200+ studio classes, hosts artists from around the world, welcomes 45,000 visitors, and holds 200+ free events. The Art Center celebrated its 80th Birthday in 2019.
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1. How are you? How are you handling/preparing?
We are preparing, but do not know what we are preparing for yet, so are constantly toggling between different scenarios. Like everyone, we do not know when we can resume physical programming and that uncertainty is hard.
We have rolled out online courses and teen programming and are adjusting schedules, and hope that this is a stop-gap. We are a physical convening space, and we re-creating that experience online, but we all need human contact.
We are lucky – we are financially healthy. But this isn’t a rainy day, this is a hurricane.
Our sector’s pain might be long-term. As we all focus on the immediate health and safety of our communities, we also need to remember that we could be feeling the pain in different ways for months and years. For me, I don’t yet know how the world will be different when we come out of this, but it will certainly be different. I’m hopeful this will be an extraordinary learning opportunity for all of us and we’ll end up stronger. In order for that to be the case, we need to weather the storm and dive into our missions wholeheartedly to the extent we can.
2. What is the immediate need of your organization?
Artists, contractors, freelancers, and K-12 students. Our relief has been focused on that. We have paid out teaching hours on existing contracts — even with no revenue coming — and created a teaching artists relief fund. We are continuing with programming, serving students and artists, keeping people employed and getting paychecks. That’s what the online courses are – to create teaching opportunities while also giving people a chance to be creative during this time and to access a community of people.
3. How are you re-imagining your work?
We know we’ll need to expand our work going forward to meet the needs of the community and want to be ready to do that when we can emerge from behind our screens.
4. What has changed with your fundraising strategy? Have you started to re-imagine what it needs to be?
In these first few weeks, we’ve been focused on fundraising for paying teaching artists among people who care deeply about artists. Long-term leadership giving strategy will be case by case. Many are giving, some are giving more, some will have to give less. Core supporters are reaching out and stepping up in both little and big ways. Board members are reaching out to artists to buy work to support them; they want to pitch in.
I’ve been thinking about how there has traditionally been a push around earned income streams — arts organizations have been doing better with those streams — but now it’s the first to go. Ticket revenue is gone. The contributed revenue is faring better right now. That’s an interesting flip-flop. It proves we need a diversity of income, especially diversified for various market conditions.
5. How do you think this crisis might change local arts ecosystems, the landscape of cultural patronage, and society’s view of the arts as a whole?
This could be a galvanizing moment. I hope we can keep equity at the forefront of this discussion, as pre-existing inequities are in danger of getting exacerbated right now. I’m interested in how we make this equitable. It must not further divide the haves and have-nots in terms of receiving and giving money. There is lots of grassroots fundraising happening in such a significant way. We’ve seen individual artists and grassroots organizers successful with crowd-funding right now. Traditionally this has not been part of the arts ecosystem in a real way.
The question is, is this sustainable outside of crisis mode? Also, there is a new audience of philanthropists. It’s a wake up call. People may say, “Oh, wait, we DON’T want a city without arts!”
Kate Lorenz is Hyde Park Art Center’s Executive Director. Since assuming the role in 2010, she has led a period of transformation and growth that has made the Art Center a national leader in how an institution can cultivate an authentic community that is part of people’s daily lives, while investing in its city’s diverse artists and voices. This work was recognized with a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions in 2016 and has served as a model for peer institutions and leaders nationally.
Under her tenure, the Art Center has launched a Residency Program for local and international artists; expanded its work with teen artists from across Chicago’s south side; created a professional development program for working artists; and played pivotal roles in the careers of artists such as Amanda Williams, Theaster Gates, and many others. It has also expanded its impact and footprint through the creation of the Guida Family Creative Wing which houses studios and resources for artists at all levels.
The Art Center is currently developing a new model for how community members of all economic backgrounds across Chicago, and especially the South Side, can train as artists.
Kate has served on numerous grant and award committees locally and nationally and frequently presents at conferences and on panels. A native of Nashville, TN, she has lived her entire adult life in Chicago. She has a BA in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences and Psychology from Northwestern University and received her MA in Humanities at the University of Chicago.
She was a founding member and board member of Enrich Chicago, a collective of arts organizations in Chicago working towards racial equity in the field, and is an adjunct faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at Northwestern University. She has served on the Auxiliary Board of High Jump Chicago, as Docent President at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and on the board of the Development Leadership Consortium. Past experience includes working as a Management Consultant for PwC Consulting in Chicago.