Atlantic Center Executive Director Ann Brady Appointed Chair of Alliance of Artists Communities

The Alliance of Artists Communities has appointed Atlantic Center’s Executive Director Ann Brady as the 2008 Chair of the Alliance. She will lead the Board of Trustees in supporting artists-in-residence programs and advocating for creative environments.

Brady has been the Executive Director of Atlantic Center for the Arts since 2003; she has been with the organization since 1992.  Atlantic Center, an artists' community and arts education facility in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, was founded by Doris Leeper, who was also one of the initiators in creating the Alliance of Artists Communities, which held its first meeting at ACA in 1989.

"I'm extremely honored to be appointed," Brady said. "It's an organization about which I am passionate -- for its mission, its history, its impact and its future.  After 19 years, the Alliance is on the cusp of moving to the next level as we broaden our membership, launch our new interactive website, and work with the National Endowment for the Arts to develop new programming that will benefit our membership of artists' communities, and thus, artists."

Prior to accepting the position of Chair of the Alliance of Artists Communities, Brady served two years as Vice-Chair. She continues to serve on state grant panels and special task forces for Florida's Division of Cultural Affairs, and she is on the board of the advocacy nonprofit, the Volusia County Cultural Alliance. Brady remains active in Volusia County Public Schools, as well, previously serving as a high school mentor, and currently serving as a representative on the School and District Advisory Committees, and in the Chisholm Elementary PTA.

Brady received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from Temple University in Philadelphia. In the years prior to working at Atlantic Center, she worked in Orlando and Atlantic City (NJ) in the nonprofit sector as a professional grant writer and program developer for cultural and social service organizations.  Prior to that, she worked in Philadelphia in the for-profit sector as an editor, account executive, and communications coordinator in the fields of communications, public relations, and marketing.

The Alliance of Artists Communities is the national service organization for artists’ communities, colonies and residency programs—a diverse field of more than 250 organizations in the US that provide artists with the opportunity to create new work and encourage risk-taking and innovation in the arts and ideas essential to human progress.

Collectively, Alliance members directly serve over 12,000 artists annually worldwide. The following is just a small sample of some of the artists and works created or inspired while in residence at an artists’ community—

FILM: Quentin Tarantino—Reservoir Dogs; Lisa Cholodenko—Laurel Canyon; Noah Baumbach—The Squid & the Whale; Kimberly Peirce—Boys Don't Cry

VISUAL ARTS/DESIGN: Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Robert Rauschenberg, Marcel Duchamp, Kara Walker, Michael Graves, Buckminster Fuller, Roy Lichtenstein, Milton Avery

MUSIC COMPOSITION: John Corigliano, John Lennon, Laurie Anderson, Aaron Copland—Appalachian Spring, Bob Dylan, Leonard Bernstein, Ruth Crawford Seeger

FICTION: Gregory MacGuire—Wicked; Michael Cunningham—The Hours; Michael Chabon—The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay; Annie Proulx—Accordion Crimes; James Baldwin—Notes of a Native Son; Ann Patchett—The Patron Saint of Liars; Moon Unit Zappa; Truman Capote

NONFICTION: David Sedaris—Barrel Fever; Ruth Reichl—Garlic and Sapphires; Gloria Steinem; Spalding Gray; Alex Kotlowitz; Harry Allen; Studs Terkel; Naomi Wolf

POETRY: Allen Ginsberg, Louise Glück, Seamus Heaney, William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Robert Pinsky

DANCE/CHOREOGRAPHY: Bill T. Jones, Merce Cunningham, Liz Lerman

PLAYWRITING:  Paula Vogel, Edward Albee, Wendy Wasserstein, Thornton Wilder—Our Town

For more information on the Alliance of Artists Communities, please see the website:http://www.artistcommunities.org/index.html