Silvermine Arts Center Executive Director to Retire

NEW CANAAN, CT - Silvermine Arts Center has announced Friday that Executive Director Leslee Asch will retire April 5 — on the sixth anniversary of her appointment to the position of the center that is planning its centennial anniversary celebration.

“The Silvermine Arts Center will soon begin planning for its 100th anniversary, which is now just six years away,” Asch said in a statement. “It seemed a natural time to begin a transition that would allow a new director to implement his or her vision as we head toward the celebration of that milestone.”

Asch began at Silvermine on April 5, 2010.

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Board of Trustees Chair Rose-Marie Fox praised Asch with having "created a legacy of Silvermine programs that unified visual and performing arts."

Asch is credited with reestablishing the position of Outreach Education Director, overseeing development of art programs for under-resourced students throughout lower Fairfield County, creating the Sculpture Walk, and expanding and renovating the offices and back-campus studios.

During Asch's tenure the curriculum was expanded to include bronze casting, glass working and woodworking to the art curriculum and the Bill Sessions Woodworking Center opened last October. And the arts center won Moffly Media’s Best Art Classes Award for four consecutive years as well as the Best Galleries five years in a row. The center has 300 member artists.

While the center conducts a search for Asch's successor, Rose-Marie Fox will lead an interim executive team that includes former Board Chair and Lifetime Guild Member Leslie Giuliani and former Board member and faculty member Nancy McTague-Stock, according to the announcement.

“As we honor Leslee, we have also begun a thoughtful search for a new executive director to take us to our centennial year,” Fox said in a statement. “Our team will carry out all executive duties in coordination with Gallery Director Jeffrey Mueller, School of Art Director Anne Connell, Director of Outreach Education Sophia Gevas, Development Director Mary-Louise Morgan, and Silvermine’s excellent staff.”

Fox added, “As we approach our 100-year anniversary, we are implementing a comprehensive strategic plan to place Silvermine at the pinnacle of art institutions in the Northeast. It is a very exciting time in Silvermine’s long and storied history.”

Contributed photo by Richard Termine.