Observing from a little further away.....

For fourteen months ending this August I served as CEO of the Smith Center for the Arts, comprised of an historic theater in equally historic Geneva, New York on the shores of Seneca Lake. Surrounded by wine country, Geneva should be a mecca for summer tourists -- and the Smith Opera House is a 1400-seat, renovated venue with near-perfect acoustics. Yes, there is no air conditioning in the theater, but the summer season is short and the State Dormitory Authority has allocated more than enough money to get this done within the next couple of years at most. Yes, Geneva has only 13,000 residents (and slowly shrinking), and regional draws were necessary to make the Smith work financially. Yes, the phones broke down and the boiler died and the projectors were broken and the movie sound system repeatedly crashed and the dimmer system doubled, in the words of a visiting consultant, as a french fryer. Among other problems, such as understaffing, a near-complete personnel turnover in 14 months, and of course a chronic financial deficits (welcome to the world of non-profits) exacerbated by reduced public funding for the arts.


In retrospect, my quest to turn around operations was pretty quixotic. And, predictably, it did not work -- not for lack of trying. In the fourteen months of my tenure, we received a $750,000 grant commitment from the State Dormitory Authority and over $100,000 in private grants and donations, part of which bought a new Dolby movie sound system. We installed a new computer network and accounting system, hired an experienced technical director and bookkeeper, instituted new marketing efforts in the form of my Arts Observer column in the Finger Lakes Times and my frequent CEO email updates sent to over 1400 subscribers, ran our first cable ads, had our first sellout concert in 2-1/2 years, ran successful community events like the first Latino Film Festival and benefits for veterans, pure water, etc., and had our first year of all-digital films including Hitchcock for Halloween, operas and other artistic content.

In the end, I had to step down. There was just no money to support a paid CEO position. So it goes. It was a great experience, one which I shall cherish the rest of my life,

During the past year, I was pleased to write fifteen Arts Observer columns, which I will post to this blog for those who may have missed some of them. In addition, I will post some ongoing comments about arts in the Finger Lakes, as I see the scene. I am still writing occasionally for the Finger Lakes Times as a guest columnist (not limited to the arts, of course) and expect to do so for as long as I am in the Geneva area.

Thanks for all the kind comments and good wishes. More coming soon.

Rich Reiben