Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation hires new CEO to lead efforts for new hall

After a nearly eight-month search, the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation has hired a new CEO with an extensive background in running arts organizations and major capital campaigns.

The Foundation is still in the early stages of planning a new performing arts center that would be used in place of the 53-year-old Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall and be the centerpiece of the The Bay Park project being developed on the existing parking for the hall.

Tania Castroverde Moskalenko, who has led arts and culture organizations in Miami and around the country for more than 20 years, will officially join the foundation in February, but is already consulting with leaders as decisions need to be made in the interim.

Moskalenko currently serves as interim director of Oolite Arts, a Miami-based non-profit that supports visual artists. She previously spent four years as executive director of Miami City Ballet, where she completed a $65 million capital campaign.

“Tania is a strategic and philanthropically minded leader with demonstrated success in public-private partnerships at arts and cultural organizations,” Jim Travers, the chair of the foundation board who has served as interim executive director, said in a statement. “We are confident in her ability to lead the Foundation into its next phase.”

In a statement, Sarasota City manager Marlon Brown said Moskalenko’s “background and experience fits perfectly for the role of CEO of the Foundation.”

Moskalenko said she was contacted by Russell Reynolds Associates, the search firm hired by the foundation to find a new director, and had not known about the opening.

“What captivated my interest is the vision of the community to build a world-class performing arts center at this important time in the city’s history. South Florida, Southwest Florida. All these areas are booming, especially post-COVID. People are moving to our state from all across the country and I think building a new 21st century performing arts center as this area is really growing will be a great service to the community.”

Travers stepped in after the resignation of Cheryl Mendelson, who led the Foundation for four years and working to build broad public support for the public-private project that is expected to cost as much as $300 million. The city of Sarasota, which owns the land on the Sarasota Bayfront where the theater would be built, is expected to cover half the costs of construction, and the Foundation plans to raise the other 50 percent from private donors and foundations.

A public divide

There has been a public divide over the need for the new facility by those who favor enhancing the Van Wezel, which was designed by Taliesen Associates. Foundation leaders have stressed that the growing area needs a more modern facility with additional seating to accommodate national touring Broadway musicals and other shows.

Earlier this year, a special panel selected the internationally known Renzo Piano Building Workshop to design and oversee construction of the new performing arts center. Leaders of the project want it to make as much of an architectural statement today as the Van Wezel did when it opened in 1970. Another panel is currently in the process of discussing potential future uses for the Van Wezel itself once a new facility is built.

The new building would seat about 2,250 people in its main theater, with a smaller black box theater, as well as administrative and education space included. It would be built toward the north end of the current Van Wezel parking lot, and the Bay park and amenities are expected to be created between the new center and existing Van Wezel.

Moskalenko said it was about five months from the first phone call before she was offered the job, and she has spent time in the interim researching the Sarasota area and the project. She said she is aware of both support for a new facility and the opposition.

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She said she plans to spend a lot of her initial time “listening and learning and going to work with the board of the Foundation, which has been very committed. I have seen a number of leaders who will come into a community and because of their experience, immediately try to put their experience and skills and stamp on the community. But I feel there really needs to be a lot of learning and listening first. There is history there. The story doesn’t begin when the new leader steps into the role. There was a story for years, decades, centuries in some cases. Those traditions need to be honored.”

Building relationships, she said, is key to winning support and the kind of donations the project will need to be fully financed.

Moskalenko, who was born in Cuba, previously spent two years as chief executive officer of the Auditorium theater of Roosevelt University in Chicago, four years as president and CEO of the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana, which houses the Great American Songbook Foundation, launched by Michael Feinstein. And she spent seven years as executive director of the Germantown Performing Arts Centre in Tennessee.

In addition to the new performing arts center, the Foundation supports a variety of arts education programs that it runs and those sponsored by the Van Wezel. It has served more than 35,000 students and families in the area since 1987 and provides professional development for hundreds of teachers in a five-county area.

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Miami arts leader to lead new Sarasota performing arts center efforts