Now in its second century, the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum has announced a new interim executive director with sterling development and fundraising skills. She has a part-time home off Route 212 in Saugerties to augment her place in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, where her two children are in school and her husband works with a Manhattan law firm.
Nicole Goldberg, who spent the first six months of this year’s lockdown upstate, will be replacing previous director Janice La Motta, who resigned her position after four-and-a-half years in late June, after having been asked to furlough during the first part of New York On Pause. Goldberg has been running her own consulting business since leaving the director of development position at Art Omi in Columbia County, and serves on several New York City arts institution boards of directors.
WAAM, the artists’ association founded by a number of key Woodstock artists during its early days as a cutting-edge home to some of the nation’s top artists, added the museum attribute a little over a decade ago, although official designation for such, from the state, has been pending completion of paperwork for several years. The institution, like many in Woodstock and throughout the Hudson Valley, has seen a number of periods of board, administrative and membership upheaval throughout its history.
Before Goldberg’s hiring, the association was being run by a committee of board members and associate director Bryana Devine, under the direction of board chair since last May Laurie Marshall, an artist and filmmaker, who comes to the organization with extensive experience.
Goldberg has a B.A. in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. in Modern Art and Critical Theory from Columbia University, work in grants writing for the Jewish Museum and at the Museum of Modern Art, and then service as director of development at The Drawing Center in lower Manhattan.
She says she pursued the WAAM job when she realized it was time she took the next step towards an executive director position in her field. Her life in the art world as a student intern and beyond, included the major shift of the art world from SoHo to Chelsea, including the phenomenon of art fairs.
“I never had the desire to be a curator. I just wanted to work in a New York museum,” she says. “For me, it’s always been more about the experience of art on the walls of a gallery, or in a museum, that touches me,”
Eventually, she and her husband, Brad Goldberg, started visiting Woodstock, bought a home just outside it, put on an addition, added a pool, and started spending as much time as possible each year alongside their two kids, 13-year-old Hannah and 11-year-old Shane, as well as young dogs Sandy and Dolly.
While never taking on the arts as a maker, Goldberg adds that she has started working in fiber arts, becoming an avid knitter.
What are her plans for her first job at the helm of an institution? She deferred comment for now, having just started her job two days ago. She noted that she’d been brought on for her fundraising and development skills, and possibly her New York art world connections. The basic idea, at first, is to rebuilding an income stream for WAAM in its second century.
Goldberg noted that she would be working with her board of directors and the WAAM exhibitions committee. She also mentioned the number of virtual and weekend-only shows on the schedule through this winter.
“I’d like to see the exhibitions committee thinking more long-term,” the new director added. “Everything works better with longer planning.”
She’ll work largely from Park Slope, to start with, but utilize her local home outside Woodstock more frequently as lockdowns ease, her kids get through the school year, and needs arise.
Several of her fellow executive directors of other Woodstock and Hudson Valley arts institutions have been in touch, and she planned a meeting this week with the Woodstock School of Art’s Nina Doyle. The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild has chosen this past year to stay director-less through the foreseeable future.
Goldberg said she was ready to learn to deal with issues as they emerged, but also wanted to stay focused on the hard attributes of development and fundraising, on facilitating artists and collections of art.
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