UCCCA owes us answers

The Daily Star featured this recent opinion piece regarding the Upper Catskill Community Council of the Arts:

Turning 40 can be tough. For the Upper Catskill Community Council of the Arts, its 40th year of existence has been brutal. If UCCCA Board President and CEO Linda MacKenzie-Ranc is to be believed, the organization may not survive to see 41.

Since the departure of executive director Kathleen Frascatore in June 2009, the organization has suffered what we feel justified in calling a crisis of leadership. In fact, the plural “crises” might be more accurate.

Cheri Albrecht sat in as interim executive director _ very capably, by all accounts _ for the better part of a year before a permanent executive director was hired in March. Sara Hammonds lasted about 40 days before leaving the post. A new interim executive director, Scott Ward, hung in there for almost twice as long, but he also left.

Little has been said publicly about this leadership roller-coaster. Hammonds cited “irreconcilable differences” in her departure; Ward, “personal reasons.” Neither of those euphemisms helps us understand why, as MacKenzie-Ranc indicated in July, the organization has found itself struggling for survival.

For 40 years, UCCCA has anchored the local arts community in many ways. The Wilber Mansion has hosted exhibits featuring professional artists of the highest caliber alongside the work of local students. Its staff has led workshops where our children can go to have fun, as well as offering serious educational opportunities for burgeoning artists to hone their skills.

Besides the traditional fine arts it has facilitated, UCCCA has presented film festivals, hosted exhibits of floral art and even started a chili cook-off.

UCCCA has also played a vital role by disbursing thousands of dollars in support and grant money to local artists, schools, nonprofit organizations and projects.

For all those reasons and more, we would like to answer MacKenzie-Ranc’s plea for help. But we need more information. If UCCCA needs volunteers, tell us where and when to show up. If it needs donations, tell us how much. More importantly, tell us what led to these problems, and what the community can do to help remedy them.

The organization is now functioning without an executive director and without any paid staff, so we appreciate that the situation is dire. But we feel we are owed more in the way of explanations.

While UCCCA is a private institution, it has a very public role, not only through the programs it presents, but also because of the taxpayer money it handles. By communicating more effectively with the community, UCCCA will be taking an important step toward another 40 years _ and hopefully more _ of keeping the arts alive in the Oneonta area.