Executive Director of RiverArts wasn’t on Chris Sade’s bingo card for mid-2022, but lucky for the Chestertown community, here we are.
Sade and his wife Marianne discovered Chestertown in 2015 during a visit to explore a job opportunity for Marianne at Washington College Library. Months later, accepting the job, the couple made the leap of faith and moved to town.
Fast forward to July 2002 and RiverArts’s search for a new executive director to steer one of the community’s paramount arts organizations into 2023 and beyond. Enter Chris Sade.
Chris brings 35 years of experience in the art world as the founder of a national transportation company in Washington DC that would cater to museums and organizations throughout the country.
“In 1996 we sold it to a firm it was based in DC and from there I ended up working with them for nearly 20 years helping them expand their business and provide services to museums such as packing, storage, transportation, and a conservation lab to help with inventories,” Sade says.
Sade says his role was to find new work for the company and tapped into the many connections he’d made over the years.
“I’ve been to about every major museum in the United States and some others around the world so I got to know people and they got to know me because trust is a large issue and allowing somebody to walk in and take care and custody of their valuable work.”
Connecting is the key, Sade says, and he hopes to expand his network of friends in Kent County to promote RiverArts mission to support artists, offer programming, arts and crafts shows, and arts education to the community.
Sade’s first project will redesign RiverArts’s floorspace by moving the gift area into a newly enhanced adjacent gallery space rather than combining it with the main gallery. Identifying the space as a standalone gift shop will help with retail sales, the foundational revenue that supports the organization. A grand opening for the gift shop will be in February.
The Clay Studio and Arts Education Center will hold a Grand-Re-Opening January 6 at 204 High St. (First Friday) from 5-7 pm, Clay Studio posting may now be found on RiverArts Facebook page, here.
The Spy sat down with Chris Sade last week to discuss his vision for 2023.
This video is approximately seven minutes in length. To join RiverArts or volunteer, see their website here.
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