Yaddo names Guggenheim’s Cyra Levenson its next president

Yaddo, the artists’ retreat on Union Avenue in Saratoga Springs, has named Cyra Levenson its next president. Levenson, deputy director of learning and engagement at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, will take over in November from Elaina Richardson, who is stepping down after 26 years, Yaddo announced on Thursday, Oct. 1, according to The Saratogian and The Daily Gazette.

The appointment comes in Yaddo’s centennial year. The estate welcomed its first artists in residence in the summer of 1926, the Gazette reported.

Who Cyra Levenson is

Levenson has spent her career at museums, working on how audiences meet art. Here is her background, according to Yaddo’s announcement as published by The Saratogian.

• At the Guggenheim, she serves on the executive team and has shaped public programs across the museum, including its first poet-in-residence program.
• She has worked on projects with artists including Rashid Johnson, Nick Cave and Cecilia Vicuña.
• Before the Guggenheim, she was a deputy director at the Cleveland Museum and curator of education and academic outreach at the Yale Center for British Art.
• She studied visual arts and Asian art history at Oberlin College and holds an Ed.M. from Teachers College, Columbia University.
• She is also a practicing visual artist, with a particular interest in poetry, public space and participatory practice.

Her curating has ranged widely, from flying mystics in Tibetan painting to slavery in 18th-century British portraiture, according to the announcement. Her writing on creative practice has appeared in British Art Studies, the Vernon Press book Pedagogy as Practice and The Lancet, and she has been a visiting critic and lecturer at Yale, Parsons School of Design, Columbia, Harvard and Princeton.

In the announcement, Levenson said Yaddo has been “dedicated to creative people, to practice and to the magic that happens in community” for 100 years, and called it an honor to support that work.

How the search worked

Richardson announced in December that she would leave and that a search was underway, the Gazette reported. The board ran a national search with Russell Reynolds Associates, a leadership advisory firm, and considered more than 200 candidates, according to the announcement. Board members Ann Chen and Alexi Worth co-chaired the search, under board co-chairs Peter Kayafas and Janice Y.K. Lee. Michael S. Singleton and Katherine Armstrong, who lead the firm’s global arts and culture practice, ran the search with the committee.

The search co-chairs said Levenson “pairs institutional and fundraising experience with a true artistic sensibility,” the Gazette reported. Kayafas pointed to her work as an artist as a reason she understands what a place like Yaddo means to the people who work there, and said the board could not be happier to have her lead Yaddo into its next century. Lee called her the board’s first choice on several fronts, including her commitment to artists and her leadership style, and thanked Richardson for helping make the handoff smooth, according to the announcement.

Elaina Richardson’s 26 years

Richardson led Yaddo for a quarter of its first century. She called Levenson a wonderful choice and said she expects the new president to increase Yaddo’s impact and its ability to support artists, according to the announcement. Yaddo will honor Richardson’s tenure at its Yaddo Centennial NYC Benefit on Monday, Oct. 5.

Richardson has said she knows how many unforeseen problems can come up in running an arts organization today, and that it is a joy to know Yaddo’s second century begins on solid footing. At Yaddo’s annual fundraiser in Saratoga Springs in June, she described how lucky she felt to spend a quarter century there, and said Yaddo has spent a century standing on the belief that art matters to the world, the Gazette reported.

Yaddo at 100

The land has a long history before the artists arrived. Jacobus Barhyte, a soldier in the second Battle of Saratoga at Bemis Heights, bought it in 1784 and built a house, two mills and an inn, the Gazette reported. New York financier Spencer Trask and his wife, Katrina, later bought the estate and built the 55-room mansion in 1893. The gardens opened in 1899, and Yaddo was incorporated as an artists’ retreat in 1900. An offer from Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, to buy the land was turned down along the way, according to the paper.

Yaddo’s mission is to give writers and artists the chance to work without interruption in a supportive setting, according to the announcement. Residencies include room, board and a studio.

The record since 1926 is long. These figures come from Yaddo’s announcement.

• More than 7,000 artists have worked at Yaddo.
• Yaddo artists have won 90 Pulitzer Prizes, 37 MacArthur Fellowships and 73 National Book Awards.
• They have also won 76 Emmy honors, 50 Grammy Awards, 14 Oscars, 19 Tony Awards and a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Past residents named by the Gazette include Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, Aaron Copland, James Baldwin, A.M. Homes and Leonard Bernstein.

What it means for Saratoga

Our read: most of what happens at Yaddo is private by design, since residents come to work without interruption. A president whose career has been about public programs and new audiences could change how Yaddo connects with the city around it in its second century, though the announcement did not describe any specific plans for Saratoga Springs.

What happens next

These are the next dates in the transition.

• Monday, Oct. 5: Yaddo honors Richardson at the Yaddo Centennial NYC Benefit.
• November: Levenson takes over as president.
• The rest of the centennial year, which marks 100 years since the first residents arrived.

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