Executive Director - Creativity Explored, San Francisco, CA

Painter Executive Search is supporting the Creativity Explored in their search for new Executive Director to lead the organization in advancing its mission to provide artists with developmental disabilities the means to create, exhibit, and sell their art and to celebrate the power of art to change lives.

Creativity Explored, headquartered in San Francisco's vibrant Mission District, has been providing artists with developmental disabilities the opportunity to become working artists and earn income from their art since 1983. Creativity Explored (CE) is a welcoming, inspiring, and lively place where artists and art lovers meet and share their appreciation of art. Through the years, CE has grown into a robust community that supports approximately 130 artists working in two group studios. CE's studio artists have the opportunity to exhibit and sell their work in CE's Mission Street gallery, through the CE website, and in art fairs, galleries, and venues around the world, as well as license art with national retailers.

Creativity Explored is grounded in the principle that all people possess the ability to create, and that visual artistic expression is a viable means to self-growth. Supporting CE artists in their personal artistic growth and shepherding their acclaim in the contemporary art world disrupts pervasive notions about people with disabilities. Through their art practices, CE artists are identified by what they can do, not what they cannot. Through supporting these individuals as they develop their own creative voice and style and by celebrating their creative work in the public sphere, CE allows the art to stand on its own and to influence a broad social dialogue.

The Executive Director (ED), reporting to the Board of Directors, will have overall responsibility for leading all aspects of CE's organizational effectiveness, health and sustainability. The ED has a key role in stewarding and advancing an internal culture that nurtures and celebrates individual creativity - a place where artists with developmental disabilities can thrive, create and be recognized through their work. Working in close collaboration with an experienced staff of teaching artists, the ED facilitates a culture of learning, inclusion, respect, and joyful chaos. The ED will lead the efforts to expand earned income through art licensing and sales, and actively build a more robust contributed income program that includes increased foundation, major gift and planned giving programs. Increasing CE's profile regionally, nationally, and internationally through the promotion of studios artists' work will be an important vehicle for ensuring the mission of CE is sustained over time.

Please contact Nancy Painter should you be interested in learning more or submit your background for consideration at [email protected]. To learn more about our organizations, please visit our websites www.creativityexplored.org and www.painterexecutivesearch.com.