After 12 ½ years as executive director of New Hope Arts, Carol Cruickshanks has decided someone new should lead the organization to which she has been so passionately devoted.
“My commitment to preserving our regional art history is the strongest driving force, as far as I’m concerned, in what I’ve been trying to do,” she told the Herald.
This matches the mission of founder Robin Larsen, whose sudden passing in 2009 “was a shock for the program,” recalls sculptor and board member Mark Pettegrow.
“Carol got the boat back on keel and has been directing it ever since in the right direction,” he said.
Two years lapsed after Larsen’s death before Carol was brought in to rescue NHArts. She doesn’t mince words.
“It was a period of confusion and trial-and-error experimentation,” said Cruickshanks. “One of the things I can say with wholehearted enthusiasm is that I have fixed it.”
She couldn’t have done it without her team: Christine Ramirez, Michelle Kott, Sandy Morrison and Stefanie Beaumont.
Cruickshanks has maintained the tradition of two signature shows that were “the brainchild of Robin Larsen.”
The Works in Wood exhibition is in its 24th year since “we’ve worked closely with the Nakashima woodworkers.”
And the Public Sculpture Program, hugely popular during the pandemic because it’s outdoors, is celebrating its 20th anniversary.
“I think we were trendsetters, what Robin started and what I’ve attempted to do to follow up on that tradition,” said Cruickshanks.
New Hope Mayor Lary Keller, chairman of NHArts’ board for the past five years, was a founding board member and strong advocate for Robin in the establishment of NHArts. He maintains a similarly supportive role with Cruickshanks.
“Carol gave us stability,” he said. “Through her knowledge and expertise, personality, and contacts in the art world, the doors started opening where we could present a much more diverse group of shows.”
Keller also cites her introduction of juried shows as a reason for NHArts’ increased stature in the tri-state arts community.
One of the annual shows that Cruickshanks created is the Members Salon, in which any member artist has at least one entry. Another is the photography exhibit. Last year’s “Ancestral Intersection” is the type of show she considers groundbreaking, in that it “explored the ethnic origins of artists and how they influence their work.”
Ralph Fey, founding board member and architect of NHArts’ renovation project, cites the popularity of recurring events, such as the fabric and fashion shows “that everyone loves…Because [they] occur in a certain month every year, Carol has made it so that the artists know they need to reserve their best pieces for New Hope Arts.”
The past three years have challenged Cruickshanks’ mission “to keep this organization alive.”
In March 2020, when many arts institutions closed their doors permanently due to the pandemic, Carol took NHArts online, “with limited gadgetry,” she boasts, and 13 contributed exhibitions.
Over the years, NHArts made physical improvements to its building out of necessity. Fey once got a call from Cruickshanks: “our windows are dropping into the street!”
Besides new windows, an HVAC system had to be installed since the second-floor gallery would hit 100 degrees, as did new lighting to properly show the artwork.
In 2021, when a state grant was secured to build an elevator, NHArts successfully launched its “Elevate the Arts” campaign, which financed a new lobby and stairs to replace the spiral ones, and an ADA ramp entrance.
The improvements “were no longer about responding to crises,” explained Fey. “They were about appropriateness for our environment, that it be accessible to everyone.”
The renovation presented another hurdle: how to keep NHArts visible throughout.
Cruickshanks’ ability to collaborate with the immediate arts community led to “Art Across the River,” an exhibit of works by NHArts and New Jersey-based Artsbridge members at Prallsville Mills in Stockton, NJ.
“It’s been important for Carol to be the voice of the artist…to remind the board that what we do is the art,” said Pettegrow. “We can build a beautiful building…but the reason why we’re there is the art that is on the walls.”
Ralph acknowledges that Cruickshanks regards the renovation as “a better vessel to display the flowers.”
Cruickshanks said she views her legacy as “expanding the awareness of New Hope Arts, expanding the accessibility not just in terms of the physical plan, but the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of artists who now work with us…making it a community-oriented organization as opposed to an exclusive club.”
Her hope for NHArts is that “younger people with a lot of energy [will] take the building, the organization, and the space in new directions, with a wider variety of media. We’re ideal for performance arts” — music, dance, theater and literary events.
The New Hope Film Festival’s return in April 2024 is an example of that new direction. To make a smooth transition for her successor, Cruickshanks will stay on through next April.
As for her own new direction, she cryptically says, “It will be in something that I’ve done before that I do very well.”
Thinking about his special bond with Cruickshanks, Keller said they formed a perfect tag-team, introducing countless arts events together.
“I’ll miss her call or a text when you’d least expect it,” he said. “When she had to get something off her chest, it was 1-800-MAYOR.”
Fey also finds Cruickshanks irreplaceable.
“When somebody is accomplished at what they do, and revered in the arts community, you take that for granted, it’s always good,” he said. “Probably the highest compliment I could pay is that we take her for granted.”
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