YoungArts’ Sarah Arison leads other arts organizations too - now including MoMA PS1
Arts champion Sarah Arison has been elected chair of New York’s cutting-edge visual arts facility, MoMA PSA1. Located in a former school in Long Island City, PS1 is part of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She previously served as co-vice chair with arts patron Agnes Gund.
The new post better positions her to encourage collaboration among arts groups, said Arison, who also leads Miami’s YoungArts Foundation and New York’s American Ballet Theater.
The new job “is definitely challenging and intimidating. We have arts organizations in the middle of a pandemic when people can’t gather together. Our entire field is based around in-person gatherings. But at the same time, it’s a chance to experiment and innovate and come up with new ways to engage our audiences and support arts,” Arison said.
In the past, Arison has fostered collaborations between YoungArts, which supports high-school aged artists, and programs for next-stage artists, including Sundance Festival’s Ignite program.
Earlier this year, when the pandemic hit, YoungArts joined with six other national arts organizations to raise funds for direct relief to artists with $5,000 grants to help pay for food, rent and insurance. The effort raised $10 million in 10 days.
“The only reason we were able to raise that much money that quickly was because we were a coalition of organizations,” she said. The group has raised an additional $10 million since, all going directly to artists.
PS1 has recently established a $5 million Strategic Transition Fund to support the vision of its director, Kate Fowle, to create new models for community engagement and diversify uses of its building. The museum reopened in September with time ticketing for the show “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Incarceration,” exploring the work of artists within U.S. prisons. It was planned prior to the spring murder of George Floyd.
Arison is president of Arison Arts Foundation, a private grant-making organization seeded by her grandparents, Lin Arison and the late Ted Arison, co-founder of Carnival Corporation. Along with the top leadership positions of PS1, American Ballet Theater and YoungArts, Arison also serves on the boards of the New World Symphony, New York’s LIncoln Center, the Brooklyn Museum and Americans for the Arts.
