Kimball Jenkins sees staff shake-up

Financial problems that left it $100,000 in the hole and disagreements about future direction have led the Kimball Jenkins center in Concord to replace the executive director and get rid of two other staffers, but for the moment at least programming will continue.

“The biggest challenge is finding sustainable revenue,” said Nannu Nobis, chairman of the board of directors for the 40-year-old nonprofit. “Our classes have been very well-attended, the summer youth programs are well-attended. What happened is that in many of the exhibitions we put on, we need financial support – often in the form of grants – and some of those grants did not come in at the level we expected.”

“All the programming we have committed to, we are going to continue to do. Classes, programs, none of that changes,” Nobis said. Future programming, from classes to exhibitions, may be affected by the need for them to be self-sustaining financially.

Nobis said the center’s financial shortfall, which came about after pandemic-era federal and state support for the arts ended, reached $100,000 last year. Its annual operating budget fluctuates between $600,000 and $700,000.

The issues became public in early January when Julianne Gadoury, who had been executive director of the center since March 2020, was let go shortly after she had handed in her resignation but before she had planned to leave. This happened “after a tumultuous nine month period where it became clear that the Board of Directors and I had differing visions and values for the future of the organization,” she wrote in a statement prepared at the Monitor’s request.

Gadoury’s statement acknowledged the financial difficulties for the “small organization with limited resources,” but said the financial challenges “were far from insurmountable.”

Her statement focused on “the dismissal of six employees from August 2023 through January 2024” involving “women leaders, people of color, people who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, and people who were gaining meaningful employment after being impacted by the justice system.”

“The challenge comes when there is not enough, or any, representation on the Board by people who have similar lived experiences to the constituents you are serving. Sometimes, well-intentioned Board members think the leadership and management style from their own sector can be easily carried over to the nonprofit sector, and the mission served by the organization can play a back seat to more corporate management approaches,” she wrote.

Nobis disagreed with that assessment, saying the one departure last fall came when a program ended and no money was available to continue it.

“Meeting after meeting, once the numbers became alarmingly apparent, we discussed it. We were very happy with the programming … but the board’s role moving forward, whatever programming we do we have to have it financially supported, financially stable, and that’s a big challenge in the arts world,” he said.

Joan Goahgarian, who served as interim executive director before Gadoury was hired, will return as interim executive director starting Feb. 5.

The center occupies the Kimball Jenkins Estate at 266 Main St., portions of which date back to 1877 and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The center was created when Carolyn Jenkins, the last member of the family that built and lived in the property, passed away in 1981, creating a trust that said the property had to be used for cultural and educational purposes, including the “encouragement of art.”

It has long hosted studios and classrooms for drawing, painting, ceramics, photography, woodworking, glass and sculpture, while the mansion and the former carriage house provide main galleries for exhibitions from regional and national artists. The site is available to rent for events.