An administrator and freelance journalist with 20 years experience managing arts organizations in Maryland and Washington, D.C., began work Tuesday as the new executive director of BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown.
Charlotte Sommers of Silver Spring spent the last full week of June in orientation and training with her predecessor, Nancy Petrisko, who announced her departure in March. Sommers said she is taking the helm at a time when fund-raising, a traditional concern of arts organizations, is gaining even more importance as a slowing economy threatens to reduce individual and corporate support.
BlackRock, which opened in 2002, has been a major part of efforts to develop Germantown’s Town Center, and its importance as a tool for economic development will continue, Sommers said.
BlackRock’s reputation for combining community-oriented arts programming and education with performances by nationally known artists led her to apply for the position, she said. The center’s emphasis on education also appealed to her.
The center’s board of trustees approved an operating budget of $1.1 million for fiscal 2009 Monday, including money for a staff of six full-time and four part-time workers. The center receives 60 percent of its money from classes and ticket sales and 40 percent from contributors, Sommers said.
Sommers said she is especially concerned about potential declines in giving, but remains confident she can manage problems arising from the sluggish economy.
‘‘We’ve ridden out these kinds of cycles before,” she said.
She comes to BlackRock after working as director of development for the Joy of Motion Dance Center in Washington from 2005 to 2007 and holding the same job with Imagination Stage in Bethesda from 2003 to 2005. She also worked as executive director of the Frederick Arts Council from 2000 to 2003 and held management positions with two other organizations in Bel Air from 1988 to 2000.
Petrisko was BlackRock’s executive director for five years, a period Sommers said she would like to match or exceed. ‘‘I really think with the type of growth this organization is going through, I would like to shepherd it through the next phase, so I want to say at least five years,” Sommers said.
Bill Craig, a member of BlackRock’s board of trustees and leader of one of two committees involved in the hiring process, said Sommers’ short tenures in her most recent jobs ‘‘really didn’t give us a lot of concern.”
Craig said Sommers is ‘‘exactly what BlackRock needs” to continue the growth experienced under Petrisko.
‘‘We’re really convinced that Charlotte is very well schooled in Montgomery County and knows how to get things accomplished,” Craig said. ‘‘We’re not looking to maintain where we are. We are looking to grow. We think Charlotte will be a tremendous emissary and provide the kind of leadership to take us to the next level.”
Sommers began her career in arts as a performer. The daughter of an opera-loving mother, she said she ‘‘got the bug” after winning the role of Eliza Doolittle in her New Jersey high school’s production of ‘‘My Fair Lady.”
She majored in theater at San Francisco State University, but was nudged toward administration when a dance company she was choreographing asked her to do some management work, she said. She received a master’s degree in arts administration from Goucher College in Baltimore in 2002. She has also worked as a freelance arts journalist since 1992 and done consulting work with several arts organizations since 1991.
