Río Sofia and L Marmon Become Interim Co-Directors of Queer|Art; Organization to be Trans-Led for the First Time

As the Staff and Board of Queer|Art, we are excited to share some news about a new era of shared leadership for our organization. After six years as QA’s Executive Director, Travis Chamberlain has accepted a new position as Director of Washington Project for the Arts, one of the oldest alternative arts spaces in the country.

As part of this transition, Queer|Art will become trans-led for the first time as Programs and Operations Director Río Sofia and Director of Development L Marmon become QA’s interim Co-Directors. Developed in close partnership with Staff and Board, this move towards a Co-Director model has been in progress for the last 18 months.

“Queer|Art connects and empowers LGBTQ+ artists across generations and disciplines through opportunities and resources, driven by an urgent need to address the lack of institutional and economic support for queer creative work,” Board President Nelson Santos notes. “United by values of collective care and creative resilience, we are an artist-led organization facing a critical juncture as we work to better align our organizational structure and programmatic priorities with our values. The board is thrilled to elevate Rio Sofia and L Marmon into new roles as interim Co-Directors, leading us through the unique opportunities presented by this moment of transition and growth.”

Rio and L bring their significant expertise and experience to lead our organization in collaboration with a dedicated team of four part-time artist-administrators and an active 11-member Board of Directors. Rio was hired as Queer|Art’s second full-time employee in 2018, and in this time has made significant strides in elevating Queer|Art’s alumni network towards being an active, mutually supportive community of artists. L was hired in late 2021 as a freelance Development Associate, and quickly rose to become our third full-time staff member and Director of Development. They bring a focus on capacity building for the organization’s financial and operational sustainability while bolstering fundraising efforts across all fronts.

L and Rio are excited and hopeful about the work that lies ahead, noting:

Queer|Art’s mission statement currently reads that the organization will “create a diverse and vibrant community through the support of LGBTQ+ art and artists across generations and disciplines.” Thanks to the guidance and leadership of Ira Sachs and Travis Chamberlain, that community now exists.
As interim Co-Directors, we are honored for the chance to work with our Staff, Board, and artists in collectively envisioning and enacting QA’s future for our community. Together, we are driven by a desire to advance the values of shared leadership within our organization’s culture; to secure a sustainable financial future for the organization; and to support artists in their totality.

Meet Queer|Art’s New Interim Co-Directors: RÍo & L!

Interim Co-Director, Programs and Operations Río Sofia is a visual artist and community organizer, leading QA as its Programs and Operations Director since 2020 through initiatives in service of queer and trans communities. Her expertise in organizing, grassroots fundraising, and inspiring community action through creative social media engagement has helped QA to dramatically increase its reach to LGBTQ+ artists and audiences more than six times over since she joined QA in 2018. Her skills as grassroots organizer also directly support QA’s community-building efforts and help create lively platforms for celebrating all aspects of queer culture. Rio introduced tenets of mutual aid into the organization’s DNA, ensuring that Queer|Art’s programs support artists holistically by creating emergency funds, increasing honoraria, and introducing in-person artist retreats. Her political engagement as an artist also continues to have a profound impact on QA’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice initiatives and coalition building efforts among other nonprofit and grassroots organizations.

Interim Co-Director, Finance and Development L Marmon is an arts administrator and performing artist with over a decade of experience in fundraising strategy, grants management, and donor relations for performing and presenting arts organizations. Their collaborative approach to fundraising and financial management was developed through professional programs, including CUNY’s Leadership Accelerator; extensive performance and production experience, including work with Playwrights Horizons and the Kennedy Center; and serving as a fundraising consultant and staffer for organizations including the Museum of the City of New York, annually managing a portfolio of $3.5M+ from foundation and government sources and securing over $1M in COVID relief grants. L brings a systems management mindset to QA’s day-to-day financial operations and long-term financial planning, focusing on capacity building initiatives and empowering fellow staffers to engage in fundraising outreach and financial management.

What is Shared Leadership and What Does It Mean for Queer|Art?

Shared leadership is more than just a staffing structure; it is establishing a community-wide culture of collective decision-making and open communication and making the role of leadership more accessible to more people by uplifting expertise amongst all levels of the organization. Through an intentional process over the past three years that has included political education, experimentation, organic development, and deep processing, the staff and board of Queer|Art have identified shared leadership as a way to ensure our organization best represents and serves our community.

In collaboration with consultants Lisa Marie Alatorre and Fatima Arain of Community Jewelbox (CJB), a new shared-leadership model has emerged for QA that is organized around balancing responsibilities for Programs, Development, Operations, and institutional advancement. Building on an informal co-directorship that had emerged between Travis and Rio, CJB has helped QA formalize a new model of co-directorship that also uplifts and begins to address related concerns of equity, inclusion, and accountability.

A Co-Director model with Travis, Río, and L was piloted in summer/fall 2022 and has been solidified in winter 2022 and spring 2023 through a 360 review process for all three Co-Directors that included input from all staff and the Board of Directors. In the pilot year of Co-Directorship, QA staff have increased direct communication, including growing capacity and trust for difficult conversations; started practicing consensus-based decision making; and are all actively pursuing their personal artistic and professional goals through ongoing education and their own art production.

This process has begun and is expected to finalize by the end of 2023. In the weeks ahead, we will be publishing more information about QA’s process in developing this shared leadership model, how shared leadership impacts QA’s artists and programs, and what our process of expanding shared leadership across our community looks like from here.