After Resignations, Ely Center Charts Path Forward

A downtown visual art gallery has kicked off a public reckoning with how to become a ​“safe” workplace in the wake of resignations by several board members and an employee.

That’s the latest with the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, a nonprofit-run arts hub that has long operated out of a historic converted Victorian mansion at 51 Trumbull St.

Following resignations from its staff and board earlier this year, the Ely Center is reviewing and revamping its employment practices — and seeking input from the New Haven community on how to do it better.

That was the major theme that emerged from the first of four community talks centered on the present and future of the gallery. The public talk took place last Wednesday at the Trumbull Street gallery as part of a series called Wednesdays with WABI Conversation Circle, hosted by New Haven-based artist and Wábi Gallery owner Kim Weston with special guest artist Isaac Bloodworth.

Wednesday’s event took place at a tumultuous time for the gallery. A board member, whom the gallery has declined to identify and who has a prior felony conviction the gallery has also declined to identify, stepped down earlier this year. One of the gallery’s staff members has also recently resigned. In the ensuing weeks, local artists have raised concerns online about how and why the gallery had this person on the board in the first place, and what it can do going forward to be a ​“safe space” for staffers and visitors and artists alike.

Weston started the discussion by introducing Helen Kauder, who is currently serving as co-chair of ECOCA’s board. She detailed Kauder’s long history of arts administration in New Haven. Kauder ran Artspace for two decades and, with two other artists, starting City-Wide Open Studios, which she then oversaw. ​“Open Studios was open to so many artists in New Haven and changed … how people looked at New Haven,” Weston said, noting that people came from out of state to attend the event. Kauder, who is now technically retired from arts administration, ​“was brought on to help the Ely raise funds, and then this happened,” Weston said.

Before diving into the issue, Kauder wanted to give a ​“little bit of history,” she said. The Ely Center was, in a sense, ​“one of the newest arts organizations in town, and at the same time, one of the oldest.” She detailed ECOCA’s journey from being the John Slade Ely House, founded in 1961. It was managed as a ​“trust,” she said, that ​“did not have the ability to fundraise, and that made it operate in a certain way that wasn’t necessarily community oriented.” The trust eventually ran out of money, and in 2016, sold the building to ACES, which sold the building in 2022 to ECOCA, which had become a nonprofit in 2016.

“The group that founded this was a small group of very close friends, and when they realized they needed to grow a little … they reached out to family members and they reached out to friends,” Kauder said. It was like ​“a family,” and ​“there were some conflicts by the time I showed up in June.”

In September, the board learned that one of the board members — ​“who is not on the board any more and not involved in the organization,” Kauder said — had a felony conviction from a crime that had happened over a decade ago. ​“We did a lot of due diligence and we talked about what to do about it,” Kauder said. They spoke to a lawyer, who advised them that the history did not necessarily need to be disclosed. They also spoke to other arts organizations that have on their boards people with felony convictions, ​“who are volunteering and who are being active, engaged, and contributing members.” 

“One of the things we’ve been talking about is: ​‘what is psychological safety?’ What does that look like?” Kauder said. ​“That’s something we could have done better.”

ECOCA has been looking for ways to improve their practices. That began by setting out a ​“grievance box,” Kauder said, which people could contribute to anonymously. Among the ​“broad themes” that emerged, Kauder said, were complaints about ​“conflicting values.… We heard about lack of trust. We heard calls for greater transparency, and calls for greater accountability.”

Among the messages they received were that ​“the organization needs clear employment policies,” that ​“there needs to be an ombudsperson for HR issues, there needs to be a process for conflict resolution,” Kauder said. They heard that there should be ​“avenues for the growth of staff, staff professional development,” as well as ​“BIPOC leadership in the organization, and there needs to be better communication.”

“There were concerns that ​“even conversations like this are happening too soon,” Kauder said.

Some of the problems, Kauder said, were ​“rooted in issues of historic structures, systemic inequities.” Some of them emerge from New Haven’s broader arts community. ​“There’s a lot of trauma in this community. We love artists because they see and they feel things very acutely.” But ​“trauma’s in our blood cells. It’s coursing through everyone,” and ​“we’re not taking time to listen and process people’s needs.”

The arts were ​“a place of second chances,” Kauder said. And at the time, ​“we did not think the safety of our community was at risk.” The board member resigned but continued to volunteer for ECOCA. ECOCA learned that the volunteer board member’s continued involvement raised issues about the organization being a safe space. In February, Maxim Schmidt announced that he was leaving his position as ECOCA’s gallery coordinator. (Schmidt did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article.) Other ECOCA board members have left the board. ECOCA is now striving to move forward and ensure that it is a safe space and one of equity and inclusion.

Later in the conversation, Weston would frame the difficulties of communication as involving differences in age. ​“I called you an old lady,” Weston said to Kauder, ​“and I was the old lady behind the old lady, and we needed to have a 20-something, and a 30-something, and a 40-something. We needed to close that gap and make sure we’re representing the line,” the range of artists in the scene. ​“We need to hear what they think, and why they’re thinking the way they’re thinking. And they need to be open to hearing what we are thinking.” She motioned to Isaac Bloodworth, an artist in his 20s who also works at the Yale Center for British Art, who was in attendance. ​“I think differently than Isaac does. But he can hear me. He knows where I’m coming from. And I’m open enough to hear where he’s coming from. So I think we can find balance.”

Weston was right in that those age differences came to the fore almost immediately after Kauder laid out the problems.

For Bloodworth, part of the tension lay in being perceived as ​“too sensitive to something” when ​“something is actually harming me. It’s not that I’m sensitive, it’s that there’s a system that’s harming me.” The word ​“sensitivity” could mask the damage being done: people ​“caused this harm, and this person felt the offense of that harm.” Understanding the difference was ​“a way of taking more accountability.” It was the difference between ​“I did this thing and I’m sorry I did this thing” versus ​“I’m sorry you felt that way from this thing.” 

“I’m coming here with a concern for safety,” said Jisu Sheen, another artist in her 20s. ​“We are of the generation of people who understand that no one is looking out for us.” Regarding the Ely Center, she said, ​“I think what’s being said is that it has been unsafe, and I don’t see what’s being done to make it more safe immediately.” She noted that the departed staff’s position is now open. ​“There’s a new person potentially being hired. Are we going to make the space safe for them? There’s a new show going on. Is the space going to be safe for people coming?”

Weston replied to Sheen. ​“I am so sorry that you feel like you are not being taken care of, that you feel like people are not looking out for you,” she said. ​“It has been my mission — because I’m a mother of six children — to look out for your generation.” She described how she left the board of Artspace on behalf of two young women ​“because I felt like they were not being looked out for, and I fought for them.” She came to the Ely Center, she explained, to help Kauder, board co-chair Debbie Hesse, and others on the board ​“make it a safe space. That’s why I’m here. Because I want young people, and children, and anyone who walks into this space to be safe. That’s my mission here, and that’s why we’re having this conversation.” She emphasized the current ECOCA leadership’s desire for reform, through community engagement, DEI training, and HR support. ​“We need to do some things immediately.”

Weston related that Kauder recently secured HR support for arts organizations from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven ​“on an as-needed basis,” she said. ​“She is not someone who sits around and talks about ideas. She makes them happen.”

“This is a safe space now,” Weston added. ​“Protocols are being put in place to make sure that it continues to be a safe space.”

Sheen pushed on that point. Actually creating safety for her meant acknowledging in a deeper way that ​“these missteps are affecting people’s lives,” she said. She called for greater empathy from those making the decisions to ​“put yourselves on the level” of the people most harmed. ​“There’s a change in perspective, and when you feel it, you feel it.”

Kauder talked about the steps ECOCA is taking in the near future. The organization now asks whether board members involved in it ​“have some connection to the criminal justice system,” she said. The board and artists are about to do a series of three sessions on DEI training and safe spaces in April and May. ECOCA is one of 10 organizations the Community Foundation is helping with HR, doing an audit of staff policies. ​“We don’t have an employment manual,” Kauder said, but ECOCA is working on creating one. ECOCA will not fill staff positions until they do an HR audit. Bloodworth suggested that DEI training could be ongoing, which Kauder agreed would be a good idea.

All agreed that this conversation was just the beginning, and that much work needed to be done, in changing the way the organization runs internally and communicates with New Haven’s communities. Kerri Kelshall-Ward, a participant in the conversation, had observations to make about the turnout for the opening to ECOCA’s latest exhibit, which happened last Sunday. ​“It was packed, non-stop. It was good energy in the room. But I could count the number of people of color probably on three hands,” she said. ​“We need to think about how we can get the word out, because an exhibit like this should have been seen by many people across the board.”

Bloodworth talked about the hard divisions that exist in New Haven’s society, among Black and brown and white people, among a panoply of its marginalized communities. They emerge even in the architecture of the Ely Center’s home on Trumbull. ​“It doesn’t look welcoming, either,” he said. He grew up in New Haven and ​“didn’t know about the Ely Center until I heard from individuals on Facebook,” he said. ​“I didn’t know this was a museum. I thought it was a rich White house that some rich white person lived in.”

“And it was,” Kauder said.

All expressed a desire also to see the effort to reform ECOCA’s practices succeed. ​“To be honest, there’s still a lot of hurt, and it will not be solved right now,” Bloodworth said. ​“But there will be three more sessions.” 

“These are difficult conversations for us to have as a community,” said Lizzy Donius, executive director of the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance. but ​“I feel like everybody’s trying.”

“To be part of solutions,” Kelshall-Ward said, finishing her sentence.

“Yeah,” Donius said.

The next Wednesdays with WABI Conversation Circle, which will continue the discussion about how to improve ECOCA, happens April 12 on Zoom, 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., featuring Rev. Kevin Ewing. Register at info@elycenter.org for the Zoom link. The series continues April 26, featuring Frank Brady, and May 5, featuring Isaac Bloodworth. Visit ECOCA’s schedule of workshops for information on these and its trainings on DEIJ and safe spaces.