Howard Jang named new executive and artistic director of ArtSpring on Salt Spring Island
The esteemed arts and cultural leader takes over the role in January 2022
Howard Jang. Photo via the Banff Centre
THE BOARD OF the Island Arts Centre Society (ArtSpring) on Salt Spring Island has announced the appointment of Howard Jang as its new executive and artistic director, effective early January 2022.
Jang, a prominent arts and cultural leader with more than three decades’ experience helming large arts organizations across the country, moved to the southern Gulf Island last year with his wife. He will take over the role from the centre’s current executive and artistic director, Cicela Månsson. ArtSpring is a community performing- and visual-arts centre launched by artists Birgit and Robert Bateman in 1999.
ArtSpring board president Walter Stewart said in a release that the search for a new leader drew applications from across North America and Europe.
“We were bound that we were looking for the best candidate regardless of that candidate’s location,” Stewart said. “It was a real joy to discover that the best candidate was right in our midst, having moved to Salt Spring a little more than a year ago. Howard brings an extensive and varied background in arts and arts facility management with a real commitment to the place of the arts in the community. He has an extraordinary network in the arts right across Canada and beyond which will benefit ArtSpring and its service to Salt Spring Island. One person we talked to said, ‘Anywhere in the arts in Canada, the name Howard Jang is gold.’”
Jang, who was named interim executive director of the BC Alliance for Arts and Culture in July 2021 and who is director of programming at the recently opened Vancouver Chinatown Storytelling Centre, got his career start in New York City prior to moving back to Vancouver in 1989 as orchestra manager of Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. He then became executive director of Ballet BC, with subsequent leadership positions including those at Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Arts Club Theatre Vancouver.
More recently, Jang has been director of Simon Fraser University Goldcorp Centre for the Arts and vice president of Arts and Leadership at the Banff Centre.
“I am thrilled to be joining ArtSpring as their next Executive and Artistic Director, and to build upon the tremendous foundational and organizational work of Cicela,” Jang said in the release. “When my wife, Alexandra, and I moved to Salt Spring last summer, we were attracted to the breadth of the artistic and creative community and intuitively felt that ArtSpring would be a home for us. I am looking forward to be working with such a committed team and Board of Directors, and excited to be given this opportunity to contribute to such a vibrant organization inspired by place.”
ArtSpring is home to a 6,600-square-foot 259-seat theatre and a 5,200-square-foot exhibition and multipurpose space.
For more information, see artspring.ca.
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