516 Arts’ Suzanne Sbarge to step down
The founder and executive director of Albuquerque’s 17-year contemporary art institution is leaving.
Suzanne Sbarge is stepping down from 516 Arts to become a consultant and concentrate on creating her own art.
“I’ll still be around to offer advice and to do some consulting,” she said. “It’s been brewing for a while. I also have my mom who’s 93 who I’m helping out. My artwork has been on the back burner for a while. And the number of hats I’ve been wearing is just exhausting.”
Deputy director April Chalay will become interim director when Sbarge leaves the organization, located at 516 Central Ave. SW, on Oct.
15. Chalay is a contemporary artist and the former deputy director of Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts.
Sbarge found- ed 516 Arts in partnership with the McCune Charitable Foundation in 2006. The staff has grown from two and a budget of $140,000, to the current staff of six and a budget of $650,000. She has launched 92 exhibitions since the museum opened, showing works by more than 1,500 artists.
In that time, 516 Arts received a $500,000, five-year grant from the Ford Foundation, the McCune Foundation’s donation of the current building and its Fulcrum Fund grant program, created at the invitation of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, awarding $745,000 to independent New Mexican artists, including major COVID-relief efforts.
“Originally, I ran Magnifico in this space from 1999-2003,” Sbarge said. “When I left that, they weren’t able to continue the level of fundraising and it folded. The building was standing empty while I was doing consulting work. One of my clients was the McCune Foundation and they owned this building. We did two years as an experiment. That was 17 years ago, so the experiment worked.”
A committee is conducting a nationwide search for new leadership.
“It’ll be good for the organization to have fresh energy and ides,” Sbarge said. “It’s something I birthed and raised and sent off to college.”