Lewis Museum exec Graham appointed BOPA’s next CEO
Rachel D. Graham, who holds a top leadership post at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, was unanimously appointed Tuesday as the next CEO of the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts.
The group’s three-member board, consisting of acting BOPA chairman Andrew Chaveas and fellow board members Jeffrey Kent and B.R. Hammed-Owens, held a brief, 10-minute meeting Tuesday to finalize Graham’s appointment. She will begin her new job March 15.
Graham is the director of external relations for the Lewis and manages the museum’s overall communications strategy. She has held that position since November 2021.
Her selection could signal closer coordination in the future between City Hall and BOPA, the quasi-governmental agency that mounts Artscape and other public city celebrations. Graham, 52, has a long-time, close working relationship with Tonya Miller Hall, the mayor’s senior adviser for arts and cultural affairs.
“She has been a huge part of my trajectory in this city,” said Graham, a Denver native. “We have worked together very closely in the past and I look forward to working with her very closely in the future.”
Hall could not be reached for comment.
Graham said that Hall was instrumental in bringing her to Baltimore. About six years ago, Graham said, she interviewed with Hall for a job she ultimately did not get. But Hall was impressed with Graham, and when a similar opening arose at the Family League of Baltimore in 2018, “I was hired on the strength of her recommendation,” Graham said. She remained at the Family League for more than three years, rising to the position of communications director.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Graham also “has advised or served in mayoral administrations in Philadelphia, Houston, New Orleans, and Baltimore” and formerly managed marketing communications for the Greater Houston Partnership, the economic development organization for the 10-county Houston region.
She previously studied at Towson University, according to her LinkedIn profile.
“Rachel brings a wealth of experience and a true passion for the arts to her new role,” Chaveas said, “and she has our full confidence in building on the lessons learned and leading BOPA forward for the benefit of our essential stakeholders and the entire community. We couldn’t be more excited about this new chapter in BOPA’s history.”
Graham acknowledged that she was taking over the agency at “a critical juncture” in its existence.
“Arts and culture — as an economic engine of Baltimore — has the potential to not only attract visitors from around the world,” she said, “but to change the narrative that some hold about this beautifully diverse community, while also serving as a catalyst to also improve outcomes for all residents who call Charm City home.”
Graham said she believes it is possible to simultaneously “shift perception and reality by ensuring that the opportunity for full, equitable participation in the cultural economy for all Baltimoreans is within reach.”
One of Graham’s first challenges will be persuading the city to renew the agency’s contract to mount such popular public events as the Baltimore Book Festival, the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade, and July 4th fireworks. The contract expires June 30.
But Graham said she’s not overly concerned that BOPA’s contract won’t be renewed.
“I believe this organization has demonstrated its value and its necessity,” she said. “And I have established relationships with some of the key stakeholders who will be involved in that decision-making process.”
In the past 18 months, city officials have been visibly frustrated with BOPA, which they perceived as being too slow to restart festivals and other public events, which went dark for
four years or longer following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Former CEO Donna Drew Sawyer and later, former board chairman Brian D. Lyles, were publicly slammed by city leaders who voted in 2022 and 2023 to temporarily withhold funds from the agency. Last summer, Mayor Brandon Scott, City Council President Nick Mosby and Councilman Eric Costello, chairman of the city’s powerful Ways & Means Committee, vowed to “explore alternative options” to using BOPA to mount festivals if the organization didn’t immediately change the way it is governed.
Costello couldn’t be reached for comment.
Sawyer resigned in January 2023 after the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade was canceled on short notice, and a furious Scott demanded that she be ousted. BOPA’s board began a national search for her successor that attracted a few dozen applicants, according to Greg Tucker, a PR consultant for the BOPA board. Scott interviewed the finalists for the CEO position, Tucker said.
BOPA appeared to find its footing in June, once Todd Yuhanick, a film producer and former owner of a public relations firm, was named interim CEO. Yuhanick acknowledged at one point that he was a candidate for the CEO position. But though Artscape, the city’s marquee festival, returned as promised last September, the three-day festival was derailed by Tropical Storm Ophelia, which caused the cancellation of all planned activities for safety reasons on the festival’s main day.
“We could not be more grateful to Todd Yuhanick,” Chaveas said, “who stepped in at a critical time as interim CEO and stabilized a rocking ship. He successfully led the return of Artscape, in collaboration with the Office of the Mayor, in addition to his many other contributions.”
Graham said she is looking forward to the return of Artscape from Aug. 2-4, and to the Book Festival, which will come back this fall with an expanded footprint in the Waverly neighborhood.
But she was noncommittal when asked about the future of Light City, a festival of visual art and innovation that debuted in 2016.
“There hasn’t yet been time to have a conversation about that,” she said.
Her salary was not disclosed at the meeting. But Sawyer was paid $176,539 in total compensation, including benefits, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, according to the organization’s tax forms.
Family League president Demaune Millard said that when Graham worked for him, he was impressed at her dedication to getting to know Baltimore from the ground up.
Though she had spent a few years as a college student in the Baltimore area in the 1990s, Graham had not lived here for decades when she returned to Maryland in 2018.
Graham began riding city buses through Baltimore neighborhoods in her spare time, he said, from Park Heights to Cherry Hill to Sandtown-Winchester. And after each trip, she would pick his brain for information on the history of the neighborhood landmarks the bus had passed.
“Rachel wanted to get a clear, bird’s-eye view not only of the neighborhoods, but also of the people of Baltimore,” Millard said.
“She wanted to engage authentically with the communities we served. That’s what makes her unique for this role,” he said. “She goes above and beyond so she can be an agent for change.”
In some ways, Graham said, she’s been preparing to become BOPA CEO for her entire life.
Her father has spent more than half a century working in the arts, first as a DJ, then as a concert promoter for among other figures, the famed singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson. Now, he is the chief carpenter for New York’s Longacre Theatre — and one of the few Black department heads working on Broadway.
Graham’s mother worked in telecommunications, but was a gifted painter and a classically trained pianist.
As Graham put it: “It was stamped in my genes in utero to be doing this work.”