Arts chief Farber to join Buffalo Bayou Partnership
Other changes were afoot at the University of Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts before the COVID-19 pandemic, but this one brings a seismic shift.
Karen Farber, the center’s director since 2005, is leaving to join the Buffalo Bayou Partnership as vice president of external affairs, a new position. Beginning May 18, Farber will oversee the partnership’s development, communications, programming and public art programs.
The public art component will be broad, including grassroots projects in neighborhoods and installations by international artsts at the Buffalo Bayou Cistern. Public art will be especially important as the partnership moves forward with its
East Sector Plan spaces, Farber said. “We will be looking at how art can be a tool to connect people to the bayou and each other.”
The Mitchell Center, meanwhile, has named Blaffer Art Museum director Steven Matijcio as interim director (he now holds both positions) and Melissa Noble as interim managing director. The center is an organization, not a place, that supports interdisciplinary arts programs, artist residencies and community projects. Its work became higher-profile after Farber launched CounterCurrent, an annual festival of experimental performances, installations, talks and participatory events, in 2014.
Earlier this year, Farber told the Houston Chronicle she thought CounterCurrent had run its course and would go on haitus after 2020. After the pandemic forced her to cancel the final festival, she reorganized and presented one element of it — the popular program “Ten Tiny Dances” — as a virtual experience. During her tenure at the University of Houston, she also hosted residencies with leading artists and a lecture series that brought luminaries including Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Theaster Gates and the Yes Men to Houston.
Faber said she wasn’t looking for a change, that her move to the partnership came about organically. The two organizations often partner, and she served on a partnership committee. “I don’t know who said something first,” she said. “It’s a strange time to be making a transition, but it’s been in the works for a while.”