Our Staff - CEC ArtsLink

OUR team

SIMON DOVE

executive director

Simon Dove is a curator and educator and co-curated the Crossing the Line Festival, the annual trans-disciplinary fall festival in New York City. He was previously Executive and Artistic Director of Dancing in the Streets in NYC, and Professor of Practice and Director of the School of Dance at Arizona State University. His past international projects have included work with the Amsterdam Choreography Master’s program (Netherlands), Rachid Ouramdane (France), the Guardians of Doubt (UK), Philadelphia Live Arts Festival (USA), The Arab Dance Platform (Lebanon), Attakalari (India), and TseKH (Russia).

Simon was curator and Artistic Director of Springdance, the international festival of new developments in dance and performance in the Netherlands from 2000 to 2007. Prior to that he ran one of the first National Dance Agencies in the UK, the Yorkshire Dance Centre in Leeds, was the founder and Artistic Director of Vivarta – the first contemporary South Asian performance festival in the UK, contributed to national dance policy development with the Arts Council of Great Britain, and programmed an innovative arts center in London. He has written articles for the performance and South Asian press, devised and presented a series for BBC Radio 3 on Dance and Music, and extensively mentored students and professional artists from many countries in developing their creative practices.

SUSAN KATZ

Program Director, Art Prospect and Back Apartment Residencies

Susan directs the Art Prospect Program in public art, social practice art, and professional development in the countries of the former Soviet Union as well as the Back Apartment Arts Residency program. She works closely with a diverse network of international partner organizations, funders, and artists to develop, finance, and coordinate these projects. Susan has a Ph.D. in public administration (cultural policy) from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service and wrote her dissertation on the development of nonprofit cultural organizations in Russia.

MEGHA RALAPATI

Program Director, fELLOWSHIPS

Megha specializes in artist mobility and has collaborated with community-centered organizations based in the US and internationally including Project Row Houses (Houston), ARTPORT Tel Aviv, and Center for Contemporary Art Lagos. She developed and oversaw the Jackman Goldwasser Residency at Hyde Park Art Center, where she forged partnerships with the MacArthur Foundation, French Embassy, Asian Cultural Council, Northwestern University, CEC ArtsLink and other institutions to design intentional cross-cultural artistic exchanges. Over her career, she has produced dynamic arts programming that centers the transformative relationship between artists, their ideas, and multigenerational audiences. Before joining Hyde Park Art Center in 2011, she was Director of Bose Pacia in New York, an international visual art gallery presenting contemporary work from across South Asia.

Megha regularly participates in award and fellowship juries, presents workshops to artists of all levels, including at the School of the Art Institute, NYU, and most recently at Asiko, an experimental pan-African summer intensive for artists, and has contributed to publications for Documenta 14, Brooklyn Museum, Sharjah Art Foundation, among others. Megha received an MA in Visual Culture from Goldsmiths and a BA in Art History and Anthropology from Columbia University. She is a board member of Artist Communities Alliance and Enrich Chicago.

ZHENIA STADNIK

Director of Communications

As a skilled arts administrator with experience in development, special events, communications and program management, Zhenia was instrumental in ensuring smooth organizational transition to new leadership in 2017-2018. Zhenia has produced a series of events about contemporary issues in the arts, CEC ArtsLink Talks and a public art workshop in NYC, Publicly Creative. She has played a key role in the development and implementation of the strategic plan that resulted in a more focused programming, engaged board and improved communication. She co-edited A Miracle or Misunderstanding, a collection of essays on socially engaged practices in ten countries, and 1-50: CEC ArtsLink’s 50 years of opening doors and changing perspectives, a book of essays and history in honor of CEC ArtsLink’s 50th anniversary. Zhenia has produced many successful and memorable fundraisers. She holds an MA degree in History from Lviv University (Ukraine); she studied Economics and Business Administration at Fordham University, New York.