Creative Arts Workshop | Visual Arts | Arts, Culture & Community | Education
Trina Mace Learned speaks at the opening of Alchemy of Art: Ann P. Lehman and Creative Arts Workshop in December 2023. File photo Kapp Singer.
Creative Arts Workshop has announced the appointment of Katharine “Trina” Mace Learned as its new executive director of the gallery and arts education center located at 80 Audubon Street.
Learned, who served as the organization’s interim director for the last year, succeeds Anne Coates, who stepped down in February 2023.
She said as interim director her charge was to “hold the reins steady.” Now, she’s excited to be able to dream bigger about what CAW can be while maintaining the organization’s current programming.
“As a permanent executive director, now I have the agency to look toward the future,” Learned said. “To think, ‘How do we stay healthy today and tomorrow, and what does it look like going into the future? What can we do that’s innovative, that’s exciting, that’s attractive, that’s financially viable?’”
In her tenure as interim director, Learned produced two exhibitions. December’s Alchemy of Art: Ann P. Lehman and Creative Arts Workshop honored the life of a CAW founder, and last month’s Made Visible: Origins in Belonging—still on view—focuses on representations of marginalized identities.
“Producing [Alchemy of Art] was, for me, a grounding and education in all the amazing things that CAW has brought to the community and continues to represent in the community,” Learned said.
Learned said she hopes to continue fostering that spirit of community through her leadership role at CAW. She expressed excitement about the late spring reopening of the “Park of the Arts,” a courtyard located behind CAW which has been closed for several years due to construction on the Farmington Canal Trail.
Other public events she mentioned CAW will participate in as part of their public outreach goals include the Audubon Street Arts Festival, on May 18, as well as future New Haven Night Markets and other neighborhood festivals, like the Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival.
Learned has spent several decades in arts, culture, academic, and nonprofit administration. Before being hired at CAW, she worked in financial management and campus and facilities planning at Yale University, Brown University, Wellesley College, and Connecticut College. She holds a B.A. in art and music from Williams College and a M.A. in humanities from Wesleyan University, and has lived in New Haven since 1979.
“This is an opportunity to use the experience I learned throughout my career and focus it on a unique and intimate organization here in New Haven,” Learned said.
“The organization will benefit from Trina’s innovative thinking and creativity, ensuring that CAW will continue to thrive in partnership with other great New Haven organizations to make art and art making accessible to all,” CAW Board of Directors Chair Sean O’Connell wrote in a press release announcing Learned’s appointment.
Going forward, Learned said she wants to continue to make sure CAW bounces back from the effects of Covid-19.
“We have truly reemerged from the difficult times of the pandemic,” she said, adding that “we need to make sure that we are welcoming and inviting so that people do want to be here in person.”
“We’re really seeing wonderful new students, new enthusiasm, new energy coming into our building.”