RoCA Names a New Leader

WEST NYACK – Rockland Center for the Arts (RoCA) has announced interim Executive Director Daly Flanagan will remain with the organization as its new permanent executive director.

Flanagan will try to fill the shoes of 30-year executive director, Julianne Ramos, who retired in 2016. The new exec has a long history of her own with the art center, having served as RoCA’s school director since 2000. Flanagan received her Bachelor’s Degree of Fine Art in Painting and Printmaking from San Diego State University in California and her Masters in Arts Administration in Visual Arts from Bank Street College of Education/Parsons School of Design in New York.

Prior to coming to RoCA, Flanagan worked for The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles as its museum educator. She moved to NY in 1993 and was the coordinator of School and Family Programs for the Museum of Art and Design (formerly The American Craft Museum). She then worked as director at the Elsa Mott Ives Gallery and the Craft Students League in New York. She is also an adjunct faculty member at St. Thomas Aquinas College.

As school director, Flanagan implemented RoCA’s exhibition-based outreach school tours and instituted the Rockland Visual Arts Education Conference in conjunction with BOCES and Rockland County Public School Art teachers, among other accomplishments. She says her one of her strongest passions is working to broaden access to the arts for children in the struggling East Ramapo School District.

In 2002, she was awarded the Rockland County Forty Under Forty Award and in 2012 she was honored with the Rockland County Executive Arts Award for Art Educator. Flanagan said she is excited to reinstitute community collaborative partnerships to present programs that best meet the needs of our community. As an example, she has already put RoCA’s popular music series back on the center’s itinerary.

RoCA was founded by such luminaries as Helen Hayes, Aaron Copeland, Henry Varnum Poor, Burgess Meredith and more. The center celebrated its 70th anniversary this year. RoCA can be reached at 845-358-0877, info@rocklandartcenter.org and is located at 27 S Greenbush Rd., West Nyack.

  ROCA, rockland center for the arts, School and Family Programs for the Museum of Art, St. Thomas Aquinas College, The Museum of Contemporary Art