CAMBRIDGE.- Wysing Arts Centre announced that Rosie Cooper has been appointed as the new Director from September 2021. Currently Head of Exhibitions at De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, Cooper brings with her extensive experience of working in the UK visual arts sector, and a strong record of championing art as a tool for social change. She succeeds the late Donna Lynas MBE who was Wysing’s Director from 2005 to 2021.
Rosie Cooper said, “It is a huge honour to take up the role of Director of Wysing Arts Centre. I see Wysing as a beacon for the freewheeling, radical imagination: an environment that empowers artists, communities and publics to re-make the world. Wysing is an exceptional organisation known for its generosity, integrity and inclusivity – qualities we need more than ever. I look forward to collaborating with Wysing’s brilliant team, board, artists and publics to build on Donna Lynas’ extraordinary legacy, constructing the organisation’s future together, with great optimism and care.”
As Head of Exhibitions at De La Warr Pavilion, Cooper developed an ambitious new vision for the visual arts underpinned by a high profile programme of exhibitions including the group shows Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance Acts 1-3 (2019), co-curated with Irene Aristízabal and Cédric Fauq, and How Chicago! Imagists 1960s & 70s (2019), co-curated with Sarah McCrory. She also established significant new partnerships with national and international cultural institutions, universities and grassroots organisations, as well as leading on De La Warr Pavilion’s application to the Plus Tate network in 2019.
Prior to De La Warr Pavilion, as Head of Programmes at Liverpool Biennial, Cooper led a year-round programme of interdisciplinary art commissions, socially engaged projects, residencies, and education and publishing projects, collaborating with major arts and civic organisations across the city and further afield, and successfully bringing an international audience to the city.
Cooper is also a trustee of IntoArt, a visual arts organisation based in south London working with people with learning disabilities, and a trustee of Home Live Art, producers of performance and community gatherings across south east England and beyond.
The Trustees and staff of Wysing Arts Centre said, "We are all extremely excited to be working with Rosie. We were impressed with her ideas and her collaborative approach to the team. New leadership means a new chapter for Wysing, and we are confident that under Rosie’s direction, Wysing will continue to situate artists at the core of our work.”
