BROOKLYN, NY.- Powerhouse Arts (PHA), the Brooklyn-based nonprofit, today announced the appointment of Cathy Harding as Vice President of Institutional Advancement. In this role, Harding will lead PHA's development strategy across individual giving, corporate sponsorship, foundation and government support, and long-term capital planning, reporting directly to PHA President Eric Shiner.
PHA President Eric Shiner states:
“At this critical moment in the growth of Powerhouse Arts's robust and dynamic programming—a period in which we've introduced a series of large-scale public exhibitions, art fairs, and festivals that prioritize multidisciplinary work across the visual arts, performance, and large-scale sculpture—we believe an individual whose expertise spans the arts at large, like Cathy Harding, will be an invaluable asset to an organization that sees art-making in all its many forms as critical to the creative economy in New York, the United States, and globally. It is our hope that in this new capacity, she will continue to cultivate and strengthen our constituency with individuals who prioritize artists and their labor at the heart of their philanthropy.”
Harding arrives at PHA following a career built at the intersection of the performing and visual arts. Trained as a journalist, writer, and educator with a specialty in modern dance, she spent three years at Paul Taylor Dance Company alongside Artistic Director Michael Novak and under Executive Director John Tomlinson, where she served in the organization's advancement leadership and worked to bring donors closer to the company's growing commitment to process, creation, preservation, and education.
Harding emphasizes that dance history—and its inseparability from the history of modern art itself—shapes how she approaches PHA's mission. She points to the organization's identity as, in effect, a factory for art and ideas: a place where the making of the work, which includes supporting both career and emerging artists across ceramics, print, public art, textiles, and beyond, is understood to be as vital as what is ultimately exhibited. For Harding, PHA represents an opportunity to connect values-aligned constituencies to the labor of artmaking itself as the work, not merely as what precedes it, and to bring institutional advancement practice into closer alignment with that value.
In speaking of her new role, the incoming VP of Institutional Advancement Cathy Harding states:
"Powerhouse Arts offers a unique opportunity to support an institution that has served as a home for a myriad of art-making techniques, educational activities, and broad-scale programming, all under one roof. Given my experience across the arts, I am perhaps most driven to apply my expertise to an institution so wholly founded on cross-collaboration, knowledge sharing, and process. Moreover, it is self-evident in all that Powerhouse does that it practices the very principles it teaches through its programs. It is a privilege to be invited to build and continue to cultivate a community so deeply engaged in the empowerment of our artists and arts workers.”
As VP of Institutional Advancement, Harding will oversee and mentor PHA's Development team and will lead the cultivation and solicitation of major gifts, corporate sponsorships, and foundation and government funding, while also serving as staff liaison to PHA's Board on development matters, including board recruitment and onboarding. Looking ahead, she will help guide planning for a capital campaign expected to launch in the coming years, supporting PHA's long-term sustainability as it continues to expand its programming and facilities.
Cathy Harding is formerly the Senior Director of Advancement for the Paul Taylor Dance Company, where she led the fundraising staff and recently completed a $10 million campaign that enabled the organization to expand into new studios and headquarters in Hell’s Kitchen. As a strategic advancement professional, Cathy has worked extensively in higher education, non-profit journalism, human services, and the arts. At Bard College at Simon’s Rock, she led a $30 million campaign.
Cathy was a newspaper and magazine editor before moving into advancement, with positions at several regional publications, including C-VILLE Weekly, the leading alternative newspaper in Charlottesville, Virginia. There she expanded operations and served as Editor in Chief for 10 years. A former dance critic and educator, Cathy’s reviews and features have been published in Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, Inside Arts, Pointe Magazine, and The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Dance, among others. Her board service has included Lighthouse and The Bridge, P.A.I in Charlottesville as well as Doug Varone and Dancers in New York. Cathy, also a longtime Pilates instructor, lives in Manhattan. She is an avid improv practitioner and believes in the power of “yes and.”
