Passing of the torch at South Jersey arts center

Monday was Karen Chigounis' first day on the job - at the place where she's been at work for the better part of four decades.

"Day One has been absolutely beyond my wildest dreams," said Chigounis, 66, the new chief administrator of the Perkins Center for the Arts. "One of the most positive experiences of my life."

A Moorestown resident, a mother of four and grandmother of four, Chigounis succeeds Alan Willoughby, a respected ceramist who retired Jan. 29 after 25 years as Perkins' executive director.

The nonprofit community arts education organization draws about 35,000 patrons annually to classes, exhibits, performances, and special events at its facilities in Moorestown and Collingswood.

"Perkins is a treasure," board member Jeff Banasz said, accurately.

"We want to make sure it's taken care of."

With that in mind, Perkins heard from consultants who suggested that an interim executive director would help ease the transition after Willoughby's long tenure. Chigounis will serve as such for two years, with a mutual option for a third, after which a permanent executive director will be hired.

"We felt that Karen will fit the role perfectly," said board president Paul Canton III, citing Chigounis' deep knowledge of, and commitment to, Perkins. "We're thrilled to have her."

A photographer and printmaker with a degree from what is now Moore College of Art and Design, Chigounis began volunteering at Perkins in 1975, not long after it was established in a landmark Tudor mansion in Moorestown that a grassroots effort saved from demolition.

She continued as a volunteer for 25 years, until she became program facilitator and curator for the Camden County Cultural and Heritage Commission in 2010. Perkins hired Chigounis in 2005 as director of arts education and curator of its then-new Collingswood facility.

The big, funky space in a former auto sales and repair shop near the PATCO line has helped Perkins reach new audiences, and it's where about 75 people toasted her, and her predecessor, during a stylish event last Thursday evening.

"We really did accomplish a lot, and I say 'we,' because without all the great people around me, it never would have happened," said Willoughby, 66, of Deptford, who presented Chigounis with a two-handled piece of pottery - an example of his own work - in front of the crowd.

"It's the perfect way for me to pass on the leadership from me to Karen," he said, adding, to much laughter, "Hold on. . . . Don't drop it!"

Later, in an interview, Willoughby said, "Karen's knowledge and commitment, and her experience in arts education, are phenomenal," and called the new job "an incredible way for her to finish her career."

Perkins has a $1.2 million annual budget, about half of which is revenue from classes and events, with the rest coming from public and private sources.

The operation is in the black, but finding money for capital improvements to the 106-year-old Moorestown facility, and the circa-1930s Collingswood building, is a never-ending challenge. And arts funding generally is particularly vulnerable to downturns in the economy.

"Alan found ways to hold Perkins together through some very rough financial times," noted former board member Patricia Finio, who spoke at the Collingswood event. "It wasn't always easy, and it wasn't pretty."

Inevitably for an organization with a rather progressive agenda - and roots in a relatively conservative community - "there have been conflicting views of how we should progress," said Finio, a longtime arts educator.

But Perkins has become a champion of urban arts programs, including mural-painting in Camden, and also set up an international exchange of work between students in Myanmar and South Jersey. A wonderful bus tour of rural South Jersey folk artists - which I thoroughly enjoyed and wrote a column about in 2014 - was another example of Perkins' adventurousness on Willoughby's watch.

Despite its edgier programs, Perkins - particularly in Moorestown - remains an oasis of the fine arts, offering regular classical music and dance performances.

"I could walk in there on a Sunday afternoon, and the room would be filled with all sorts of people from Moorestown and beyond, listening to the most wonderful musicians," Finio said. "To walk up to this beautiful house, find yourself a chair, and listen - how great is that?"

Under Willoughby's leadership, she noted, Perkins has maintained "artistic excellence."

Indeed, with its juried shows and high-caliber teachers, Perkins has given emerging artists "the courage to bring their work to the next level," in the words of mixed-media artist Dolores Poacelli.

"I've been showing my work at Perkins for 30 years," said Poacelli, who's making a series of three-dimensional wall panels at her South Philly studio. The artist, who lives in Collingswood, called Chigounis "the right person" to take over the leadership of Perkins.

"She knows everybody, she has a feel for it, she has extremely good taste, and she's a hard worker," Poacelli added.

Chigounis' first day in her new post began with a surprise from the colleagues who are now working for her.

"There's a joke around here that I'm the Post-it note queen," she laughed. "So a few people on staff found colored Post-it notes and covered an entire wall in a staggeringly beautiful rainbow."

It was, Chigounis said, "a piece of art."

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