Metro Arts has moved toward finding new leadership. Its commission appointed Paulette Coleman as its interim executive director. Coleman is a housing activist, trained mediator and former Metro Arts Commission chair. But the process of her appointment Thursday was filled with missteps.
Commissioners wanted to hire an interim director quickly after some Metro Arts staff expressed a desperate need for one at a meeting last week. The department has been without a day-to-day leader since Daniel Singh took medical leave in February. At last week’s meeting, the commission also put Singh on paid administrative leave, saying they lacked confidence in his leadership.
At Thursday’s meeting, commission chair Leah Dupree Love proposed Coleman and two other possibilities: artist James Threalkill and former Community Education Commission director Mary Beth Harding. Some commissioners said they had not interviewed the candidates, and had not even been able to read their resumes before the meeting. Threalkill had been in discussions with Metro Human Resources about his candidacy, but Harding told WPLN she had no idea she was even being considered, and did not want the job.
Of the nine commissioners who were present at the meeting, four voted to move forward with Coleman, while the other five thought the process was too hasty.
But of the five against, two abstained, thinking the vote would fail without a majority of members who were present at the meeting. Then, Macy Amos from Metro Legal told them there had been a misunderstanding. The number of votes needed for a majority changes if people abstain.
“With the two not voting, that skewed the number,” Amos said. “So the motion for Dr. Coleman passed.”
Metro Development and Housing Agency Paulette Coleman has been named the interim Executive Director of Metro Arts.
With that, the commission had appointed Coleman, essentially by a legal technicality. If she accepts the job, she’ll walk into a department facing multiple challenges.
Among them: arts organizations that are still waiting for much of their operation grant money from last year’s funding cycle. Some individual artists and small organizations that are part of the Thrive program have received the money they were owed, but others have faced technical difficulties and are still awaiting bank transfers.
The commission also discussed firing current Executive Director Daniel Singh. Five of the nine commissioners present made statements in favor of his immediate termination, but the group ultimately decided to wait until they had read a memo — sent on Thursday by Singh’s lawyer, Jamie Hollin — responding to staff members’ HR complaints against him.
Cecilia Olusola Tribble, who worked at Metro Arts until 2019, wrote a statement to the commission supporting Singh’s firing.
“National funders among whom Metro Arts use to be seen as a leader in policy and growing equity practice are now gossiping about Metro Arts because the (executive director) is unwilling to make sound policy decisions, he’s on his third round of staff, the board is on its 4th chair in 7 months,” she wrote.
But one current staff member, Public Art Project Coordinator Jesse Ross, spoke in support of Singh, saying he thought the director deserved a chance to implement his vision of antiracist art funding.
“His leadership was clear, and we were focused, and the priority was … equity,” he said during Thursday’s meeting. “We took everything we did and put it through that lens.”
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