20 People to Watch - Julie Delliquanti: The arts leader

Julie Delliquanti has more questions than answers at the moment. After about six months as the new executive director of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Delliquanti wants to know, “Who are we? Why are we here? What do we do? Why do we do it? And is it relevant?”

As ACAC approaches its 42nd year, it makes sense to reevaluate, especially given the changes of the last few years. Founded in 1973 by a group of local photographers as the grassroots arts organization the Circle of Confusion, the institution was soon renamed Nexus and then — somewhat controversially — reborn in 2000 as the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. The ACAC’s 40th anniversary was celebrated with a massive capital campaign that raised funds for a $600,000 overhaul of the nonprofit’s Westside space.

The ACAC experienced more big shifts in 2014. Since 2008, Artistic Director Stuart Horodner and Managing Director Stacie Lindner had worked as a management team. Horodner and Lindner announced their departures within a month of each other in early 2014. The vacancies left the leadership possibilities wide open. The board decided to revert to an executive director setup. Delliquanti was hired in June.

“I think in that sort of a model with two directors you have both two people in charge and nobody in charge; two people as the face of the organization and nobody as the face,” Delliquanti says.

Born and raised in southern California, Delliquanti’s background is in public education and arts administration. She came to Atlanta in 2007 and worked for Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Libraries (MARBL), as the High Museum’s head of Public Programs and Community Engagement, and as curator of the Decatur Book Festival’s art|DBF.

“Culturally, the High wasn’t a good fit for me, so that’s when I sat back and said, do I really still want to do museum work and education?” says Delliquanti, who had been missing the civic engagement of past arts jobs centered on issues including homelessness, food security, and affordable housing. “And the more I thought about it, contemporary art is really the place where artists are working and struggling with a lot of these really big issues ... and it provides a really interesting place to have these conversations.”

The first step in having those conversations is making sure that people know they’re taking place. And where they’re happening.

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The ACAC has called a converted Westside warehouse home since the late ’80s. It’s tucked away behind Marietta Street at the bend of a narrow drive, and faces a parking lot. Signage is minimal. There are few traces of life in the building’s lovably crumbling courtyard.

In the coming year, Delliquanti wants more signs, better visibility, and a new website.

“I know we have invited a lot of people here in the last six months — that I made the huge assumption that they had been here many times before — who had never been invited or never been here,” she says. “It’s been a wake-up call.”

Moving forward will be less about rewriting the organization’s mission as a noncollecting exhibiting institution, and more about how that mission is carried out and whom it serves.

In her new role, Delliquanti wants to launch a school program to get more students through the ACAC’s doors, create more partnerships with local universities and arts groups, and continue to build the organization’s reputation as a leader beyond Atlanta. There’s also the three-year, $200,000 capitalization grant the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund awarded the ACAC in May that she and her team, which includes recently hired curator Daniel Fuller, have to work with.

“I know a lot of really smart and fun and engaged and wacky people who don’t go to any of the arts stuff around town,” Delliquanti says. “And I’m not sure why. In Atlanta, you have this core group of people who are just super-invested in the arts, but how do we get beyond that group? It can’t just be these 500 people who live in a city of 4 million. So where are the other people, who are not nearly as invested in the arts but are interested? ... Where’s our arts-interested community?”

It’s another question to add to the list.