People on the Move: The Avenue Concept Announces New Leadership
GoLocalProv News Team
People on the Move: The Avenue Concept Announces New Leadership
New Leadership at The Avenue
The Avenue Concept (TAC) Board of Directors announced that following a competitive national search led by EOS Transition Partners, it has appointed Tracy Jonsson-Laboy as TAC’s next Executive Director, succeeding Founder Yarrow Thorne.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST"We are delighted to have Tracy guide us as TAC enters a new era following Yarrow’s departure. She has the skills to help us with our strategic planning initiatives and to implement our new organizational mission and vision of producing exceptional visual public art and experiences with artists and communities designed to inspire joy, dialogue, and belonging," said the board in a statement.
Jonsson-Laboy is returning to Rhode Island after spending three years in Rejmyre, Sweden, where she was Executive Director of the Rejmyre Art Lab Center for Peripheral Studies. She was both Founder and Executive Director of Newport Art House, an artist-run place-making non-profit in Newport, RI.
In 2020, Jonsson-Laboy served as policy architect for the City of Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism. A practicing interdisciplinary artist exhibiting internationally, Jonsson-Laboy is currently exploring conceptual craft and the racialization of materials in her For Flax Sake project, supported by the Rhode Island State Council for the Humanities, as well as the role of BIPOC craft and textile practice through Homespun, an Awesome Foundation supported project. She spins, knits, weaves, sings, plants and tends within these projects.
Jonsson-Laboy has a master's Degree in Historic Preservation from Roger Williams University and "believes that artists are expert gatherers and contextualizers of ideas and lived experiences and, by extension, central resources for spearheading placekeeping, placemending, and depth-building efforts across all sectors."
About The Avenue Concept
The Avenue Concept makes public art happen. We produce exceptional visual public art and experiences with artists and communities designed to inspire joy, dialogue, and inclusion.
We do this by investing in permanent infrastructure, funding public art projects, documenting and promoting the work of artists, using art as a tool for education, and advocating for policies, processes and partnerships that develop sustainable avenues for public art. We envision vibrant public spaces where art is a catalyst to nurture connection, hope and belonging.
Founded in Providence, RI in 2012, The Avenue Concept is the state’s leading public art program. Since then it has installed or exhibited more than 250 works of public art, and invested $2 million in both artwork and infrastructure.