Board Member: Make an impact with your passion for the arts, drive for community service, and professional expertise.

Looking for a place where you can apply your passions and skills to make a difference?

The Lexington Arts and Crafts Society (www.LexArt.org) is a non-profit community arts center, located in Lexington, MA., whose mission is to spark joy, enrich lives, and build community through the practice, teaching, and sharing of art and craft. Our Nominating Committee seeks to identify potential candidates to join our board of directors and help us further the transformation begun in recent years.

About LexArt

LexArt has a rich history; a small but growing and committed membership; and an 11,000 sf. building in an enviable location near Lexington Center that houses a gallery and fully equipped ceramics, woodworking, metalworking and weaving/fiber workshops, along with adaptive space for painting, photography, needle arts, polymer clay and bead work, and decorative arts. Teens to seniors can learn new craft techniques, become painters or sculptors, or advance their knowledge of favorite pastimes. They can join a community of like-minded people who are passionate about making beautiful objects with their hands and passing on their know-how to others. 

Though started in 1935, LexArt has undergone a renaissance in recent years. In 2019, the organization adopted new bylaws, reorganizing the Board of Directors, bringing in outsiders and experienced professionals, and reducing boar turnover. In 2020, despite the pandemic, LexArt raised funds for and successfully completed the renovation of its main gallery space, rechristened the Molly Harding Nye Gallery, creating a clean, modern and professionally equipped space to host exhibits and sales. In November 2020, LexArt’s first full-time executive director, Matthew Siegal, assumed his role. Matthew, a LexArt board member since 2019, had been Chair of the Department of Conservation and Collections Management at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Since then, we've continued to transition from a volunteer-managed to professionally-managed organization, ramped up development efforts, and expanded the breadth and depth of classes and exhibits.

Board Priorities

Our Executive Director and Board aspire to preserve and improve the physical plant, while extending the organization’s reach and impact by greatly enlarging its membership, expanding, and improving its educational offerings, diversifying and professionalizing its gallery operations and building professional advancement (fundraising, education, and member relations) capacity. We are particularly committed to extending and broadening our reach beyond our traditional base to individuals and groups under-served by public cultural resources. We firmly believe that one of the best and most important ways to build community is for people to make and share art together. We have been updating our membership, operating, and physical structures so that we can significantly expand the audiences we serve and make it much easier for people to engage with LexArt. To these ends, we have recently added professional studio managers in our equipped studios and launched a Universal Access initiative, including building renovations, new equipment purchases, and the addition of special classes all to enable students of varying physical and cognitive abilities to participate in our learning and making community.

Board Member Responsibilities

The LexArt board typically meets five times per year for two to three hours. Since the organization is largely volunteer run, this is a working board and members are expected to serve on at least one committee and provide some assistance to the organization between board meetings. The nature of that assistance will vary based on the individual member’s interests and expertise. We encourage board members to attend exhibit openings and other special events at LexArt and ask that they represent LexArt occasionally at community events in Lexington as well as arts and crafts gatherings in the region. The Executive Director and Board Chair also count on individual board members to share their advice and expertise directly with them.

Board Member Qualifications

All board members should be:

• Passionate about the arts and excited by the particular contributions that small community arts-organizations can make
• High integrity
• Curious, strategic thinkers
• Willing and able to “roll up their sleeves” to get the job done

Specific attributes sought for one or more members in 2024:

• Connections to communities currently under-served by local arts organizations generally and LexArt specifically (various racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups)
• Financial management/accounting/legal
• Cultural institution leadership
• Professional artists and those with arts and crafts community connections
• Arts education leadership and instruction
• Information technology
• Development and fundraising
• Marketing and communication