Chiwoniso Kaitano Wants to Lead MacDowell to Greater DEI
Chiwoniso Kaitano is on a mission to elevate MacDowell, a bastion of artistic diversity, to the next level. As the 10th executive director in the Peterborough organization’s history, she believes she was made for this challenge.
“What we have done for over 100 years has worked extremely well. What we need to do is make sure we are an organization that stays relevant and represents artists well in 2023 and forward,” Kaitano says.
At a time when New Hampshire is beginning to embrace diversity, Kaitano sees a golden opportunity to make sure more aspiring artists know about everything MacDowell has to offer and they continue to be a welcoming, all-inclusive place.
When the MacDowell Board of Directors hired Kaitano in February, she believes they also affirmed a basic truth: “The world has changed, and staying relevant in a changed world is important for MacDowell’s future,” she adds.
Kaitano understands and appreciates the fact that MacDowell has been way ahead of the curve when it comes to promoting diversity. Since its founding in 1908, artists from all over the world from many cultures have created literature, music, painting and sculptures on its 500-acre campus that includes 32 studios.
The African American writer James Baldwin is just one of many celebrated artists who once took up residence in this quiet, peaceful corner of New Hampshire. The James Baldwin Library on campus honors his legacy.
“It’s something I am really proud of with MacDowell, that we have this in our DNA,” Kaitano says.
For more than 100 years, some 8,800 fellows working in seven disciplines have been honored with 99 Pulitzer Prizes, eight National Medals for the Arts, 33 National Book Awards, 34 MacArthur Fellowships, 122 Rome Prizes, 31 Tony Awards, and 868 Guggenheim Fellowships, according to the MacDowell website.
In July, Alanis Obomsawin, 90, an Abenaki documentary filmmaker who is originally from New Hampshire, was honored with the prestigious Edward MacDowell Medal. She is the 63rd award recipient and the first woman filmmaker and the first Abenaki person to win the medal.
In some ways, Kaitano sees this as an example of where she wants to take MacDowell. But the overriding question she wants to answer is: “How do we go from good to great?”
MacDowell already has a great legacy for its foundation, Kaitano says. Long before the murder of George Floyd in 2020 that sparked the nation’s drive for greater diversity, equity and inclusion, MacDowell had achieved this through the universal medium of art, she says.
Edward MacDowell, a well-known composer, and Marian MacDowell, a pianist, bought a Peterborough farm in 1896 and enjoyed making music there, according to the center’s website. Before Edward died in 1908, he directed Marian to create a community where artists could work with their peers.
“The Peterborough Idea,” as it came to be known, enjoyed great support from former President Grover Cleveland, Andrew Carnegie and J. Piermont Morgan. They created the fund to make Edward MacDowell’s vision a reality. Marian toured the country to further his mission until her death in 1956.
Fast-forward to 2023, and Kaitano wants to do the same thing as Marian MacDowell. Her message is that MacDowell is open to all artists regardless of race, country of origin, physical or intellectual disabilities, gender or sexual orientation. MacDowell exudes global diversity in its artistic community.
“We have had as many as 50 countries represented in our cohort of fellows,” Kaitano says.
MacDowell has always extolled these virtues, but Kaitano believes finding ways to open up the campus to even more artists of different backgrounds will be the key to MacDowell’s future success.
“We are coming out of a global pandemic and racial reckoning,” Kaitano says. “My part of the story is to reach out to artists who may not feel we are for them.”
For MacDowell, the societal push to create greater DEI here in New Hampshire and elsewhere dovetails with what they have been doing for more than 100 years. “It is not a trend or fad. We embrace people from everywhere in a way we always have done. It really is part of our ethos,” Kaitano says.
“Art can play a role in bringing people together. It tells a story of beauty with a universal language,” Kaitano says. “Every culture on earth has visual arts, literature and music. The art of creation itself has always been the heart of our humanity.”
The art that artists will continue to create at MacDowell and elsewhere will continue to improve people’s understanding of one another, and people realize they share more in common than they may realize, Kaitano says.
Kaitano’s journey to become the first African woman to lead MacDowell is as rich and diverse as the path she wants to create for the artist community.
She was born and raised in Zimbabwe and earned a law degree at the London School of Economics along with a master’s degree in international affairs at Columbia University. She has also served on several boards for nonprofit organizations in New York City that further the arts and their power to bring people together.
Kaitano believes her background gives her the vision to see MacDowell’s future direction from many sides. She understands it requires a delicate balance between preserving its heritage and mapping a way forward to ensure its sustainability and viability for another 116 years.
Kaitano is based in MacDowell’s New York City offices, where fundraising is a big part of her role. She lives in New York with her husband, Andy Sabl, their 12-year-old son and her 20-year-old stepson. Occasionally, she will travel to the Peterborough campus to meet with her colleagues and attend important events.
When she does spend time in Peterborough, Kaitano would like to see the campus embody as much diversity as possible given where and how art is created in 2023 and beyond throughout the world.
“We are in a period of change,” Kaitano says. “We need to make sure we are dynamic and that we are meeting the needs of artists everywhere.”
This article is featured in the winter 2023 issue of 603 Diversity.
603 Diversity’s mission is to educate readers of all backgrounds about the exciting accomplishments and cultural contributions of the state’s diverse communities, as well as the challenges faced and support needed by those communities to continue to grow and thrive in the Granite State.
