Paula Owen retires, leaving a legacy of change at Southwest School of Art

Paula Owen, Southwest School of Art president, will be retiring on Thursday after 26 years with the art institution.On Thursday, Paula Berg Owen will retire as president and CEO of the Southwest School of Art, ending her 26-year tenure. Her mantra throughout has been, “If you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevance even less.”The school began in 1965 as the Southwest Craft Center, located in La Villita.

As a crossroads of the Mediterranean, Malta regularly saw travelers from many different countries, she said. “It was a formative experience,” Owen said. She stayed for 11 years to direct the organization that is now the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. “That’s where I got my first taste of leading an organization, and all the elements and knowledge that was required,” Owen said.Sign up to receive The Daily Reach every morning.Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

The school’s founding trustees, including Edith McAllister, Margaret Pace Wilson, Helen Marie Hendrie, and Maggie Block, resisted the changes Owen proposed. “I admired them completely, but they really didn’t want me to add my two cents,” she said. “I could see it all but I didn’t know how to convince them.”

Balancing the interests of those who want things to stay the same and those who see how change would improve the school has remained the challenge, she said.. One longtime faculty member retired rather than accept what she considered an insulting job offer with the university, and other staff and faculty have complained privately about job offers that they felt devalued their experience.

Source: News Formal (newsformal.com)

*UTSA’s acquisition of the Southwest School of Art

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