Rockland Center for the Arts (RoCA) has named Daly Flanagan as its new Executive Director.
Ms. Flanagan is excited to re-institute community collaborative partnerships to present programs that best meet the needs of our community. She has already reinstituted the music series at RoCA. She is one of the founding members for Rockland Culture and is a board member of Rockland21C Collaborative for children and youth. She is committed to the process of experiencing, responding to, creating, and exhibiting art.
RoCA, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, was founded by such luminaries as Helen Hayes, Aaron Copeland, Henry Varnum Poor, Burgess Meredith.
Ms. Flanagan succeeds Julianne Ramos, who retired in 2016. She has been the Acting Executive Director in the interim. Flanagan has been the School Director since 2000. She received her Bachelor’s Degree of Fine Art in Painting and Printmaking from San Diego State University in CA and her Masters in Arts Administration in Visual Arts from Bank Street College of Education/Parsons School of Design in NY.
Prior to coming to RoCA Ms. Flanagan worked for The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles as its Museum Educator. She moved to NY in 1993 and was the Coordinator of School and Family Programs for the Museum of Art and Design (formerly The American Craft Museum). She then worked as Director at the Elsa Mott Ives Gallery and the Craft Students League in NY. She is also an Adjunct Faculty Member at St. Thomas Aquinas College.
As the school director, Ms. Flanagan was responsible for implementing RoCA’s exhibition based outreach school tours and workshops. She instituted the Rockland Visual Arts Education Conference in conjunction with BOCES and Rockland County Public School Art teachers, giving teachers in the surrounding counties new approaches to art with students. Her passion continues to be broadening access to the arts for children in East Ramapo. In 2002, she was awarded the Rockland County Forty Under Forty Award and in 2012 she was honored with the Rockland County Executive Arts Award for Art Educator.
