Shemer Art Center & Museum Association Hires Executive Director!

Jocelyn Hanson joined the Shemer Art Center & Museum Association on September 1, 2010.  Prior to taking this position, she served for 11 years as the Director of Arts Education for the City of Phoenix Office of Cultural Affairs.  In that role, she was responsible for administering the Arts Education Department including a grants program and the valley’s Arts & Sciences in Education Network.  She founded artSpace, an afterschool arts learning partnership between the Phoenix Office of Cultural Affairs and the Arizona Department of Education in collaboration with ASU Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts and the Arizona State Library.

Before joining the City of Phoenix Office of Cultural Affairs, Jocelyn served as the Deputy Director of the South Dakota Arts Council (1995-1998), in Pierre, South Dakota and owned and operated Gallery 306, a contemporary art gallery in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (1981-1995).  She represented several local and regional artists and coordinated many corporate and private art collections.

Throughout her 30-year career in arts administration, Jocelyn has been a passionate leader and advocate for arts and culture, arts education, and the role of the arts in community development. In South Dakota, Jocelyn was appointed by South Dakota’s governor to two terms as a Councilmember of the South Dakota Arts Council.  She served on numerous boards including the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, the South Dakota Symphony, the Sioux Empire Arts Council, the Civic Fine Arts Center, and Northern Plains Tribal Art Show.  In 1989, Jocelyn chaired the South Dakota Centennial Folk Arts Project for Governor George S. Mickelson.

In Arizona, Hanson served as the president of the Arizona Alliance for Arts Education.  In 2005 the Office of Cultural Affairs’ Education Department received the Partner of the Year award from the Katherine K. Herberger College of Fine Arts.  That same year, she was honored by the Arizona School-Age Coalition with a Governor’s Award of Excellence as Best Public Official.  In 2008, Jocelyn received a City of Phoenix Employee Excellence Award for raising over $4 million dollars to develop an afterschool arts learning initiative that established a new model of educational experience designed to teach thinking using the arts integrated with academic knowledge.  Under her leadership, the Office of Cultural Affair’s Education Department was nominated twice for a Governor’s Arts Award.  Jocelyn earned a B.A. degree in Education with a minor in Art History from Augustana College, Sioux Falls, SD.

Ben Davis, President