CHESTERTOWN — John Schratwieser is stepping down after nine years as executive director of Kent Cultural Alliance and “turning over the reins” to artist, curator and community organizer Robert Blackson.
KCA’s board of directors announced the change in leadership in a May 26 news release.
Deputy Director Hester Sachse, who has worked with KCA since October 2021, will lead the transition. She manages all organizational operations as well as KCA’s grant making and Chestertown’s Arts & Entertainment District.
Schratwieser has accepted the position as director of advancement and communications for the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine, on Mount Desert Island.
Schratwieser succeeded Leslie Prince Raimond as executive director of what was then known as the Kent County Arts Council in July 2017.
He rebranded the organization as Kent Cultural Alliance in 2020; directed and completed, debt free, a major capital campaign to restore an endangered historic building on Spring Avenue in downtown Chestertown; and launched a visiting artist residency program.
In addition he directed KCA’s regular programming as Kent’s designated county arts council, including making grants of more than $100,000 a year to artists, arts organizations and community groups across the county.
Schratwieser also created KCA’s first endowment, the Patricia Clark Waring Fund for Arts Education.
Schratwieser more than doubled KCA’s operating budget and created supportive and lasting relationships with Kent County Public Schools and many other county-based nonprofits.
Blackson is not a stranger to Kent County.
He joined the Washington College staff in early 2025 as director and curator of the Kohl Gallery at the Gibson Center for the Arts.
He said he is “honored to creatively serve the people of Kent County” as the next director of Kent Cultural Alliance.
“This historic site is more than a cultural hub for the county, it symbolizes an expansive commitment of artistic service for all,” Blackson said in a statement. “I am deeply grateful to KCA’s board and leadership for collaboratively creating a local legacy of care that is ambitiously poised for continuing growth.”
Blackson’s curatorial initiatives include Symphony for a Broken Orchestra, Funeral for a Home, 100 People Listening: A Shared Decade, 2021-2031, Sail Through This to That, Philadelphia Doll Museum Forward with Barbara Whiteman, and reForm with Pepón Osorio and the Fairhill community.
He is a curatorial advisor of ArtPhilly.
From 2011 to 2021, Blackson was the founding director of Temple Contemporary at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture.
Prior to moving to Philadelphia from the U.K. in 2011, Blackson was curator of BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle/Gateshead and curator of public programs at Nottingham Contemporary.
He is an Andy Warhol Curatorial Fellow and author of numerous publications.
Blackson’s curatorial purpose focuses on the ways in which programming of, by and for a community leads to targeted impact.
Over the past 10 years, his leadership has illustrated a shift in the way artistic programs can be crafted to build a healthy mutuality of poetic and practical social purpose.
Blackson has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design and a master’s degree in curatorial studies from Bard College.
KCA board President Margaret Footner said when Schratwieser told the board of his plans to move to Maine, many were in tears.
“He means so much to this community as a friend and cultural leader,” said Footner, co-founder and former director of the Creative Alliance in Baltimore.
She said Schratwieser “envisioned a new Kent Cultural Alliance and tirelessly led KCA through its first capital campaign, major building acquisition and renovation. He developed groundbreaking programs and organized a strategic planning process to collaboratively craft our vision for the future.”
Footner also said Blackson “is the perfect creative leader to deepen and expand our projects with artists and Kent County’s diverse cultural communities to support and promote their work.”
Over the last year, KCA’s board of directors has worked to create a new strategic plan aimed at ensuring that the organization continues to lead the arts and culture sector in Kent County through service, creativity and inclusion, and focuses on five key objectives to drive a stronger sector for the county and to keep its own programming and services effective and sustainable.
In the fall, KCA and new director Blackson will be rolling out a campaign of information around the new strategic plan as it also launches its fiscal year 2027 grant making and the second part of the HISTORY-themed residency [For America’s 250th anniversary] with three new artists from the mid-Atlantic region.
