Meet Ix Art Park’s full-time staff: Director of programming, Ewa Harr. Director of curation, Ewa Harr. Director of operations, Ewa Harr. Executive director, Ewa Harr.
Last year, each of those roles was separate, but now it’s a team of one. A financial deficit has forced the Ix Art Park Foundation to make some hard cuts. Put simply, the park has been spending more money than it’s taking in, Susan Krischel, Ix Art Park Foundation board president, announced last September.
“Ix Art Park is re-evaluating our current nonprofit business model,” Krischel wrote in the foundation’s 2023 Impact Report. “We want to ensure that we can provide a creative space that lifts our community for years to come. To accomplish this, we will dedicate 2024 to reexamining who we are as an organization and how we can best serve our community in a financially responsible manner.”
Most of the foundation’s income comes from events that are hosted at the park. That was 35 percent of overall revenue in 2023, according to the Impact Report. Twenty-four percent came from visitors to the Looking Glass, the park’s immersive museum installation; 20 percent came from donations; 11 percent from renting out the space; and 10 percent from camps and workshops.
Though locals generally think of Ix Art Park as synonymous with the 17-acre parcel, owned by developer Ludwig Kuttner, there are important nuances.
“I know there’s a lot of confusion about the whole structure in our community,” Harr says. “But the property between Elliott and Monticello is Ix, and that’s privately owned property. The Ix Art Park Foundation is a nonprofit that rents the property just like everybody else. Just like Three Notch’d or Brazos or Sake, we’re a tenant.”
Ix Art Park transitioned to nonprofit status in September of 2019, and opened The Looking Glass in January of 2020. Like many new and established organizations, Ix had to make radical changes while navigating the landscape of the pandemic.
“I think things would have looked a lot different for us financially had the museum not had to be closed for over a year because of the pandemic,” Harr says. “Then some of those emergency funds, some of those things that were allowing us to keep our staff on during COVID ended.”
The park has had to move to a more financially conservative model because of the gap in funding, according to Harr. “The hardest part of it was a reduction in staff. The people who really built up a lot of the magic that’s here are no longer here because of that funding gap.”
The programs we won’t see in 2024 are a lot of the free artmaking projects, says Harr. Summer camps and summer movie nights will also be missing. The Thursday night sunset market remains undecided.
Harr talks about these events as frozen, not eliminated. Her goal is one of recovery. She says her vision for the future is to bring back those community-oriented programs. “Bring back and develop and grow both educational and community programming, for sure,” Harr says. “We just can’t do it right now.”
Things we definitely will see in 2024 include the Saturday morning farmers’ market, which the 2022 Impact Report called the “crown jewel” of Ix Art Park, attracting between 2,000 and 3,000 people to an average market. Ix’s four signature events, the Charlottesville Arts Festival, Fae Festival, Soul of Cville, and Fantasy Festival will be sticking around too. Harr also intends to engage in as many partnerships and venue rentals as possible.
The park’s mission, as Harr sees it, is to be a space for play in Charlottesville. Last year, over 200,000 people came to play at Ix by attending some kind of programming at the park, according to the 2023 Impact Report. Harr is committed to maintaining what the park has meant for people.
“It’s such a unique place and that’s what it’s here for,” Harr says. “It’s a place to spark creativity, a place where people can come and set their imagination free.”
Important to that mission is inviting visitors to make art themselves. In 2024, Harr is planning to add more artist-led workshops. At the end of The Looking Glass tour a lounge invites visitors to make something of their own.
Despite the funding issue, Harr says the park remains active. Its events, sculpture garden and murals, children’s playground, and standing as a 24/7 art haven in the city isn’t going anywhere.
In fact, the next event is right around the corner. Ix will host a Valentine’s Day dance in partnership with Chinchilla Café on February 9. “It is going to be several fantastic DJs and the theme is going to be, ‘dress filthy, dress gorgeous,’” Harr says. Tickets are $10 presale and $15 at the door.