East End Arts’ new executive director says the organization is on the upswing. She wants to keep it that way.

East End Arts, the Riverhead-based arts nonprofit, has a new executive director. 

Wendy Weiss, previously the organization’s creative director, was promoted to the top job on June 17. Weiss, 45, of Bridgehampton, got involved with East End Arts in March 2020 as a board member and was later hired to oversee the organization’s major arts exhibitions.

Weiss is most excited to help grow the organization and make it more sustainable, she said in an interview at her office above the organization’s main gallery on East Main Street in Riverhead Tuesday. The organization is already on an upswing, she said, and she wants to continue that momentum.

“I really want us to continue to make our mark as this regional arts organization, which is something that differentiates us from all of the other art centers that are around here on the East End,” Weiss said. “We really are encompassing both the north and the south forks — or uniting them, as I like to say — and creating those opportunities and connections there.”

She has ideas about expanding and refining the organization’s existing programming. One of them is adding more of the organization’s satellite art galleries across the East End and Suffolk County. 

“It gives us the opportunity to rotate member artwork and have it on display in different places across the community,” she said. “And it’s become a really powerful program because it supports that mission of being regional and being out in all of the parts of the community and meeting new people. And it helps our members be able to get their artwork out there.”

Another priority is growing the organization’s All Abilities arts and music program, which works primarily with people with developmental disabilities and the organizations that serve them. 

“It’s really important to the development and the socialization of that population to have enrichment activities that are social,” Weiss said.

“We feel really good that we’re providing a service that is lacking out here,” Weiss said.

She also wants the organization to continue to grow its community performance program. The program allows groups of musicians, many of them East End Arts students, to perform at festivals and special events on the East End, including downtown Riverhead’s Alive on 25 street festival and the East End Arts Mosaic Festival.

Fundraising is also a priority, as it is for any nonprofit, she said. The organization is on the upswing and received its first six-figure donation this past winter.

A big new attraction is also set to pop up in the organization’s backyard — literally. Riverhead Town, which owns the East End Arts property, is looking to build an amphitheater on the organization’s grounds. That project and the development of the town square next door to the East End Arts campus, will reorient several buildings on the campus and make it more resistant to flooding, according to town officials.

There are conversations among town officials about who would manage the amphitheater, and East End Arts is a contender. “I would love to manage it,” Weiss said. “I think it’s important for it to remain as it’s being designed, as a community space.” 

“East End Arts has been here for a long time and it seems like a good time… because as East End Arts is on this great trajectory, so is this area,” Weiss said, referring to downtown Riverhead. 

Weiss succeeds Diane Burke, who was the organization’s executive director since 2019. Burke left the executive director role to work for Kinexion, a nonprofit that provides enrichment activities for developmentally disabled people. 

Weiss, who considers herself a creative — but not necessarily artistic — person, grew up in Bridgehampton and graduated from Mercy High School in Riverhead. She has a marketing degree from Johnson & Wales University. She most recently worked throughout the Boston area in administrative roles in the medical industry, according to her LinkedIn. 

Weiss left the Boston area to come back to Long Island in 2019 after her father died to be closer to her mother, she said. Soon after she reconnected with a family friend involved in East End Arts who got her involved with the organization; in March 2020, Weiss joined its board. 

After pandemic restrictions on in-person work started to lift, she began having to commute to Boston, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut for work. “I kind of got spoiled being home for a while; I [thought] I might want to consider making a change that’s more local,” she said. “I was in a virtual EEA board meeting, and Diane mentioned that she had figured out in the budget how to bring on somebody part-time for membership and gallery [coordination].”

Weiss expressed her interest in the job and was hired in March 2021. The job evolved into the full-time creative director position, in which she worked closely with Burke. When Burke announced she was leaving, she wanted Weiss as her successor, Weiss said. 

Weiss credits Burke for making the organization healthy and putting it on a path to success that Weiss hopes to continue.

“Wendy has significantly engaged the professional working artist community on the East End,” East End Arts board president John McLane said in a news release announcing Weiss’ appointment. “We cannot be more optimistic about the opportunities in front of East End Arts in the next several years.”