The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) has recruited Lili Chopra to join the organization as its new executive director for cultural programs, grants and services. She is slated to become part of an unusual dual-leadership team, in which she will share authority with Diego S. Segalini, currently LMCC’s interim executive director, who will fill the newly created position of executive director for finance and administration.
Ms. Chopra comes to LMCC from the French Institute Alliance Française, where she has served as artistic director since 2006, and founded the acclaimed Crossing the Line arts and performance festival. She also helped to found the highly regarded Tilt Kids Festival, which brings the work of professional artists to a young audience.
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Lili Chopra will take over in April as the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s executive director for cultural programs, grants and services.
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Mr. Segalini has been with LMCC for more than a decade, most recently overseeing its financial operations, as well as the organization’s government and board relations.
Among Ms. Chopra’s primary responsibilities will be producing LMCC’s signature annual event, the River to River Festival, the free summer arts celebration that presents a week-plus of live dance, music, theater and visual arts, spread across scores of Lower Manhattan venues, to a total audience of tens of thousands of spectators.
She will also help lead the final phase of the ongoing campaign to renovate and expand LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island, a facility that will house over 30,000 square feet of artist studios, a media lab, and rehearsal and presentation spaces. A comprehensive reimagining of studio residency and gallery spaces, currently visited by over 60,000 people per year, the renovated and expanded center is envisaged as a year-round cultural destination for local residents and tourists that will function as an incubator for new work and a nexus of public exchange.
Founded in 1973 to ‘add some humanity’ to the nascent Downtown community after the completion of the World Trade Center, LMCC began with lunchtime concerts and evening performances on the plaza between the Twin Towers. Today, the not-for-profit organization fulfills its greatly expanded mission by offering grants and residencies to artists living in New York City, and organizing a range of cultural programming that includes performances, exhibitions, studio visits, and readings across Lower Manhattan.