SPACE is proud to announce the hires of Lia Wilson as Engagement Manager and Geneviève Beaudoin as Communications Coordinator in two new positions for the organization.
“These new hires will help sustain the connection between artists and audiences,” said Executive Director Kelsey Halliday Johnson. “Both Lia and Geneviève are significant members of Portland’s contemporary creative community and bring such exciting expertise and energy to SPACE.”
In working to best address the needs of the organization in a changing Portland, SPACE has restructured its staff to create two new roles, a dedicated part-time communications position, and a full-time Engagement Manager position. The Communications Coordinator position will oversee social media, grassroots marketing, and our monthly calendar. The Engagement Manager will steward SPACE’s membership communications, cultivate volunteers, and oversee engagement for programs through community partnerships and outreach communications.
Beaudoin temporarily joined the staff ahead of this year’s SPACE Oddity fundraiser as Communications Coordinator and will resume her position after returning from a music tour with her band Dead Gowns in the first week of July. Wilson’s full-time role as the new Engagement Manager begins later this week.
Lia Wilson is an arts writer and arts administrator. A Chicago native, she moved to Maine in 2015 to plant roots after years living in Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Santa Fe. Wilson has a background managing academic departments in art schools, first for California College of the Arts’ Architecture Division and later for Pratt Institute’s Art and Design Education Department. More recently she was the Communications Manager at the Portland Museum of Art during the institution’s Your Museum, Reimagined initiative, a multi-year revamp project dedicated to expanding access to the museum’s campus and collection. Wilson’s writing practice is focused on elevating contemporary artists that examine the complexities of identity, visibility, and representation. Her research interests include the expanded field of Outsider Art and Self-Taught Art and the evolution of critical discourse surrounding artists with mental illnesses. She has a MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts and a BFA in Printmaking from College of Santa Fe. She currently lives in Portland with her partner and young son.
Geneviève (GV) Beaudoin is a musician, writer, music curator, and arts administrator. Raised in a bilingual household in Maine, she went on to study at New York University and The Conservatory van Amsterdam. After several years working in theater in New York, she returned to Portland in 2016 where she quickly found herself among audiences at SPACE (… the rest is history). Driven by the Didion belief that “we tell ourselves stories in order to live,” her freelance career has varied from curating music series and pop-up performances to magazine writing and developing new media in the health and sciences. With her band, Dead Gowns, GV released the 2018 EP, new spine, and regularly tours around the northeast. A recent pet owner, she aspires to be like the greats – a friend to all dogs.
