Jonathan Moscone, most recently the chief producer at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is the next director of the California Arts Council, succeeding Anne Bown-Crawford, who has held the role since 2018.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s officeannounced他的任命3月29日,星期二。

In the new role, which he starts at the end of April, Moscone will be the top arts official in the country’s most populous state, reporting to the governor and overseeing an annual budget of about $25 million to $30 million;last year’s one-time infusionsof $60 million to the California Creative Corps and $40 million to youth arts initiatives; and an additional $30 million, which Newsom’s office proposed in January, that would go to the state’s 14 Cultural Districts.

“我是sad to leave YBCA but ready to take something on statewide that would impact as many people as possible,” Moscone, 57, told The Chronicle on Thursday, March 31, via phone from New Jersey, where he is officiating a nephew’s wedding. “The job, as I see it, is to rain money across the state as efficiently and equitably as possible.

“Those are hard things to reconcile,” he continued. “Equity requires time, but we have to get the money out the door. I’m really intrigued by this complicated scenario.”

Julie Baker, executive director of advocacy organization Californians for the Arts, said they “are thrilled with the appointment.”

“He brings experience, passion, political savvy and a practice deeply rooted in equity that will benefit artists, culture bearers and arts workers across California,” she added.

Before joining YBCA in 2015, Moscone served as artistic director of California Shakespeare Theater for 15 years, broadening the company’s work beyond the Shakespeare canon and beginning an investment in diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

His departure from YBCA follows that of CEO Deborah Cullinan, whoannouncedin January that she was leaving to become Stanford University’s first full-time vice president for the arts.

The son of former San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, Moscone has deep civic and artistic connections throughout the Bay Area and beyond. He sees a first major challenge as helping the state’s arts organizations recover from the pandemic.

“I believe arts organizations and artists know what to do; our job is to make sure they have the resources to do it. I don’t need anyone to prove anything to me,” he said. In his first days on the job, he intends to “listen, do and then listen more deeply.”

The current staff size at the CAC is about 20, with room to hire more, he said, as the agency rebounds from the pandemic. “我想要的ore practitioners — people who know how to make the work happen, who’ve worked in arts organizations — here at CAC. No one knows better than practitioners how to support practitioners.”

Moscone, 57, intends to stay in San Francisco with his husband, dog and cat and commute to Sacramento.