The Alabama Contemporary Art Center in downtown Mobile has restructured its staff leadership, elevating Elizabet Elliott to executive director as the nonprofit builds on a year of rapid membership growth and new grant funding. The change took effect Jan. 1 and reshapes several roles across the organization. Under the new structure, Elliott now serves as executive director and curator, overseeing an expanded leadership team that includes Angie Yankle as director of finance and operations, Allison Skoda as curator of programs, Amanda Solley as curator of education, and Amber Guy as visitor services coordinator. Development responsibilities, previously concentrated with one staff member, will now be shared across the group.
Leadership Transition and Organizational Growth
Elliott said the reshuffle grew out of changing priorities among the center’s leadership. Solley, who previously held the executive director role, returned from maternity leave last year wanting to focus her energy on education programming, while Elliott, who had been serving as director of exhibitions and programs, agreed to step into the top position. The organization launched an internal audit after a year in which its membership grew by an estimated 800 percent, according to Elliott. The center also landed a $100,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation in 2019, one of several new resources it hopes to build on going forward.
Elliott said she’s confident in the team now in place at the center. “We have such a great staff right now,” she said. “I’m really lucky to have these people to work with because everyone is really committed to what we’re doing.” Elliott joined the Alabama Contemporary Art Center in November 2018 after roughly five years at the Mobile Museum of Art, where she held positions including curator of adult education and curator of programs, along with independent contract work. Her background in museum education and exhibition planning informs a leadership approach that emphasizes community accessibility alongside artistic excellence.
The membership surge reflects a broader trend of increasing engagement with contemporary arts in Mobile. The center’s programming has shifted toward more accessible, community-responsive exhibitions and events, including free admission days, artist talks in partnership with local universities, and family-oriented workshops. This approach has drawn audiences who might not traditionally visit contemporary art spaces, including younger demographics and families from neighborhoods surrounding the downtown core.
Midtown Mobile Theater Project Advances
Elsewhere in Mobile’s arts community, plans are moving forward for a new mid-sized theater development on the city’s west Midtown side that could reshape the cultural landscape of the corridor. The project, which has been in discussion for several years, gained momentum in 2023 with the identification of a potential site and preliminary funding commitments from local foundations and the city’s economic development apparatus. The proposed venue would seat approximately 500 patrons, filling a gap between the Saenger Theatre’s 1,900-seat capacity and the smaller black-box spaces currently available to local theater companies and touring acts.
The theater project aligns with the city’s broader Midtown revitalization strategy, which has targeted the corridor between downtown and Spring Hill Avenue for mixed-use development, streetscape improvements, and cultural anchoring institutions. Mobile’s theater community, which includes Theatre 98, Mobile Theatre Guild, and the Joe Jefferson Players, has long advocated for a dedicated mid-sized venue that could accommodate productions too large for community theater spaces but not suited for the Saenger’s scale. The project’s proponents argue that such a venue would also attract regional touring acts that currently bypass Mobile due to the lack of appropriately sized houses.
Funding Model and Community Impact
The theater development would likely operate under a public-private partnership model, with the city contributing land or infrastructure support while a nonprofit operating entity manages programming and day-to-day operations. Similar models have succeeded in comparable Gulf Coast cities, including the Saenger Theatre’s own restoration in Pensacola and the Temple Theatre renovation in Meridian, Mississippi. Proponents estimate the venue could generate $3-5 million in annual economic activity through ticket sales, restaurant traffic, and hotel stays for visiting performers and audiences.
For the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, the leadership transition positions the organization to play a more active role in the Midtown cultural corridor. Elliott has expressed interest in collaborative programming with the proposed theater, including visual arts exhibitions tied to theatrical productions, artist talks, and educational workshops that leverage both venues. The center’s 800 percent membership growth — from approximately 300 members to over 2,700 in a single year — suggests a growing appetite for contemporary arts programming in Mobile that a mid-sized theater could help satisfy.
Andy Warhol Foundation Grant and Programmatic Expansion
The $100,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, awarded in 2019, represented a significant milestone for the center. The foundation’s granting program is highly competitive, focusing on organizations that support innovative contemporary art and curatorial practice. The funding has supported the center’s exhibition program, which in recent years has featured artists working at the intersection of Gulf Coast ecology, industrial heritage, and cultural memory. Notable exhibitions have included survey shows of artists from the African diaspora with Gulf South connections and installations addressing coastal erosion and climate adaptation.
Under Elliott’s curatorial direction, the center has emphasized programming that reflects Mobile’s specific cultural and environmental context rather than importing exhibitions wholesale from larger institutions. This place-based approach has resonated with local audiences and funders alike. The center’s education programs, now under Solley’s dedicated leadership, have expanded to include partnerships with Mobile County Public Schools, the Mobile Public Library system, and after-school programs in underserved neighborhoods.
The education expansion includes a new teen council program that gives high school students curatorial agency in developing youth-oriented exhibitions and events. The program, modeled on successful initiatives at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, aims to cultivate the next generation of arts leaders and audiences in Mobile. Early participants have reported increased confidence in public speaking, project management, and creative collaboration — skills that transfer well beyond the arts sector.
Mobile’s Evolving Arts Ecosystem
Mobile’s arts infrastructure has undergone significant transformation over the past decade. The restoration of the Saenger Theatre, completed in 2002 after a $6 million capital campaign, anchored downtown’s cultural revival. The Alabama Contemporary Art Center, originally founded as the Centre for the Living Arts in 1999, rebranded in 2015 to sharpen its focus on contemporary practice. The Mobile Museum of Art in Langan Park underwent a $5.5 million expansion completed in 2002. More recently, the GulfQuest National Maritime Museum opened in 2015 on the downtown waterfront, adding a science and history dimension to the city’s museum cluster.
The Midtown theater project represents the next layer in this evolution. By situating a cultural venue in a corridor that has historically been more commercial than cultural, the project could catalyze the kind of organic revitalization that follows arts-led development in cities nationwide. The presence of Spring Hill College, the University of South Alabama’s Mitchell College of Business, and numerous medical facilities along the corridor provides a built-in audience base of students, faculty, and healthcare workers who might patronize evening and weekend performances.
Challenges and Next Steps
Despite the momentum, significant hurdles remain. Capital costs for a new 500-seat theater with modern technical capabilities typically range from $15-25 million, depending on site conditions and design aspirations. Fundraising in a midsize market like Mobile requires broad coalition-building across corporate, philanthropic, and public sectors. The project’s steering committee has engaged architectural consultants to develop preliminary renderings and cost estimates, with a goal of launching a public capital campaign in 2024.
Operational sustainability poses another challenge. Mid-sized theaters across the country have struggled to balance artistic risk-taking with the box-office demands of keeping the lights on. Successful models often depend on a diverse programming mix — presenting series, rental income from community groups, educational partnerships, and a robust donor base. The Alabama Contemporary Art Center’s experience growing its membership base 800 percent in a year demonstrates that Mobile audiences will support institutions that offer relevant, accessible programming. Whether that translates to sustained theater attendance remains an open question the project’s backers will need to answer.
Zoning and infrastructure considerations also factor into the project timeline. The proposed site along the Spring Hill Avenue corridor may require rezoning or conditional use permits, and the city’s traffic engineering department will need to assess parking and access impacts. The project team has begun preliminary conversations with the Mobile City Council and the Planning Commission to identify potential regulatory hurdles early in the process.
Looking Forward
For Elliott and the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, the leadership restructuring and the Midtown theater project represent parallel tracks of institutional growth. The center’s expanded curatorial team allows for more ambitious exhibition scheduling, while the theater project — if realized — would create new opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration. Mobile’s arts leaders have increasingly embraced a collective-impact mindset, recognizing that no single institution can carry the cultural weight of a growing city alone. The coming years will test whether that collaborative spirit can translate into the bricks-and-mortar reality of a new Midtown theater and the sustained organizational health of the institutions that would call it home.
The center’s 2024 exhibition calendar, already in development under Elliott’s direction, includes a major survey of contemporary Gulf South ceramic artists, a site-specific installation addressing Mobile’s historic waterways, and a collaborative project with the proposed theater’s design team that would invite visual artists to respond to architectural renderings. These programs signal an organization thinking beyond its walls and positioning itself as a catalyst for the cultural corridor’s evolution. Whether the theater materializes on schedule or faces the delays common to capital projects of this scale, the Alabama Contemporary Art Center has structured itself to be a durable anchor in Mobile’s creative ecosystem for years to come.