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June 17, 2012

Hoskins no longer listed as EKU Arts Center director

By Bill Robinson Register Editor

RICHMOND —  

Debra Hoskins, the director who guided Eastern Kentucky University’s Center for the Arts through its inaugural season, appears to have left the position.
On Saturday, the staff listing on www.ekucenter.com did not include her name or title, only the support staff.
Asked Friday morning whether reports of Hoskins’ resignation were true, EKU spokesperson Marc Whitt would neither confirm nor deny her departure but said he expected a statement on status would be released by early evening.
However, by 7:30 p.m. Friday, no statement was released and none was available as late as mid-afternoon Saturday.
The center closed its first season on June 5 with a concert by tribute groups for the Coasters, the Drifters and the Platters. An announcement of the second season’s line-up was expected soon. Only a concert by world-renown cellist Yo Yo Ma on March 20 had been previously announced for the upcoming season.
Hoskins was appointed the center’s director in late January 2011. The center’s original director, Katherine Eckstrand, announced in December 2010 that she would be leaving the next month after less than 14 months on the job.
Before taking the helm at the EKU Center, Hoskins had worked for 20 years at Centre College’s Norton Center for the Arts, rising to assistant director. The Garrard County resident earned two degrees from EKU.
The EKU Center opened Sept. 9 with a black-tie, invitation-only event featuring the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra. The first public performance was Sept. 24 by country music star Wynonna Judd, a Kentucky native who spent part of her childhood in Madison County while her mother was a EKU student.
On Saturday night, the annual Pattie A. Clay Medical Center Auxiliary’s ball took place at the center. The event was one that Hoskins had said early-on she hoped the facility could host. In mid-September, the center hosted the Richmond Area Arts Council’s annual Arts Gala.
Other highlights of the center’s first season included three Broadway shows, “The Wizard of Oz,” Walt Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and Monty Python’s “Spamalot.” There also were performances by Willie Nelson, Peter Frampton, Garrison Keillor, Wynton Marsalis, Aretha Franklin, Jerry Seinfeld, the Moscow Festival Ballet, the Munich Symphony and others.
Hoskins led EKU’s unsuccessful bid to host a 2012 presidential or vice presidential debate. Her former employer, which hosted the 2000 vice presidential debate, landed the same event this year.
In April, the center was the site for an outdoor exhibit of a traveling replica of the Vietnam War Memorial.
In June 2011, the EKU Board of Regents included $443,600 in the university’s 2011-12 budget to cover a potential operating deficit for the center. At the June 2012 regents’ meeting, school officials said final accounting figures for the center’s first season were not yet available.
Bill Robinson can be reached at brobinson@richmondregister.com or at 624-6622.

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