Mara Manus is leaving her role as CEO of Pioneer Works, the Brooklyn arts and science-focused non-profit space founded by artist Dustin Yellin. That wraps up a brief tenure that began in 2023 and marked a swift period of transformation for the institution.
Gabriel Florenz, a co-founder of Pioneer Works who has served as artistic director since it opened in 2012, will move into an expanded role as executive director.
In an interview with ARTnews, Florenz said that Manus met the organization’s fundraising objectives several months earlier than their original two-year goal and set the founders up to continue on their artist-academic-led mission. Under Manus’s direction, the organization finalized the third phase of a $30 million capital campaign, which was completed in early 2025.
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“The plan was for Mara to come in build the infrastructure and finish the campaign,” Florenz told ARTnews in an interview. “We don’t want to be a single point institution, we like collectivity, we want to be an artist-scientist-led organization. She helped us get through a lot of intense institutional frameworks that we built in a short amount of time.”
Florenz’s new role, which took effect in March, will expand to fundraising efforts and donor development. Stephanie Hermshot, who has helped run Pioneer Works’s capital projects since 2021 was appointed as Chief Operating Office in April.
The hiring of Manus in September 2023 was big news at the time, meriting a story in the New York Times. She was the highest-profile professional to come to Pioneer Works, and the first to have the title of CEO. Manus came to Pioneer Works from the New York State Council on the Arts, where she spent seven years as executive director overseeing $100 million in funding and supporting 3,000 organizations. Before that, she led New York’s prestigious Public Theater and worked at the Ford Foundation.
In March, Manus announced her departure on LinkedIn, writing that her accomplishments included “establishing a robust internal Finance department, rebuilding our Development team and implementing a comprehensive CRM system” as well as deepening engagement with local schools and community. “All of this presents a natural transition point for leadership progression,” she wrote.
Manus’s exit comes a month after the art center held a gathering of community members and government officials, including NYC Cultural Affairs Commissioner Laurie Cumbo, to mark the completion of a $12 million renovation to enhance accessibility—including adding an elevator for ADA access—and expand programming. Pioneer Works reportedly gets 50,000 visitors annually and offers 90 percent of its programming to the public free-of-charge.
Pioneer Works, which has a full-time staff of 43 people and had a $9.1 million operating budget last year—just under its level in 2023—launched its first capital campaign in 2019 before the start of Covid. The $30 million campaign had as its first priority the purchase of its 1866 building, which then made the nonprofit eligible to receive about $5 million in city and state funding. Over the past three-plus years, the arts center has undergone a multi-stage renovation to bring its 1866 building up to code and add amenities. It closed from December 2021 to August 2022 and again from early 2024 to Sept 2024 to accomplish those changes. The roof was replaced, an HVAC system was installed, and bathrooms were added. What remains to be completed is a planned rooftop observatory.
Manus is the sixth person to be in an executive-level position at the organization since it opened in 2012. Throughout the decade that Pioneer Works has been open, the title has changed a number of times.
When Pioneer Works first opened, the co-director was Katie Cooper, who had been Yellin’s studio manager for four years. (Yellin’s studio is next door to Pioneer Works.) Cooper left in late 2013. In 2013, Pioneer Works hired Ella Marder, who’d been in the art department of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, for the new role of artistic and managing director. Marder stayed in that role until late 2015. She was replaced by an executive with more experience in the nonprofit world, Marcia Santoni, who had spent seven years as Deputy Director of Pathways National, a housing initiative. Santoni’s title was managing director and COO. Santoni left in 2019, and was replaced Eric Shiner, former director of the Andy Warhol Museum, who became Pioneer Works’ first-ever executive director.
Shiner left in spring of 2021, and was replaced by Maxine Dalio. Unlike all the directors since Cooper, Dalio was a Pioneer Works veteran. She’d started at Pioneer Works in fall 2017 working on advancement and growth, coming there after a three-year stint in development at the Park Avenue Armory; she rose to external affairs, then, in December 2020, to deputy director, before replacing Shiner as executive director. Dalio left in late 2022, after only a little over a year and a half in the top position. After a brief stint under interim director Jill Eisenhard, Manus took the reins in October 2023.
When Manus was hired, she told the Times she would work closely with Becca Keating, the newly-appointed director of advancement (Keating remains at Pioneer Works.) Manus came in at a time of recovery; the organization hadn’t yet seen its annual revenue, including income made from grants and exhibitions and other programs, bounce back to its pre-Covid level of the $14.3 million it reported in 2019. In 2023, it reported revenue of $13.4 million.
Gabriel Florenz, who is Yellin’s second cousin as been artistic director since Pioneer Works opened and now takes the reins from Manus. When Manus’s appointment was announced in 2023, Florenz told the Times her hire brought a sense of stability: “I’ve always really thought, how do you make a structure that’s the most orderly possible, so the most disorder can happen within it? The most creative chaos and energy — that beautiful kind of freedom.” With confidence in their new chief executive, he said, “we can fly now.”