Ellen Naomi Zisholtz is Founder, President, and CEO of the Center for Creative Partnerships. She is also a visual artist whose work and leadership have advanced community development, arts and humanities, and social justice for more than five decades.

 

She currently serves as Project Director for the preservation of the Center’s All Star Bowling Lanes, listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its central role in the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre. Under her leadership, the project has secured four National Park Service grants totaling $2.75 million. The restored marquee was lit for the first time by Congressman James Clyburn and Orangeburg Mayor Michael Butler at a community celebration.

 

For ten years, Ellen was Director and Curator of South Carolina State University’s I.P. Stanback Museum & Planetarium and Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts. As Museum Director, she preserved James Brown’s legacy by safekeeping his memorabilia at the Stanback Museum for seven years. She curated two major exhibitions and two concerts with his original band. Under her directorship, the collections were expanded to included a major collection of african art.

 

Her academic teaching career included New York University’s Steinhardt School, Faculty Advisor at NYU's Gallatin School and at Rutgers University, Assistant Professor in Arts Administration and Producing Director of the university’s theater company.

 

Her leadership extends to service on the boards of the Association of African American Museums, Penn Center, where she coordinated the first Gullah Studies Institute, and the Center for Heirs Property Preservation. She has served on the grants committee for the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Museum Grants for African American History and Culture and authored the strategic plan for Jackson, Mississippi’s historic Farish Street District, funded by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

 

Ellen’s many honors include the 2023 Smith, Hammond, Middleton Social Justice Award from South Carolina State University; the 2017 Leadership Award from the Association of African American Museums; the 2015 Medal for Social Justice and Civil Rights from the National Civil Rights Conference in Philadelphia, Mississippi; and South Carolina State University’s first Faculty Award in Creativity, presented at Commencement by Congressman James Clyburn. She also guided the I.P. Stanback Museum to receive the Governor’s Award for the Humanities and the inaugural Social Justice Award at the Orangeburg Massacre Commemoration.

 

Her contributions to the performing arts are equally distinguished. She produced Rose Leiman Goldemberg’s Letters Home with Kathleen Chalfant at Lincoln Center’s Performing Arts Library, and has worked at theaters including George Street Playhouse, Crossroads Theater Company (for which she wrote the founding grant), Count Basie Theater, producing concerts featuring Max Roach, Wynton Marsalis, and B.B. King. She has also worked with the American Place Theater, Intar Hispanic American Arts Center, and the Rod Rodgers and Bill T. Jones Dance Companies.

 

As a visual artist, Ellen’s series Art with a Conscience has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Meridian Museum of Art (Mississippi), the York W. Bailey Museum at Penn Center (South Carolina), and the Cochran Gallery (Georgia).

 

Her international work includes projects in Northern Ireland, Taiwan, Poland, Georgia, and the Dominican Republic, as well as participation in major festivals in Edinburgh, Budapest, Prague, Lyon, Aarhus, and Montreal.

 

A native New Yorker, Ellen graduated from Hunter College High School, studied at the Art Students League with Rudolf Baranik, earned her BA from City College of the City University of New York, studying with Dr. Kenneth Clark, where she earned a Tremaine Scholarship and was elected into the Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society. She completed her MA at The Steinhart School at New York University where she earned a Kurtz Scholarship and worked as an Assistant in the Doctor of Arts Program.       

 

Across her career, Ellen has united art, education, and community development to preserve history, advance social justice, and inspire the next generation.