Spavento will serve as Co-Executive Director alongside Amanda Middaugh
Kansas City, MO, October 16, 2025: Following a national search, Charlotte Street has selected Elizabeth Spavento as its newest Co-Executive Director. The organization shifted to a co- leadership model following the departure of Executive/Artistic Director Amy Kligman (2015-2024). Spavento will lead artistic direction and programming initiatives and will work with current Co- Executive Director Amanda Middaugh to advance fundraising, strategic planning, and operational and financial support functions.
“I am delighted to be joining Charlotte Street’s leadership team at this important juncture in its history. I hope to build on the momentum set forth by Amy Kligman and create meaningful partnerships with artists and arts organizations locally, regionally, and nationally,” said Spavento. “This is a great time to be excited about Charlotte Street! With Elizabeth and Amanda leading the team, we’re going to keep supporting Kansas City’s artists, centering them in a regional and national arts conversation,” said Charlotte Street Board President Elvis Achelpohl.
Founded in 1997, Charlotte Street has a 28-year legacy of centering artists and advancing contemporary art in the Midwest. Charlotte Street responds directly to needs expressed by artists, providing financial and nonfinancial resources to individuals and artist-run operations, as well as free space for making and presenting new work. In 2024, Charlotte Street served 761 artists of all disciplines and career stages through awards and grants, residencies, and public events. Over $285,000 was granted to individual artists and small arts operations—the largest amount of funds distributed to artists by any Kansas City-area organization. Charlotte Street also builds community by producing over 100 free public events every year— creating accessible opportunities for local audiences to connect with new, multidisciplinary art and artists, fostering community, and growing the fabric of Kansas City’s cultural landscape. In 2021, it opened its first permanent campus in Midtown Kansas City—home to a gallery, theater, artist studios, recording and media lab, workshop, library and archive room, and community gathering areas.
For interview requests, contact Amanda Middaugh, Co-Executive Director, at [email protected] or 816-994-7734.
ABOUT ELIZABETH SPAVENTO
Elizabeth Spavento is a curator, arts administrator and artist born and raised in Buffalo, NY. She has over 14 years of hands-on experience overseeing large- and small-scale curatorial programs in a variety of settings. She was named one of eighteen 2023-24 Creative Corps Fellows with the California Arts Council and the 18th Street Arts Center in Los Angeles, for which she received $110,000 in funding for curatorial projects, the largest individual artist grants to be given out in the state of California. In Portland, Maine, she ran a statewide artist grant program as part of the Andy Warhol Foundation’s regranting network and a residency program that highlighted the contributions of gender- and racially diverse artists.
From 2021-22, she served as the Executive Director for the Arts Council of Kern,
in Bakersfield, CA, the county’s leading arts and culture organization. There, she
provided leadership for programs including the Arts in Corrections and Community
Grants Programs.
As an artist, Spavento organized multiple exhibitions and published many texts between 2016-25 as Co-Founder and Co-Director of the curatorial collective, Border Patrol, including collaborating with residents of Bakersfield’s Mesa Verde ICE Processing center. She is a recipient of an Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Project Grant and a three-time recipient of an Alliance for California Traditional Arts Living Cultures Grant; and she has been awarded residencies with Iris Project (Los Angeles, CA); ACRE (Steuben, WI); and the Centre for the Study of Substructured Loss (London, England). She has lectured about curatorial practice and artist-centered systems at institutions such as Alfred State University, the Maine College of Art, the Portland Museum of Art, and Henry Art Gallery. Spavento also served as a juror and panelist for the Brink Award, Creative Time and Charlotte Street, among others.
ABOUT AMANDA MIDDAUGH
Amanda joined Charlotte Street in November of 2020 as the Development + Marketing Director and was named Co-Executive Director in April of 2025. Prior to Charlotte Street, Amanda served as Senior Manager of Development for The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures from 2019-20 and worked in the Development Office of Kansas City Repertory Theatre for seven years, where she oversaw corporate giving and KCRep’s annual gala.
Amanda holds a B.A. in Fine Arts and Art History from Drury University. She is a graduate of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s Centurions leadership program and was named 2018 Centurion of the Year by her peers. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Kansas City Community Gardens, a nonprofit addressing food insecurity in the region.
ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET
Charlotte Street centers Kansas City’s most forward-thinking visual artists, writers, and performers—acting as the primary incubator, provocateur, and connector for the region’s contemporary arts community, and its leading advocate on the national stage. Since 1997, Charlotte Street has distributed over $2.5 million in awards and grants to artists and their innovative projects, and connected individual artists to each other and to the greater Kansas City community. For more information about Charlotte Street, its awards, programs, and initiatives, visit www.charlottestreet.org.
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View the press release as a PDF here.
